Tag: AJGA

Nicholas Dunlap, reigning U.S. Junior Amateur champion, collects AJGA Rolex Player of the Year honors

At the biggest junior events in 2021, Nicholas Dunlap was always a factor.

At the biggest junior events in 2021, Nicholas Dunlap was always a factor. Perhaps nothing demonstrates that better than the U.S. Junior Amateur trophy Dunlap carted off from the Country Club of North Carolina in July.

Now, Dunlap, who is verbally committed to play for Alabama, has been named the AJGA’s Rolex Player of the Year, which is the organization’s highest honor for a player.

While the U.S. Junior trophy might have scored him the biggest headlines – and also earned him a spot in the 2022 U.S. Open – the rest of Dunlap’s season was equally impressive. Early in the year, he won the Dustin Johnson World Junior and early in the summer, he won the Polo Golf Junior Classic at Liberty National. The latter, like the U.S. Junior, was a match-play event.

In AJGA competition, the high school senior played in 11 events recognized by the Rolex AJGA Rankings and finished outside the top five just twice. Even when Dunlap wasn’t winning, he was in the mix. He tied for second at the Wyndham Invitational, tied for fifth at the Western Junior and was runner-up in both the Boys Junior PGA Championship and Junior Players Championship late in the summer.

Dunlap, No. 1 in Golfweek’s Junior Rankings, and the rest of the 2021 Rolex Junior All-America Teams listed below will be honored virtually through a Rolex Junior All-America Awards celebration on Friday, Dec. 3 dubbed “The Greatest Night in Junior Golf.”

First Team

Luke Clanton of Miami Lakes, Florida
Nicholas Dunlap of Huntsville, Alabama
Maxwell Ford of Peachtree Corners, Georgia
Zach Heffernan of Boerne, Texas
J. Holland Humphries of Austin, Texas
Benjamin James of Milford, Connecticut
Jackson Koivun of San Jose, California
Eric Lee of Fullerton, California
Bryan Lee of Fairfax, Virginia
Jacob Sosa of Austin, Texas
Jase Summy of Keller, Texas
Caleb Surratt of Indian Trail, North Carolina

Second Team

Sihao Cong of Irvine, California
John Daly II of Dardanelle, Arkansas
Ethan Gao of Alpharetta, Georgia
Jonathan Griz of Hilton Head Island, South Carolina
Bryan Kim of Brookeville, Maryland
Bruce Murphy of Johns Creek, Georgia
Anawin Pikulthong of Gilbert, Arizona
Aaron Pounds of The Woodlands, Texas
Nicholas Prieto of Miami, Florida
Mason Snyder of Las Vegas, Nevada
Matthew Troutman of Louisville, Kentucky
Wells Williams of West Point, Mississippi

Honorable Mention

Kyle An of Aliso Viejo, California
Jonas Appel of Encinitas, California
Gavin Aurilia of Phoenix, Arizona
Carson Brewer of Jacksonville, Florida
Ryder Cowan of Edmond, Oklahoma
Matthew Doyle of Madison, Connecticut
Nicholas Gross of Downingtown, Pennsylvania
Will Hartman of Marvin, North Carolina
Scotty Kennon of Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida
Shawn Lalmoni of Orlando, Florida
Carter Loflin of Duluth, Georgia
Kyo Morishita of (Japan) Bradenton, Florida
Will Morlan of Alpharetta, Georgia
Sebastian Moss of Houston, Texas
Chase Nevins of Great Falls, Virginia
Calder Overfelt of Newport Beach, California
Alex Papayoanou of The Woodlands, Texas
Deven Patel of Johns Creek, Georgia
Solomon Petrie of Akron, Ohio
Sihan Sandhu of Pinehurst, North Carolina
William Sides of Tulsa, Oklahoma
Brendan Valdes of Orlando, Florida
Keaton Vo of Austin, Texas
Rylan Wotherspoon of Florence, Kentucky

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From contending at U.S. Women’s Open to top junior honors: Megha Ganne named AJGA Rolex Player of the Year

Every time Ganne teed it up in an American Junior Golf Association event in 2021, she contended. Now she’s the AJGA’s top player.

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Every time Megha Ganne teed it up in an American Junior Golf Association event in 2021, she contended. For those in the know, it came as no surprise that she also contended in one of women’s golf biggest events – the U.S. Women’s Open.

Ganne was hardly an unknown entering the year, having qualified for the Drive, Chip and Putt National Finals four times and advanced to the semifinals at the 2018 U.S. Women’s Amateur. But she took her game to a new level this season, especially on the junior circuit. She played in five events recognized by the Rolex AJGA Rankings without ever finishing outside the top four and has been named the AJGA’s Rolex Player of the Year. It’s the junior golf association’s highest honor for players.

Ganne finished T3 at the Rolex Tournament of Champions and T3 at the ANNIKA Invitational early in the AJGA season. She won the Scott Robertson Memorial, a long-running junior golf event in Virginia, before making big headlines as the 17-year-old contending at the U.S. Women’s Open at Olympic Club.

Ultimately, Ganne finished T14 that week for low-amateur honors.

The back half of her year was a whirlwind of team events. She represented the U.S. as an alternate on the victorious Curtis Cup team and was a playing member of the Ping Junior Solheim Cup team and Junior Ryder Cup team.

Ganne, who is verbally committed to Stanford, ended the year ranked No. 1 in the Golfweek Junior Rankings and No. 22 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking.

Ganne and the rest of the 2021 Rolex Junior All-America Teams listed below will be honored virtually through a Rolex Junior All-America Awards celebration on Friday, Dec. 3 dubbed “The Greatest Night in Junior Golf.”

