Freeport’s Eli Spaulding will look to become just the fourth golfer to win three consecutive Maine Amateur Championships beginning Tuesday when the 107th Maine Amateur will be held at the Sanford Country Club.
Spaulding, who just completed his sophomore season at Loyola University in Maryland, won last year’s Maine Amateur at the Waterville Country Club by four shots over Ron Kelton Jr. of the Purpoodock Club in Cape Elizabeth after triumphing by two shots over John Hayes IV in 2024 at Purpoodock.
Hayes and Kelton are Cape Elizabeth natives.
Spaulding is looking to join Dick Diversi, Mark Plummer and Caleb Manuel in the group that has won at least three in a row.
Diversi won five in a row from 1953-1957; Plummer captured three in succession on two occasions (1982-1984, 2000-2002); and Manuel won in 2021-2023.
Spaulding, like Manuel, plays out of the Brunswick Golf Club and was an All-Patriot League First Team selection this season after posting five top-10 finishes in 11 tournaments including a team-best fifth at the Patriot League Championship at Army-West Point, N.Y.
Last month, he won the prestigious 126th annual BMW Philadelphia Amateur golf tournament.
He was an All-Patriot League second team selection his freshman year.
The three-time state Class B individual champion from Freeport High School followed up his triumph at last year’s Maine Amateur by winning the New England Amateur in Vermont, becoming the first Maine golfer in 34 years to win the Maine Amateur and New England Amateur in the same year.
Spaulding will be one of four former Maine Amateur champions in the three day, 54-hole tournament along with Hayes (2015), Andrew Slattery (2014) and Ricky Jones (2003, ‘04 and 2013).
Brian Bickford, the executive director of the Maine Golf Association, said Sanford’s par-72, 6,722-yard layout will test the golfers and that a score of six or seven-under par would be “outstanding.”
“It is a challenging golf course. You will use a lot of different clubs off the tee, which will result in using different clubs to the green,” Bickford said. “There are multiple ways you can play the course. You can play with a lot of three woods, you can pick and choose when to use your driver or you could hit some long irons. It isn’t super long. In today’s day and age, it is pretty moderate.
There will be a field of 132 golfers. Fifty-two received exemptions and 419 attempted to qualify at six different sites across the state for the 80 remaining spots.
After the first two rounds, a cut will be made leaving the low 50 players (and ties) to vie for the title and for 40 exemptions to the 2027 Maine Amateur Championship.
And for just the third time in tournament history, the winner will receive an automatic berth to the United States Amateur championship at the Merion Golf Club and Philadelphia Country Club in August.
And the top 16 finishers (and ties) at the Maine Amateur will earn a spot in the 2026 Match Play Invitational at the Purpoodock Club on Aug. 3-5.
There will be players from 46 different golf clubs in Maine with the Brunswick Golf Club leading the way with 12 participants. The Val Halla Golf Course in Cumberland will have 11 representatives, the Waterville Country Club will have nine and the Biddeford-Saco Country Club will have eight.
The youngest player in the field will be 14-year-old Jacob Footer from the St. Croix Country Club in Calais and the oldest will be 67-year-old Guy Lansing from the Waterville Country Club.