It is true that Cameron Kahle needed a birdie on 18 last weekend to win the Whitefish Lake Golf Club championship, and that he got it, but it isn’t the highlight of his young career.

That was last October, when he went birdie-eagle on the last two holes of regulation at the State A championship before winning medalist honors on the third playoff hole.

Sunday was just more of the same.

“I had to birdie 18 to win, but I don’t think you can compare to last year’s state,” Kahle (pronounced “Kale”) said Thursday, as he headed to the Pac-Northwest Invitational tournament in Corvallis, Ore. “It was all right – I got home from a rough week at Pinehurst a week prior.

“It felt good to get back on the home course and be comfortable.”

About Pinehurst: Kahle was among six Montanans to compete in the National High School Golf Association championship in North Carolina Aug. 3-5. He wanted to score lower – what golfer doesn’t – and finish higher.

In the end Justus and Jordan Verge of Bozeman shot better than his three-round total of 233 among Montanans, and Kahle, a senior-to-be at Whitefish High, finished in a tie for 73rd overall.

“I got to spend a week there, playing one of the oldest golf courses in the United States,” he said. “It was a learning experience – playing on Bermuda grass, playing a championship course with some of the best kids in the nation.

“I think I left a lot of shots out there. But it just puts it in perspective where my game is compared to a lot of kids in the nation.”

Bill Kahle, Cameron’s father, who’s in his fourth year coaching the Whitefish Bulldogs golf team, puts a sunnier spin on things. “Three rounds in the 70s,” he said, before adding that a tropical storm had affected the proceedings. “One of those rounds was more than seven rounds on the golf course. It was another learning experience – one he can put in the vault and be able to draw on in the future.”

And besides, Bill and another son, 19-year-old Grant, were not only there but they were able to get out the sticks.

“To have a few days with two sons, in one of the Meccas of golf, was really phenomenal,” the elder Kahle said. “I had as much fun as anybody.”

Kahle and his wife Sharon have four boys and all of them – 24-year-old Scott, 22-year-old Jack, Grant and 17-year-old Cameron – have been Bulldog golfers. The dad grew up in the Bay Area of California, and remembers watching tournaments at the famed Pebble Beach with his father.

It’s a golf-crazy family: Bill’s sister volunteers at the USGA and was able to arrange for Grant and Cameron to be standard bearers for three rounds of the 2019 U.S. Open. When Bill and Sharon moved to Whitefish in 1992 – he’d first visited with his Colorado University roommate, Whitefish native Doug Reed – he found an excellent place to raise some golfers.

The Bulldogs’ golf history is fairly spectacular: Twelve boys’ team championships starting in 1960; 18 girls’ championships with the first coming in ’81.

Kahle traces it back at least as far Whitefish golf legends Mike Dowaliby and Terry Nelson. When Nelson stepped down from coaching, WFGC pro Tim Olsen took over. About this time the first Kahle boy hit the high school ranks, so Bill Kahle – “for purely selfish reasons” – became an assistant and eventually the head coach.

“Mike Dowaliby’s philosophy was always to involve more kids rather than fewer,” he said. “That legacy Mike left was certainly carried on with Terry Nelson.”

The Bulldogs continued to crank out champions – though Kahle is their first medalist since Reed Platke in 2009, which is also the last time the boys won a team title.

Cameron, a solid 155-pounder, could help the always strong Bulldogs back to the top after a fourth-place finish last year.

After years in PGA Juniors programs the youngest Kahle started getting – his own word – “competitive” as high school approached.

“That’s when I started traveling a little bit more for tournaments, around the state and Northwest,” he said.

Along the way he started running into Libby’s Ryggs Johnston, a four-time high school state champion, including an eight-stroke victory at the 2018 State A meet.

“I had the opportunity to compete with him,” Kahle said. “Ryggs Johnston is a mentor of mine. Seeing what he’s been able to do his freshman year at ASU, it’s pretty awesome.

“I’m just trying to do my best to follow in his footsteps – keep Montana on the map for high school golf and the next kids.”

Kahle hasn’t drawn the recruiting interest that followed the record-setting Johnston, though all the Frontier Conference schools have made contact along with a few smaller schools in California. He’s excited about what the future holds, either way.

“All that needs to happen is a coach spend about a half-hour with him,” his dad said. “They’ll see not just his determination but that athletically he’s gifted. And a shot-maker. It’s a big ask to pull out a clutch shot at the end of a round, but the younger Kahle has done it more than once in his short career. He is intent on getting better while mentally, he seems pretty far along.

“I think my first meet was actually home, on my home turf,” he remembered. “I definitely showed some nerves. But I’ve learned to love those first-tee nerves. They get you going.”