First Team

Brooke Biermann of Wildwood, Missouri
Gianna Clemente of Warren, Ohio 
Anna Davis of Spring Valley, California
Megha Ganne of Holmdel, New Jersey 
Mackenzie Lee of North Little Rock, Arkansas
Michelle Liu of Vancouver, British Columbia
Alexa Pano of Lake Worth, Florida
Bailey Shoemaker of Dade City, Florida
Kendall Todd of Goodyear, Arizona 
Karen Tsuru of Carlsbad, California
Yana Wilson of Henderson, Nevada
Avery Zweig of McKinney, Texas

Second Team

Sara Im of Duluth, Georgia
Xin (Cindy) Kou of (China) Valencia, California
Jaclyn LaHa of Pleasanton, California
Erica Lee of Arcadia, California
Katie Li of Basking Ridge, New Jersey
Gloria Nip of (Hong Kong) Port St Lucie, Florida
Jacqueline Putrino of Lakewood Ranch, Florida
Kiara Romero of San Jose, California
Kaitlyn Schroeder of Jacksonville, Florida
Kelly Xu of Claremont, California
Lucy Yuan of San Diego, California
Yunxuan (Michelle) Zhang of (China) Plano, Texas

Honorable Mention

Kynadie Adams of Nashville, Tennessee
Vanessa Borovilos of Toronto, Ontario
Leigh Chien of Irvine, California
Kylee Choi of Murrieta, California
Kylie Chong of Torrance, California
Kary Hollenbaugh of New Albany, Ohio
Thienna Huynh of Lilburn, Georgia
Grace Kilcrease of Springdale, Arkansas
Lauren Kim of Surrey, British Columbia
Sophie Linder of Carthage, Tennessee
Angela (Yilin) Liu of Irvine, California
Bridget Ma of Orlando, Florida
McKenzie Mages of Marietta, Georgia
Ava Merrill of Johns Creek, Georgia
Julia Misemer of Overland Park, Kansan
Catherine Park of Irvine, California
Catherine Rao of Camarillo, California
Brooke Rivers of Brampton, Ontario
Alexia Siehl of Fort Mill, South Carolina
Suzie Tran of Poulsbo, Washington
Lily Zhang of Buffalo, New York
Angela Zhang of Bellevue, Washington
Sophie Zhang-Murphy of Saratoga, California
Alice Ziyi Zhao of (China) Irvine, California

Blog Junior: Keeping up with all things junior golf

Looking to keep up with all the news in the junior golf world? Keep an eye Golfweek’s running junior golf blog.

Junior golf is a proving ground for the next level of competition, and a place where the next star is often identified early.

Looking to keep up with names you should know, tournaments you should follow and news of the junior golf world? Golfweek is here to help. Keep an eye our running junior blog.

We’ll compile newsy nuggets about venues, junior tours, players, significant wins and more here so you can easily follow the game at the junior level. Keep an eye on the “junior” tab on Golfweek.com for all other junior-related news.

Also make sure you keep an eye on Golfweek’s Junior Rankings:

Boys rankings | Girls rankings

The sixth annual Dustin Johnson World Junior will feature 74 players ranked inside Golfweek’s top 100

March 1

The Dustin Johnson World Junior will be played for the sixth time next month at TPC Myrtle Beach, and with a field fitting for a tournament named after the reigning Masters champion. The event features a boys and girls division, and 74 of the 90 total players (60 boys, 30 girls) are ranked among the top 100 players in the Golfweek Junior Rankings.

The boys field is highlighted by Brendan Valdes of Orlando, Florida, No. 6 in Golfweek’s rankings. No. 3 Hyo Joon Jang of Howey in the Hills, Florida, highlights the girls field.

Neither of last year’s winners will be around to defend as boys champion Tyler Wilkes is playing at the University of Florida girls winner Taylor Roberts is teeing it up at Florida State.

“Dustin’s goal was to make this the best junior tournament in America, and this year represents another big step in that direction,” Tournament Director Scott Tomasello said. “This year’s event will feature one of the three strongest fields in all of junior golf, TPC Myrtle Beach is an elite facility, and with Dustin’s support, the tournament will deliver on the experiential side as well. We can’t wait for the sixth annual Dustin Johnson World Junior Golf Championship to tee off.”

The entire field can be found here.

-Julie Williams

New junior event selected for Symetra Tour MVP Invite

Feb. 18

The Mack Champ Invitational, a new junior golf event, has been selected by the Symetra Tour as one of three tournaments showcasing minority golfers that will receive a “Symetra Tour MVP Invite” for the 2021 season. Invitees will be selected by the respective tournament’s committee and earn exemption into a designated Symetra Tour event.

The Mack Champ Invitational is named after PGA Tour player Cameron Champ’s late grandfather Mack. It honors his legacy by identifying talented, diverse players. The inaugural event was supposed to be played in 2020 at Memorial Park Golf Course in Houston, Texas, but was postponed to 2021 because of COVID. The 2021 event will take place from March 19-21, and the corresponding Symetra MVP Invite will provide an exemption into the Garden City Charity Classic at Buffalo Dunes Golf Club in Garden City, Kansas, from April 30-May 2.

“We are incredibly excited and grateful for the Symetra Tour’s enthusiasm in supporting our mission with the establishment of the Symetra Tour MVP Invite. Having the ability to award a player in our field with an exemption to compete in the Garden City Classic is huge,” said Cameron Champ. “That will be a fantastic experience for one of these young players and could also lead them to many more opportunities, which is exactly what we’ve set out to accomplish with the Mack Champ Invitational – opening more doors for golfers of diverse backgrounds to have the chance to succeed in this great sport.”

