The suspense was scattered around the back nine Saturday at Niagara Falls Country Club.

Golfers in three different threesomes were in contention for the 52nd Porter Cup championship. One was trying to become the first Western New Yorker in 45 years to win the prestigious amateur tournament. Another was poised to be the youngest player to ever conquer the event. The leader for most of the day was one of the world’s top-ranked amateurs, an All-American from the university that produced two of the last three champions.

In the end, it was David Chung — the first player to post a notably low score from Wednesday’s opening round — who outlasted what may have been the strongest field in history and pulled a green jacket over his white polo shirt emblazoned with the Porter Cup logo.

Chung, a co-leader when the final round began, overcame bogeys on the first two holes and an early four-stroke deficit to win the tournament by three shots with a 13-under par 72-hole score of 267. He shot a 5-under 30 on the back nine to post his third 65 of the week.

“I had a shaky start, but actually, I didn’t feel that bad about it,” said Chung, 20, who now has bragging rights over Tiger Woods as the only University of Stanford player to win the Porter Cup. “I was pretty patient and I knew my game would come through today. And it did, thankfully.” “He was pure,” said Jake Katz, the Williamsville native and crowd favorite who played with Chung on Saturday. “Every shot is right down the middle. Every shot is right at the target. He missed a couple putts early on and he showed a lot of guts coming back the way he did.”

Chung, Katz and University of Georgia standout Russell Henley started the day tied for the lead at 8-under. Henley, 21, Golfweek’s NCAA player of the year, opened with a par and then birdied three holes in a row to get to 11-under and pull four strokes ahead of Chung.

But Henley couldn’t get any further under par, and Chung caught up to him with a birdie on 13. On the 16th hole, a 215-yard par-3, both players had long birdie putts from similar spots that came up about five feet short.

“I was going straight down hill, and he had a little bit of a slider, going left to right,” Chung said. “Both tough putts. I kind of knew that if someone missed a putt there, it would be an advantage going into the final two holes with the lead.”

Chung made his second putt. Henley pushed his past the hole, missed another shortie, tapped in for double bogey, and fell off the top of the leaderboard for the first time all week.

Afterward, Henley said the four-putt didn’t prevent him from winning any more than the several birdie putts he missed earlier. “That was just one hole,” he said. “I gave myself a ton of opportunities and I was just burning the edges all day. I’m not going to look back on No. 16. ... Six, I barely missed. Seven, I barely missed. Eight, I barely missed. Nine, I burned the edge. Ten, I burned the edge. Twelve, I was left side. Thirteen, I burned the edge. Fourteen, I burned the edge. I was hitting great putts, but you can’t always make them.”

At that point, Peter Uihlein, 20, a top-five ranked amateur out of Oklahoma State University, and Gavin Hall, a 15-year-old prodigy from Pittsford that improved with every round, were both in the books at 10-under, anxiously awaiting the final group’s arrival on the 18th green. With two of the track’s toughest holes left to play, Chung needed only a pair of pars to win.

Instead, he turned in two birdies to tie for the third-lowest four-round score in tournament history.

“It’s the biggest tournament I’ve won. I’m really honored and privileged to win,” said Chung, a Fayetteville, N.C. native. “I have to say this is one of the amateur tournaments that has the biggest community following.”

The final group was followed by a big gallery bolstered by Katz’s presence. For an afternoon, it seemed as if NFCC had absorbed the membership from Westwood Country Club, Katz’s home course.

“It was a dream come true, it really was, having my friends and family and all the people from Westwood here,” said Katz, 21, who took himself out of contention with two double bogeys on the front nine, but thrilled the crowd with a 100-yard shot for eagle on No. 14 and finished tied for 10th.

Katz, a Binghamton University senior, finished tied for 44th in his Porter Cup debut last summer, and had to qualify in June for a return invitation. He never expected to challenge for the championship this week.

“To be in the last group, tied for the lead with 18 holes left, you can’t put into words how exciting, how nervous, how thrilling it all was,” he said. “Being the 54-hole leader in the Porter Cup — no matter what I do from here on out — is something I’ll cherish.”