Andrew Bailey is headed to the 2027 Masters

Andrew Bailey (BBA ’14) sat on the bed in his room at Sand Valley the night of Oct. 1, staring at an ornate sterling silver cup: the Robert T. Jones Jr. Memorial Trophy, named for golf legend Bobby Jones. That’s when it all hit him. He’d actually done it. He had won the 2026 U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship.

“I never knew if I thought this was possible,” he said.

Hours earlier, he had proved it was, beating Nate Smith 5 and 4. Now, he’s headed to the Masters and the U.S. Open in 2027.

Andrew’s golf career has been one of peaks and valleys.

He came to Cleveland State in 2010 after being paired with Steve Weir, CSU’s men’s golf coach, at the 2009 Ohio Open golf tournament. He calls it a stroke of luck.

At St. Ignatius, where he attended high school and played on the golf team, he admits he wasn’t the best. He didn’t even make varsity his freshman year. But at the Ohio Open, Andrew shot a 68 on the par-71 course, 3 under par.

“It was basically that next week, he gave me a call offering me a spot on the team at CSU,” he said.

“So, the rest is history, and one of the best decisions I ever made.”

At CSU, Andrew met Shelly, his future wife and a golfer on the women’s team. He also met some of his best friends to this day. When they married, half of their 14-person wedding party were Vikings.

In 2014, the year he graduated, he went pro.

“Kind of being a little naive to the whole amateur game of golf, I thought the only path to playing competitive golf after college was to play professionally,” he said.

But it soon lost its luster. The risks far outweighed any reward. And Andrew fell out of love.

Then in 2015, during a rock-climbing trip at Whipp’s Ledges, he fell 20 feet onto a bed of rocks, fracturing his wrist.

That injury “might have been the best thing to ever happen to me,” he told the Associated Press.

He returned to play after he healed, but pro golf had exacted a big toll by then — on him and on his relationship with Shelly. So, he quit but immediately applied to get his amateur status back in 2016. Even then, he barely played.

“I didn’t really have any reason to play golf,” he said.

It took time, but eventually his love for the sport rekindled.

In 2018, he started working for Holderness & Bourne, a golf apparel brand, as a sales rep. Today, he’s the national sales manager. But back then he would spend 120 nights a year on the road, convincing golf clubs throughout the Midwest to carry its merchandise. It was a fledgling company at the time, with only 20 customers. He would actually make six sales trips to Sand Valley without ever playing a round of golf.

Along the way, his interest in golf architecture grew.

“What drew me … was the 'golden age' architects and how they borrowed ideas from the great golf courses in the British Isles and brought those same ideologies to America,” he said.

“I came to love the strategy that may not be known to someone who is not looking for it. It allowed me to be much more engaged when walking a round of golf.” 

When Andrew realized that playing amateur tournaments would put him on some of the most storied courses, places like Pine Valley, Seminole and Fishers Island, he had a reason to play again.

By 2021, Holderness & Bourne was booming, and he stepped back into competing.

He qualified for his first U.S. Mid-Amateur, reaching the quarterfinals that same year.

“That opened up some doors to me,” he said.

“You get a few invitations from there. And you go, and you see how you do, and started playing better.”

An Ohio Amateur title at Canterbury followed in 2023, with another the next year.

Just two years later, he was at the 2026 U.S. Mid-Am at Sand Valley.

A lot of what he learned at CSU showed up.

“I’d say my grittiness, my ability to have confidence in myself even when things are going wrong,” he said.

“…Even if the ball’s not going exactly where you want it to, I still have the tools in my toolbox to get it done. That’s a lot of what Steve Weir instilled in us players: Every day’s not gonna be your day. But you still need to have the strong foundation that can help you get it done when the dominoes aren’t falling in your direction. You can be gritty for a few holes, and then you can find it again, and keep going.”

After he won the title, Weir texted him a screenshot of the 2009 Ohio Open pairing when the two first met.

Weir asked what he’d think about this guy winning that tournament.

Andrew laughed.

“He would have never had a shot.”