The National Women’s Collegiate Golf Championship will also receive a Symetra Tour MVP Invite, with a third event yet to be determined.

-Julie Williams

Tournament opportunity: Dye Invitational

Feb. 18

The Dye Junior Invitational debuted in 2020 at Crooked Stick Golf Club in Carmel, Indiana. The 54-hole event includes a boys and girls field of 33 players each. The 2021 event will be played June 6-8.

A new name enters the realm of AJGA tournament hosts

Feb. 18

If it feels like Albane Valenzuela isn’t all that far removed from junior golf, it’s because there’s something to that thought. At 23, Valenzuela has added her name to a stacked lineup of PGA Tour and LPGA pros lending their support to AJGA events.

Valenzuela, who played collegiately for Stanford from 2016 to 2019, competed in the 2016 Olympic Games for Switzerland and was runner-up at the U.S. Women’s Amateur in 2017 and 2019. She earned her LPGA card in the fall of 2019 and is embarking on a “do-over” rookie season afforded by the pandemic.

As a junior golfer, Valenzuela competed for Team Europe on the 2015 Ping Junior Solheim Cup, won the 2015 Doral Publix Junior Classic and 2015 Junior Orange Bowl, and competed in the Evian Masters Junior Cup in 2012.

Now, Valenzuela’s name will remain in the junior game through the Under Armour / Albane Valenzuela Girls Championship. The inaugural event will be played at Longbow Golf Club near Phoenix, May 27-30, a day after the conclusion of the NCAA Women’s Championship across town at Grayhawk Golf Club.

The 54-hole stroke play event will feature 78 girls selected by Performance Based Entry. The tournament joins the AJGA’s all-girls lineup of the Diamond Resorts ANNIKA Invitational presented by Rolex (January), Rolex Girls Junior Championship (June), and Ping Junior Solheim Cup (August).

-Julie Williams

NCAA extends recruiting dead period

Feb. 17

In a bit of bad news for hopeful college golfers – particularly those in the Class of 2022 – the Division I Council extended the recruiting dead period for all sports through May 31, continuing the ban on in-person recruiting activities that began when the pandemic hit last spring.

The only silver lining in the latest dead-period extension was that it also included news of a return, according to the NCAA announcement.

“After careful consideration of all available information, the Council agreed that an extension of the dead period through May 31 was necessary,” said Council chair M. Grace Calhoun, athletics director at Pennsylvania. “However, there is a strong commitment to use the next several weeks to outline the transition plan back to recruiting activities post June 1 and to provide those plans to prospective student-athletes, their families and the NCAA membership no later than April 15.”

Ping becomes AJGA’s first Legacy Partner, extending contract through 2030

Feb. 16

In the AJGA’s more than 40-year history, Ping has become a name synonymous with the junior golf organization. The equipment company has become the AJGA’s first Legacy Partner, which is a new level of partnership that recognizes longtime support to junior golf. The announcement, and a new contract extension, mean the AJGA and Ping will continue their relationship through 2030.

Ping first appeared as an AJGA sponsor when it hosted the Ping Myrtle Beach Junior Classic at Quail Creek Country Club in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina – an event that ran for more than 10 years. Ping was soon supporting as many as six events per year, including the Ping Phoenix Junior which ran from 1991-2016. Its support in that area continues has continued to date with the Ping Heather Farr Classic.

“It’s a tremendous honor to become the first AJGA Legacy Partner,” said Ping Chairman & CEO John A. Solheim. “We both share a common goal of helping develop highly-skilled young golfers who aspire to compete at the college level and beyond. Our 40-year relationship includes many highlights, but I’m especially proud of the success of the Ping Junior Solheim Cup and its impact on girls’ golf.

“Its stature is elevated with each event and to see many of those participants go on to star in the Solheim Cup brings me great satisfaction and pride. With the growing popularity of golf, it’s more important than ever that we promote the values golf has to offer while bringing the game to the next generation of competitive junior golfers. We’re excited to continue that mission with our friends at the AJGA.”

-Julie Williams

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Jackson Van Paris locked up the AJGA Simplify Boys title hours before a winter storm blanketed Texas

Jackson Van Paris became the first player in this AJGA invitational’s 34-year history to win multiple titles.

With much of Texas blanketed in snow and record-low temperatures on Monday, Jackson Van Paris found himself with a little extra time to reflect on a junior-golf title bagged, unbelievably, a day earlier. Van Paris, like the rest of the field, piled on the layers and donned a beanie for the final round of the AJGA’s Simply Boys Championship at Carlton Woods, the first invitational of the season and one where the schedule was scrambled to fit in 54 holes.

“The conditions – they were pretty hard,” Van Paris said. “When it’s 35 degrees out here, you’re wearing three, four, five layers the entire round. Definitely doesn’t allow you to hit some of the shots you normally would be able to hit in 65-, 70-degree weather.”

The Van Parises, from Pinehurst, North Carolina, imagined they might be in the Lone Star State a few more days as the winter storm raged. It will go down as quite the memory, particularly if this happens to be Van Paris’s final AJGA invitational start.

It’s a possibility, but not a certainty.

Most of Van Paris’s summer will be taken up by amateur events as he transitions to the next level before his freshman year at Vanderbilt. The Western Amateur, Sunnehanna Amateur, Terra Cotta Amateur and North & South Amateur are among those on his wishlist. Van Paris, 17, already appeared in some of those events this past summer. Most recently, he finished 72nd at the Jones Cup earlier this month.

“Trying to transition to amateur golf just to kind of get used to what it will be like in college,” he said.

