Camden’s Cole Anderson is preparing to play in the U.S. Amateur for the second time starting Monday at Cherry Hill Country Club just outside of Denver. Anderson also played in the tournament in 2017. Derek Davis/Staff Photographer

This could be Cole Anderson’s last summer as an amateur golfer. If so, this might be the last opportunity for Anderson to play in the U.S. Amateur Championship, which begins Monday and runs through Sunday at Cherry Hills Country Club, located just outside of Denver.

Anderson, a Camden native, received an automatic bid to the tournament. The top 50 players in the World Amateur Golf Rankings make it in without having to go through qualifying, and Anderson began the week ranked 37th.

“I think (I’m) more relieved, just to not have to play another one of those qualifiers. I’ve had some bad luck over the last few years as far as getting through those,” Anderson said. “It’s a big added stress off your back, and it allows you to focus on preparing and being ready to go when it’s time to compete.”

It will be Anderson’s second time playing in the U.S. Amateur; he missed the cut in 2017 before his junior year at Camden Hills Regional High School. After he finishes his final year at Florida State, the 22-year-old is expecting to turn professional.

“There have been some ‘lasts.’ You finish the Western (Amateur), and it’s like ‘Oh, that’s my last Western Amateur,'” he said. “Even talking to Mom (Sunday) night, I told her ‘Do you realize this is potentially your last tournament as the travel agent?’

“I don’t feel like this chapter is closed at all yet. I still have a lot of college golf left to play. … (But) I have started to notice a little bit of, I don’t know if nostalgia is the right word, but you start to realize you’re in another transition period.”

The U.S. Amateur is the most prestigious amateur event in the country, and Anderson has been trying to get back since qualifying when he was 17. Anderson shot 72 and 81 at Bel-Air Country Club in Los Angeles and missed the 64-player cutoff for match play.

“In hindsight, I definitely wasn’t ready from a golf experience. But those are the types of experiences you need,” he said. “My game didn’t match up yet, but it didn’t feel like it couldn’t in the near future. I feel pretty confident about my ability to compete and contend at this level now. I’m just excited to have another stab at it.”

Anderson has been making sure that second chance will go as well as it can. He flew to Denver on Saturday, right after the Western Amateur, to get acclimated to the thin air, which allows the ball to carry farther and can throw off club distances. It’s a lesson he learned last year, when he qualified for a Korn Ferry Tour event in Colorado after his remarkable third-place finish at the Live and Work in Maine Open, but shot 5 over and missed the cut.

“That was one of the main reasons I didn’t play well. I just felt kind of unprepared from a distance control standpoint,” he said. “That experience influenced a little bit of my thought process when it came to planning out this stretch of the summer.”

Anderson also credited a break from golf with improving his mindset entering this part of the season. After grinding through the college season, he went straight into the summer amateur schedule and played in the Northeast Amateur, Sunnehanna Amateur and Palmer Cup, but didn’t like the state of his game.

“I just felt like I wasn’t quite hitting it the way that I’m used to,” he said. “(I was) off enough that it felt like I couldn’t really play offense in a lot of the situations where I would usually like to be in an aggressive mode.”

Anderson reset, and went to Greece with his family for 10 days in early July, not touching a club the whole time. By the time he was back in the United States, Anderson couldn’t wait to get back on a course.

“It was the first real break I’ve taken in a few years, honestly,” he said. “I just shut it down, which was nice. By the end of it, I was itching. I don’t think I could have done many more days without touching a club. For the 10 that I did, I think it was needed.”

The U.S. Amateur features two days of stroke play, with the top 64 advancing to match play. Anderson said the match play format makes his preparation a little easier.

“I love match play, it’s a blast,” he said. “It’s a lot easier to beat one person than 200. … The first goal is get yourself inside that top 64, and from there, it’s a pretty easy goal each day of winning your match.”

He’s applying that approach to the tournament as a whole. The best amateur players in the country will be there, and Anderson knows he belongs with them.

“Ultimately, the goal is always to win,” he said. “That never changes. There wouldn’t be any fun in this if that wasn’t the goal.”