Setting the Standard

Brayden Forte and Miles Kuhl, two 18-year-olds still in high school, set scoring record — with room to spare — in winning CGA Four-Ball; in all, 7 Team Colorado members place among the top 6 team finishers

By Gary Baines 

WINDSOR — At the conclusion of the CGA’s first championship of 2026, it came time for the winners to be introduced at the trophy ceremony.

One person in the assembled gathering said out loud what others competitors no doubt might have felt.

“Give us a chance next year,” the person said to the new CGA Four Ball champions, perhaps reflecting an admiration of talent — along with injecting a little levity into what had become a runaway affair.

Two 18-year-olds, set to be roommates and teammates at San Diego State, made it so. Brayden Forte of Aurora and Murphy Creek Golf Course and Miles Kuhl of Boulder and Boulder Country Club lapped the 104-team field, winning by seven strokes on Sunday at RainDance National. It tied for the second-most-lopsided CGA Four-Ball victory in the 45 times the championship has been contested.

Dean Clapp and Jim Doidge hold the record for winning margin with a 10-stroke gap in 2005, when it was just a 36-hole event. And Chris Thayer and Bryan Rusin won by seven in a 54-hole tournament in 2021 — as Forte and Kuhl did this year.

Kuhl (left) and Forte with the spoils of victory.

But that was hardly the only category in which Forte and Kuhl moved into the CGA Four-Ball records books this weekend. Despite two rounds at the formidable RainDance National — along with one at nearby Highland Meadows Golf Course — they broke the tournament scoring record as their 31-under-par total was three better than Parker Edens and Jimmy Makloski posted in 2024.

“I heard last night someone said that 28 (under) was the record, but we kind of knew going in today that we were going to crush that,” said Kuhl, winner of two AJGA Wyndham Clark Presented by the CGA titles and the 2025 5A state high school championship — as well as being a qualifier for the 2024 U.S. Amateur as a 16-year-old. “So that was kind of our mindset — just keep it going, and it feels really good to put our names in the record books.”

Kuhl chips onto a green on Sunday.

Kuhl and Forte are both second-year members of the Team Colorado junior squad that’s been on the cutting edge of the USGA’s National Development Program. And it would be an understatement to stay Team Colorado did itself proud at the CGA Four-Ball at RainDance National and Highland Meadows.

Besides Kuhl and Forte winning, Brayden DeStefano of Peyton was part of the second-place team (with partner Cole Anderson of Colorado Springs), while TC members Nicholas Brooks of Parker and Austin Hunt of Highlands Ranch tied for third on Sunday, and Team Colorado teammates Ash Edwards of Boulder and Gavin Amella of Castle Rock shared sixth place.

In other words, of the 14 players who tied for sixth or better at RainDance National, half are current members of Team Colorado.

“That’s’ super special,” said Forte, the 2025 CGA State Junior champion who qualified for the Korn Ferry Tour event last summer at TPC Colorado. “I think we've all gotten a lot better over the past two years since the team has started. And the coaches we have are really good, and they help us get a lot better. So it’s kind of special, just because we're all really close friends.”

Added Kuhl: “It's cool to see everyone succeeding. Golf is really individual sport, and having that team aspect to it just adds a lot of fun.”

Speaking of accomplished teenage golfers, Forte and Kuhl are one of the youngest — if not the youngest —CGA Four-Ball champions, when taken as a team. At least one other 18-year-old has won the event, but Sam Marley in 2015 partnered with then-37-year-old James Richardson.

Cole Anderson (left) and Brayden DeStefano finished a distant second on Sunday.

This time around, Forte and Kuhl put on a show as they shot best-ball rounds of 62 (RainDance), 61 (Highland Meadows) and 61 on Sunday (RainDance). In 54 holes, they made one better-ball bogey (hole 2 at Highland Meadow on Saturday), while carding 32 better-ball birdies.

Both players from the winning team finished each hole — despite it being a four-ball event — and Forte ended up with scores of 67-65-66, while Kuhl went 69-69-69. Forte made 23 birdies for the tournament, while Kuhl racked up 14.

That, my friends, is how a tournament record is posted — whether the primary host course is RainDance National or Legacy Ridge Golf Course, where every CGA Four-Ball but one was held from 2007 through ’25.

“I feel like in past years, I've never had every single round in a tournament under par,” Forte said. “And I played in a little amateur event — the Ute Creek Invitational — last week, and I shot 10 under for two days. So that kind of got me over the hump, and then it gave me some confidence going into this week.”

Forte extricates himself from a bunker at RainDance.

DeStefano and Anderson (64-64-63) checked in at 24 under par for second place, with Brooks and Hunt (65-63-66) and Matt Zions of Lakewood and Jay Livsey of Wheat Ridge (63-66-65) shared third place at 21 under.

Neither Forte (Cherokee Trail) nor Kuhl (Fairview) have yet graduated from high school — that comes in the next few weeks — but by late summer they’ll be teammates again at San Diego State. Kuhl committed first to the school and Forte originally planned to go to Xavier. But Kuhl planted the idea with Forte that he should think about going instead to SDSU. So Forte contacted the coach and made the switch become a reality.

Kuhl and Forte were friends before being part of Team Colorado and representing the state at the Junior America’s Cup tournament, but those “kind of bonded us,” they said.

“We’re going to be roommates and teammates, so I think it's special that we can play well in this event,” Forte said. “We can go do the same in college, and be really good on a team together.”

Said Kuhl: “I would say this is a preview of what’s to come next year. We're going to have a really good team, and we're going to make a run into May and June.”

In the final group on Sunday were four members of Team Colorado (from left): Forte, Austin Hunt, Nicholas Brooks and Kuhl.

On Sunday, Kuhl and Forte took a five-stroke lead into the final round, but saw the margin narrowed to three when neither player birdied the first or second hole. But Forte got things going with a 3-foot birdie on 3, and Kuhl birdied the next from 20 feet before Forte added a third straight birdie on No. 5. By the time they made the turn on Sunday, they had rebuilt a big lead — which they wouldn’t relinquish.

“We got off to a slow start, then after those two holes (3 and 4), it started the momentum, and we started racking up the birdies,” Forte said.

“All we needed was a few birdies to get us rolling, then we were just going from there,” Kuhl said.

Jay Livsey (white pullover) and Matt Zions, who finished third, line up a putt at No. 9 on Sunday.

Both Kuhl and Forte have played in the CGA Four-Ball before — with different partners — but didn’t make it into contention for the title. To do so together in record-setting fashion on Sunday was special, they said.

“So many good players have come through Colorado,” Forte noted. “To set a record (in this event) — to get that done — feels really good.”

From 2014 through ’24, no winning team for the CGA Four-Ball featured both players under 25 years old. But the last two years, that’s flipped as University of Colorado students Hunter Swanson and Wes Erling won the event last year and Forte and Kuhl prevailed on Sunday.

For all the scores from the 2026 CGA Four-Ball, CLICK HERE.

Brooks points to his partner after both sank birdies at No. 17.

About the Writer: Gary Baines has covered golf in Colorado continuously since 1983. He was a sports writer at the Daily Camera newspaper in Boulder, then the sports editor there, and has written regularly for ColoradoGolf.org since 2009. The University of Colorado Evans Scholar alum was inducted into the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame in 2022. He owns and operates ColoradoGolfJournal.com