Van Paris is ranked No. 9 in Golfweek’s Junior rankings and No. 279 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking. He has been as high as No. 64 in the latter ranking. These past six months, despite his game feeling solid, he hasn’t felt his scores have matched. The familiarity of the Club at Carlton Woods in The Woodlands, Texas, site of last week’s Simplify Boys Championship, helped change that.

Jackson Van Paris
Jackson Van Paris fist bumps a military member during the final round of the AJGA Simplify Boys Championship at Carlton Woods. (AJGA photo)

With his win, Van Paris became the first repeat champion in the tournament’s 34-year history, having also won the event in 2019. The AJGA condensed a three-day tournament into two by making Friday’s opening round a 36-hole day as the winter storm loomed. A few players had to finish their second round on Saturday before the start of the third round, but the field finished by Saturday evening as temperatures dipped into the 30s.

Van Paris fired rounds of 69-68-66 to win by five shots at 13 under. Golfweek’s top-ranked junior, David Ford of Peachtree Corners, Georgia, finished runner-up.

“I honestly think coming back to a place I’ve won before helped me,” Van Paris said. “I’ve won here in the past, I know my game is good enough to win here. I love the golf course.”

He would have another chance to test that theory next month had the Junior Invitational at Sage Valley, one of the elite events in junior golf, gone on as planned, but the event has been canceled because of COVID. Van Paris won’t get to defend the tournament he won on the cusp of another natural disaster in March 2020.

There are still perks on the calendar, though, and perhaps none bigger than playing his final U.S. Junior Amateur at his home course, the Country Club of North Carolina, in July.

Van Paris is the rare player who has given enormous amounts of his time back to the game – not just through hours spent on the putting green and the driving range, but by getting involved in the giving-back component of golf. He served as a player representative to the AJGA board in 2020 and devoted considerable energy to one particular charitable effort.

Jackson Van Paris
Jackson Van Paris with the AJGA’s Jerry Cole Sportsmanship Award at the AJGA’s year-end virtual “banquet” in 2020. (AJGA photo)

For the past six years, Van Paris’s name has been synonymous with the Carolina Cup, an event that has raised $250,000 in four years on behalf of the Nicklaus Children’s Health Care Foundation and the ACE Grant. Starting in 2017, he helped run the event with his family and through assistance from the AJGA. It’s the kind of event passed down from one junior-golf family to the next, and the Van Parises will pass the torch now, too.

Van Paris alone has raised more than $32,000 for charity during his involvement with the Carolina Cup. He was honored with the AJGA’s Jerry Cole Sportsmanship Award at the end of last year and gained loads of perspective from learning how to apply his talents to something bigger than golf.

“I really don’t know if I ever saw myself before doing it but now after running it for three or four years I really couldn’t see myself not doing it,” he said. “It’s been really cool and an opportunity I’m very thankful for and feel lucky to have been a part of.”

In many respects, including his charitable efforts, Van Paris seemed to go from junior golf to the cusp of adulthood in an instant. Not even four years have passed since Van Paris made match play as a 14-year-old at the 2018 U.S. Amateur at Pebble Beach. When he won his first-round match against Dylan Perry, it made him the youngest competitor to win a match at the U.S. Amateur since Bobby Jones reached the quarterfinals in 1916.

2018 U.S. Amateur
Jackson Van Paris watches his second shot on the first hole during the Round of 64 at the 2018 U.S. Amateur at Pebble Beach Golf Links in Pebble Beach, Calif. (Photo by USGA/Chris Keane)

“I was 14 and didn’t really know what I was doing yet,” he said. “Just went out there and played golf and happened to have stuff go my way and play really well, made match play and won a match. That was really cool, and ever since then, I’ve kind of just tried to play amateur events periodically and get a feel for what it’s like.”

Van Paris imagines he’ll study either human organizational development or economics when he lands at Vanderbilt next fall, but he hasn’t decided for certain yet.

Van Paris and his friend Gordon Sargent, who hails from Birmingham, Alabama, and finished third at the Simplify Boys, committed to play for the Commodores within 24 hours of each in 2018. They’ll room together as freshmen, and Van Paris hopes he’s part of the next wave of Vanderbilt golf glory. After meeting head coach Scott Limbaugh and assistant coach Gator Todd, he couldn’t imagine playing anywhere else.

Given his track record, one would imagine that’s Van Paris’s impact in Nashville will extend far past his scoring average.

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AJGA’s 2021 schedule to include invitationals at Streamsong, Champions Golf Club

The AJGA is adding invitationals in 2021 at two top venues: Streamsong Resort and Champions Golf Club.

The American Junior Golf Association tends to celebrate long weekends with tournament opportunities. As this weekend’s AJGA Simplify Boys Championship at Carlton Woods in The Woodlands, Texas, approaches, the AJGA has added two more similar championships.

This marks the first time since 2007 that boys stroke-play invitationals – which draw the deepest fields on the AJGA schedule – have been added to the AJGA lineup.

The organization announced on Wednesday that it would host the Team TaylorMade Invitational on May 29-31, 2021. Top juniors will spend Memorial Day weekend at Streamsong Resort’s Blue Course in remote Bowling Green, Florida.

Streamsong Blue lands in the top 20 on Golfweek’s Best 2020 list of top resort courses and has never hosted an AJGA event before. The U.S. Golf Association hosted the second U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball at Streamsong Resort in 2016. The Florida State Golf Association frequently uses it for a championship site, and the inaugural Golfweek Streamsong Amateur was played on the Blue Course in December.

Along with the Team TaylorMade Invitational, the AJGA last week added the Jack Burke Jr. Invitational to the August schedule. The 54-hole boys event will be played at Champions Golf Club Cypress Creek course, where the U.S. Women’s Open was played in December.

Interestingly, the event, to be played Aug. 3-6, grew from parent support. When four parents of AJGA players posed the question of whether Champions Golf Club ever host an event, the wheels began to turn.

A group of golfers walk down the fairway after tee shot off the 11th tee box during the third round of the U.S. Women’s Open at Champions Golf Club. (Photo: Erik Williams-USA TODAY Sports)

“One of the biggest challenges for junior golf is obtaining high-quality courses for tournaments,” said Chris Spaulding, one of those parents, in an AJGA release. “We all have junior golfers and we know this first hand. We thought it would be excellent if an AJGA Invitational were held at Champions and on the Cypress Creek course. We knew that it would be a very special event and, as we knew would be the case, when we raised the possibility with Robin Burke and Bret Nutt, Champions immediately got behind hosting the event.”

The Jack Burke Jr. Invitational is named, of course, after the founder of the club – a man who had an illustrious professional career that included the 1956 Masters title. The invitational has no corporate sponsor. Instead, support from Champions Golf Club members will fund the championship in 2021 and beyond.

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Avery Zweig, 13, crosses off another milestone with AJGA Annika Invitational win

Thirteen-year-old Avery Zweig added the Annika Invitational – her first AJGA title – to a growing list of achievements on Monday.

ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. – It’s easier than you might imagine to lose a golf bag at a junior golf event – particularly if it’s a red bag, the coveted sign of an AJGA Open or Junior All-Star winner.

Avery Zweig explains that this has happened to a friend of hers. Zweig, however, need not worry because before her post-round interview at the Annika Invitational was even complete on Monday afternoon, her clubs had already been transferred into the new blue and white bag – the kind carried by winners of AJGA Invitationals. Meanwhile, an elegant cut-glass trophy rested safely on the table next to the 13-year-old, who tried to put both in perspective in terms of hours invested.

“This is like a physical symbol of that,” she said of her first AJGA win.

The experience with which Zweig backs up this milestone win is mind-blowing. She’s a player who can give a cavalier start to an acceptance speech (“Well I’d say this was a pretty good day”), draw applause for her age and as a kicker, remind the crowd that she’s going to be back four more times to defend.

“You guys may be sick of me,” she joked.

Despite being only 13, Zweig has made four USGA starts (with a fifth coming in April at the U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball) and holds a handful of USGA age records. She also appeared in the 2013 junior-golf documentary “The Short Game.”

Scores: AJGA Annika Invitational

It’s both remarkable she won an AJGA invitational at this young age and surprising it took her this long.

Entering a clear, chilly day at the Slammer & Squire course at World Golf Village, Zweig, in the graduating class of 2025, trailed high school senior Kendall Todd by a single shot. Birdies at Nos. 2 and 6 kept her in the game as Todd played the first seven holes in 2 under. But when Zweig birdied the par-5 eighth and then dropped a 35-footer for birdie on the ninth, she seemed to pick up a pep in her step.

“I told myself at the beginning of the day, or at least this is how I comforted my nerves, no matter what happened today, I knew I was going to get something out of it,” Zweig said, referencing the experienced players in her group. “I told myself I wasn’t going to play tentative and if I was going to lose, I wasn’t going to lose with fear.”

Annika Invitational golf bag
The golf bag and trophy awarded to Avery Zweig as winner of the AJGA’s Annika Invitational. (AJGA photo)

For Zweig, birdies at Nos. 10 and 12 followed. At the 300-yard par-4 14th, Todd and 16-year-old Ganne, the third member of the final group, pulled driver to go for the green. Zweig laid up with a fairway wood and walked away with par.

It occurred to Zweig that tournament directors were rotating tee boxes and massaging yardages to make contenders’ rounds interesting – to make her round interesting. Zweig lost a shot on No. 14 with driver in the first round, when the tee was back, but birdied it after a layup on the second day.

“We go over my notes, and I have a specific gameplan that I have to follow,” she said. “Part of it was laying up on 14 if the tee was front or back.”

Zweig navigated the back nine in 1 under for a closing 68, the low round of the day. At 7 under, she was four ahead of Todd and six ahead of Ganne, who spent the day laughing at Zweig’s jokes and commentary while marveling at her swing.

“She’s so sweet and polite and respectful and funny,” Ganne said. “She was so nice to play with.”

Annika Invitational
Top finishers at the Annika Invitational. (AJGA photo)

Ivan Zweig was a half step ahead of his daughter – or a half step behind, to the side, at the right angle – for the duration of the round. He deftly videoed every one of his daughter’s shots, often holding his iPhone with his right hand while drumming the fingers of his left hand with paternal nervous energy.

Ivan, a self-described entrepreneur who works primarily in IT, has gotten quite adept at editing together swing footage the more tournament experience his daughter racks up.

Ivan started videoing Avery in competition when she was 5, and has massive amounts of swing shots on iCloud. Sometimes he and Avery will look through the video together after a round and sometimes he simply edits the clips together to post. Avery has grown a large following on her Facebook page, to the tune of 24,000 followers, and also has a dedicated YouTube channel.

“It’s invaluable,” he said. “It’s like football film study.”

Many aspects of Avery’s golf style are symbolic. She wears all black in the final round as a nod to Johnny Cash. Avery’s favorite Cash song is “Man in Black,” and the running family joke is that she’s going to her opponents’ funeral.

Her initials are also built into a logo designed by a friend of Ivan’s. The AZ sits on top of a tiny lit bomb, an insignia embroidered onto the back collar of the black shirt Avery wore in the final round of the Annika.

“We really just copied Tiger Woods,” Ivan said of the logo placement. “When it doubt, copy Tiger Woods.”

Avery Zweig, Annika Invitational
Avery Zweig with her dad Ivan at the Annika Invitational. (AJGA photo)

Notably, Avery’s 2021 has also included a top-20 at last week’s Sally Amateur 60 miles south in Ormond Beach, Florida. Between those two tournaments, she returned to her McKinney, Texas, home where she attends eighth grade at Spring Creek Academy.

Before the Sally, Avery and Ivan played a practice round at World Golf Village. They discovered that Avery was at a major disadvantage with her long irons. Feeling like Avery was losing too many shots from the 160 to 185 yard range, the Zweigs called Callaway to see about an equipment update.

Avery subbed out her 5- and 6-irons in place of a 5- and 6-hybrid, and knows it made all the difference. She and Ivan went back to that decision over and over again as being key in the Annika Invitational win.

Equipment is just one part of the equation and a small part of the team that brings all the pieces together. Avery credits work with a physical trainer, swing coach and short-game coach as being instrumental – an unusually large team for a 13-year-old.

Next week, Avery turns 14. There still isn’t a lot you can do to celebrate a birthday in a lingering pandemic, but she imagines she’ll do dinner with friends. It’s too early in the year to have much of a goal sheet drafted out, but the Annika title will certainly open a few doors.

“Winning an invitational and having that experience, it’s essential in my development,” she said. “I think my goal is to become a more consistent player overall.”

Asked what she’d like to accomplish next, Avery listed the Junior Solheim and Junior Ryder Cup.

A national-team bag would vault her to a whole new level.

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Williams: Phone interviews and high-school golf were sanity-saving in a year of contingency plans

What the professional tours did to bring back golf was totally impressive, but don’t discount the efforts in junior and amateur golf.

Covering golf, at every level and on every tour, in 2020 was unlike anything our writers have experienced. Through the end of the year, our staff is looking back on what will forever stand out from the season of COVID – a season during which every aspect of the game we love was impacted by a global pandemic. Read the whole series here.

I’ve spent eight months asking some version of the same question, and that’s the best way I know to sum up golf journalism in the year of COVID. Everyone has a story as we will ourselves toward 2021. For the most part, we all learned to adapt.

How did you go on despite a global pandemic? To hear that question answered is to get a lesson in the ingenuity behind a game that, at its heart, really needs no bells and whistles.

What the professional tours did to bring back golf was, without question, totally impressive. They threw their resources at getting their players back in the office, something especially important for players on the bottom rung – the ones who desperately needed the paycheck.

But I don’t cover golf at the professional level and thus, there was much more improvisation in my zip code, where the one-off junior and amateur events live.

For months, I’ve been going back to how Brian Fahey, Pinehurst’s director of tournament operations, broke this all down. In June, Fahey spoke of record entry numbers for the North & South Amateur and Women’s Amateur (that tells you something of demand). He also explained how the events would be boiled down in 2020. Summer amateur season encompasses golf, but also dinners, social outings and host housing.

At many events, those extras simply went away in the name of preserving the golf.

“This was our communication to the players: This is going to be golf almost in its purest form,” Fahey said in summing it up.

Six months later, at the end of a mind-blowing 101-event COVID season, AJGA Executive Director Stephen Hamblin detailed a massive undertaking in his organization that saw the creation of an 18-page COVID playbook that guided the AJGA in revamping nearly every procedure it takes to run a summer full of junior tournaments all over the country.

I logged fewer miles in 2020 than any year since I started writing about golf in 2009. I’ve also maybe never spent more time on the phone. My summer and fall were spent scouring scoreboards, hitting refresh, tracking down phone numbers and listening closely to verbal highlight reels of rounds I couldn’t see in person. While I miss watching live golf on my beat (a sincere thank you, USGA, for primetime Bandon broadcasts during the U.S. Amateur – a true gift), realizing just how many people live to talk amateur golf was comforting. I didn’t encounter one person who couldn’t find a few minutes to pick up the phone and talk.

John Yerger, co-chairman of the Sunnehanna Amateur, was one of the first people I called when trying to piece together what the summer amateur season was going to look like. Yerger & Co., carried on with a 100-man tournament, but I think he would have invited double or triple that number if it were possible.

“You can’t turn away a kid who has no place to play,” he said back in June.

In Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina, Bruce Fleming, the tournament director of the Rice Planters Amateur, felt just as much responsibility to carry on with his slot on the summer calendar. Fleming labored over doing things right if he was going to do them at all.

“We have to do it in a manner that is appropriate and successful for what is going on.”

Ah, the unsung heroes of amateur golf.

I had some unexpected down time in 2020. Didn’t we all? I played more rounds – walking, bag on back – than I have since graduating college. My handicap is as low as it’s ever been.

In my little Florida beach town, our 27-hole muni only closed for a week in July. But in April, when the pro shop started closing early, word spread quickly. Shortly after 5 p.m., the parking lot was packed. But with the cart barn locked, it was all foot traffic from there. There was also no formal tee sheet, but shockingly, the first tee never descended into a free-for-all. The place was full of families – kids, moms, strollers. For the first time in a long time, dusk golf became my favorite way to end a day.

The phenomenon continued all the way to August. This marked my fourth season coaching the local high school girls golf team, and attendance at summer practices (or “play days,” as I call them) is generally sporadic. Not this year.

I averaged 15 players on days we hit the driving range and 10 or 12 on days we played nine holes. I once interviewed a First Tee director who described her New England facility as “crawling with kids.” I’ve always wanted to describe my home course that way, and I’m happy to say we achieved it this summer. Something tells me it wasn’t just us.

Of course, by the time our season rolled around, every one of the precious few matches the school district allowed us to play required at least three phone calls as COVID regulations changed, reversed and changed again. We wore our masks when we gathered, did everything in squads of no more than six and started every practice with temperature checks. Life went on.

We had to celebrate our senior night on an outdoor porch in the middle of a wicked thunderstorm, rethink the way we “broke it down” before and after matches and instead of a Homecoming pep rally, we were asked to film a hype video for our team. At the end of the season, a senior told me this was maybe her favorite year yet on the golf team. I had just been relieved to see it through but hearing that changed everything about the way I’ll look back on this COVID season.

I fought so hard to keep every high school match on the schedule because I heard so many veteran college coaches stress how important it was for their players to keep competing, keep grinding, keep getting tournament reps, even if college golf was canceled for the forseeable future.

At Golfweek, we scraped and strategized to help solve that problem. Our fall college series is usually one of my favorite parts of the year, but with so many teams unable to compete in the first half of the season, that series transformed into eight new individual events.

I was on-hand for half of them, and I’ll never forget how grateful those players were. I’ll also never forget how many questions we’d get from college coaches if players didn’t keep up with live-scoring input.

That tells you something about how college coaches spent the fall, too. Refresh, refresh, refresh.

As empty as my beat felt on March 13 – the day NCAA postseason was canceled for all spring sports, golf included – my golf life on Dec. 27 feels pretty full. I know I’ve said it a hundred times in 2020, but this is a year I’ll never forget.

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What powered the AJGA’s 101-event COVID season? A giant question-and-answer effort.

The AJGA thought through every possible COVID scenario to create a playbook for a June restart. It allowed them to salvage the 2020 season.

A successful reboot of the American Junior Golf Association’s competition schedule in June started with questions. Pages and pages of questions.

AJGA executive director Stephen Hamblin’s first directive to his staff was to come up with every uncertainty in every scenario. Reducing touchpoints and field sizes – to 78 players – in the name of safety was the guiding principle, but the finer points of how, exactly, to make it work needed mush hashing out.

“I told them OK, get every question that you have – every doubt, every worry – put it on paper,” he said. “And they did. And then I told them, now answer all these questions. You answer them as to what you would do.”

Three hundred questions got 300 answers. And 300 answers allowed the AJGA to conduct 97 tournaments from a June 7 restart to the time the Rolex Tournament of Champions closed the season on Thanksgiving weekend.

Hamblin often refers to the document that resulted from a massive AJGA problem-solving effort as the COVID playbook. It’s nearly 20 pages long, but it held up through a season that continued despite a global pandemic. Key in the document’s effectiveness was that the AJGA never abandoned it.

“No matter what happens, no matter if (COVID is) subsiding, we’re going to stick with it,” Hamblin said. “Other tournaments, by the end of summer, were allowing kids to touch a flagstick and touch rakes and we didn’t.”

Looking back on 2020, it’s somewhat remarkable what the AJGA was able to accomplish in the second half of the year. The organization ran 101 events in 2020.

David Ford won the AJGA Invitational at Sedgefield, the first AJGA event after the COVID lockdown. (AJGA photo)

The AJGA veered off its normal course mid-February after the AJGA Simplify Boys Championship – what amounts to an AJGA “major” – was conducted. The schedule went dark for the next 12 weeks, but the gears were still turning at AJGA headquarters in Braselton, Georgia. A task force made up of tournament operations officials got to work

Nearly every aspect of the way the AJGA operates got a COVID makeover. Instead of writing thank-you notes at the end of each event, players filmed thank-you videos. Meals were all grab and go. Scoring went digital.

Hamblin thinks the latter two are elements that improved AJGA operations. Those modifications will stay, post-COVID.

The AJGA model depends heavily on people. As meticulous as the COVID playbook was, a successful summer depended on buy-in from everyone involved in tournament operations. Staff could not let their guard down, and to Hamblin, that “was the big question mark” at the beginning of the summer. He need not have worried.

“Yes, protocols,” Hamblin said is summing up the season,” but I guarantee you, there’s some luck involved in this as well. I love (Ben) Hogan’s comment, ‘The harder I work, the luckier I get.’ I get that’s kind of part of it.”

Since the beginning of Hamblin’s nearly 40-year tenure at the AJGA, the organization’s intern structure has been paramount to its operations. Seven traveling teams of seven interns were the backbone of the summer tournament schedule in 2020, as always.

Hamblin & Co., run potential interns – the AJGA receives upwards of 1,500 applications for the position – through the ringer to find the right fit. Hamblin won’t hire an individual for a full-time position if he or she didn’t complete the internship.

The AJGA did intern training in six sessions in 2020. But by June, anyone who was going to be a part of tournament operations made the trip to Greensboro for at least a day as a way of ripping off the bandaid for the restart.

Mark Brazil, tournament director for the Wyndham Championship and tournament chair of the AJGA Invitational at Sedgefield, was there waiting. Brazil had looked at the AJGA’s COVID protocols from a PGA Tour perspective and knew they were solid.

“I’d been dealing with the PGA Tour on all of theirs too and so it just felt to me like we could do it,” he said of being in the AJGA lead-off position. “Keep everybody outside. Park your car, get your shoes on, you go play golf. If you want to grab a sandwich, you grab a sandwich.”

“They put it all together and it was a success.”

While COVID protocols were being drafted and enacted, Jason Ross, the AJGA’s Chief Tournament Business Officer, was helping lay out the roadmap for the second half of the year. Ross found that in talking to tournament venues, volunteers and sponsors, the AJGA’s safety plan inspired a lot of confidence.

Ross and his team navigated 150 schedule changes from mid-March on to pull off 101 tournaments. At the start of the year, the AJGA was aiming for about 124 tournaments – a standard number for a normal season.

Roughly 38 tournaments canceled for various reasons. The final schedule also included 23 added events or replacement venues, plus four events added in what Ross calls the double model – adding an open championship, a qualifier event or a preview event at an existing host venue.

“It was a way to get back a lot of the events that we lost in the spring,” Ross said.

In the process of talking to venues and local health departments, Ross found he would often have something to contribute to AJGA protocols. It was an ever-evolving document.

Ross logged hours on the phone navigating the schedule before getting in the field for the first time at the beginning of July for the KJ Choi Foundation Texas Junior Championship in Plano, Texas.

His first thought?

“I felt safe,” he said. “Everyone, the kids and the parents, were following the protocols, our staff was executing the protocols. It was neat to see.

“It was different than what you’re used to. We knew that going in. The field might not be the same without the social and the interaction. Our operations department came up with an unbelievable plan and it worked.”

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AJGA ends a non-traditional 2020 by taking ‘Greatest Night in Junior Golf’ virtual

The Greatest Night in Junior Golf was broadcast on Facebook live on Friday evening to end the 2020 junior golf season.

A year of improvising continued for the American Junior Golf Association on Friday night as the junior golf organization took its annual end-of-year banquet virtual. The banquet, dubbed “The Greatest Night in Junior Golf,” generally takes place during the season finale, the Rolex Tournament of Champions at PGA National in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.

This year, the show aired a week later on Facebook Live. The hour-long presentation included taped segments with the nation’s top juniors, AJGA leadership and a few cameos from AJGA alumni – including at the start of the show. Justin Thomas started things off with a welcome message. Jordan Spieth and Lexi Thompson appeared later.

“It would have been easy not to do this evening,” AJGA Executive Director Stephen Hamblin said at the start of the show.

Add it to the list of things the AJGA salvaged in a year challenged by a global pandemic. Like many golf organizations, the AJGA shut down mid-spring, relaunching its schedule in June and completing more than 100 events from that point to last week’s finale at PGA National.

The program played out much as the live version of the banquet typically does. Allie Kantor and Jackson Van Paris were recognized at the start of the program for winning the Jerry Cole Sportsmanship Award, annually presented since 1978 to a junior golfer who best promotes integrity and sportsmanship.

Kantor and Van Paris, who both spoke during the program, to date have raised nearly $40,000 for charity. Kantor, who was diagnosed with scoliosis when she was 13, has raised money for other kids facing that diagnosis. Van Paris took over the Carolina Cup in 2017, an event that has raised $250,000 in four years on behalf of the Nicklaus Children’s Health Care Foundation and the ACE Grant. Van Paris alone has raised more than $32,000 during his involvement in the event.

As is tradition at the Greatest Night in Junior Golf, the AJGA’s Scholastic Junior All-Americans were recognized. Each player who received AJGA Rolex All-America honors also was named. Golf Channel’s Lisa Cornwell and Fox broadcaster Joe Buck emceed that portion of the show.

With outgoing AJGA player representatives Van Paris and Amanda Sambach acting as hosts – both guided the program sitting on camera in a pair of director’s chairs – Rolex Players of the Year Kelly Chinn and Rose Zhang also spoke about their seasons.

The banquet told the story of 2020, from honoring players’ on-course achievements to recognizing scholarship efforts through the ACE Grant to social-media presence to a focus on inclusion. It was played out similarly to previous banquets while also being nothing like previous banquets – a fitting end to 2020.

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Rose Zhang, David Ford end 2020 by winning AJGA Rolex Tournament of Champions

Rose Zhang and David Ford ended 2020 by topping their respective fields at the prestigious Rolex Tournament of Champions and PGA National.

Rose Zhang just keeps adding titles to her 2020 collection. The 17-year-old defended her AJGA Rolex Tournament of Champions crown on Nov. 28, winning the season finale on the AJGA calendar. Zhang has now won three AJGA invitational titles – the TOC joins her Rolex Girls Junior and Ping Invitational triumphs. Those go along with her U.S. Women’s Amateur crown as well as a third-place finish at this year’s ANNIKA Invitational.

Zhang was named the AJGA’s Rolex Player of the Year for the second year in a row. She is also the top-ranked player in the World Amateur Golf Ranking.

Zhang, an Irvine, California, resident who is committed to play for Stanford next fall, led by three shots entering the final round of the event at PGA National in Pam Beach Gardens, Florida, after opening rounds of 70-67-69. She started the final round calmly enough with four pars and made her first birdie on the par-3 fifth hole. Zhang pieced together five birdies on the back for a closing 66.

Scores: AJGA Rolex Tournament of Champions

Remarkably, Zhang only had two bogeys in 72 holes and didn’t make another one after the sixth hole of her second round.

Zhang finished ahead of fellow Class of 2021 player Xin (Cindy) Kou, who was four back at 12 under. Madison Hewlett, who also had a closing 66, and Megha Ganne tied for third at 6 under.

In the boys division of the Tournament of Champions, David Ford capped his 2020 in a similarly fitting way. The North Carolina commit from Peachtree Corners, Georgia, made the Tournament of Champions his third AJGA invitational title of the year after winning the AJGA Invitational at Sedgefield in June – the first event of the AJGA restart – and following that with the Junior Players Championship title two months later.

Related: Maxwell and David Ford battle it out in mirrored success

Interestingly, all three of Ford’s AJGA Invitational victories came at venues that host PGA Tour tournaments. Ford, No. 2 in the Golfweek Junior Rankings, entered the final round at PGA National with a seven-shot lead. He only had one bogey in a closing round of 68 and at 22 under for 72 holes, finished seven ahead of Bruce Murphy of Johns Creek, Georgia.

Sean-Karl Dobson of Austin, Texas, was third. Ford’s twin brother Maxwell finished T-26.

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