When John Broderick finally decided to ditch the 3-wood in favor of his driver, that’s when things really got going at Ledgemont Country Club in Seekonk, Massachusetts. Broderick, a Wellesley, Massachusetts, native, didn’t feel like he had been hitting his driver well enough to put it in play at the start of a 36-hole day at the Golfweek New England Junior Open.
He decided to go conservative, hence the 3-wood.
“At Ledgemont you don’t really need driver but anytime I would hit 3-wood, I would hit it worse than my driver,” he said.
Broderick double-bogeyed the second hole, a short par 4 he calls one of the easiest on the golf course. By No. 5, he had changed strategy. The left-hander birdied Nos. 8 and 9 off big drives.
After an opening 73, he came back in the afternoon with 67. A final-round 70 left him at 3 under for the tournament, the only player under par and with a three-shot cushion on runners-up Aidan Leblanc and Christopher Pieper.
Scores: Golfweek New England Junior Open
Broderick has a lot of imagination when it comes to shot shape. He likes to hit a low cut “fairway finder” with his driver, but he can hit it higher and longer when necessary.
“If I can feel a cut with my driver, my swing feels good,” he said. “I feel like I can hit any shot.”
Broderick skipped the practice round at Ledgemont considering the rainy weather. He had seen the course once a year ago and felt he knew his way around. Most holes are straight-forward, he said.
“It always gives you that extra confidence that you might need for upcoming tournaments that I’m playing,” he said of getting a win. “I had been playing well but not scoring well. This is kind of a little bit of a breakthrough because I started to score well.”
From here, Broderick plans to play the New England Amateur and the Francis Ouimet Memorial Tournament. He has three AJGA events planned for August, including the Justin Thomas Junior Championship.
In the girls division, Piper Jordan won the title after two extra holes against Catie Schernecker.
Jordan took a two-shot lead to the 14th tee, but bogeyed the next three holes to fall even with Schernecker. Jordan made a solid par at No. 18 to force extra holes.
In the playoff, Jordan, who lives in Hingham, Massachusetts, ultimately won with a par. It takes her playoff record to 1-1. Jordan fell in extra holes in an Optimist International Junior qualifier (but still ended up getting to play the event when her opponent couldn’t attend the tournament proper). Jordan felt fewer nerves at Ledgemont having been in that scenario before.
“I guess I kind of started to lose focus last time and I learned from that,” she said, “that I had to keep my cool and just try to stay with my game and not worry about what the other competitors do because I know what I’m capable of and if I focus on what I’m doing.”
Later this summer, Jordan has the Massachusetts Junior – she’ll play up in the championship division this year after winning the silver division last year – and the Massachusetts Women’s Amateur. She’s playing the latter for the first time.
“This is the big year that I’ve kind of started to hit the ball a little bit further,” she said of her game. “Also mentally just taking charge of being more positive and not thinking, alright let’s make bogey here. Focusing more on my short game too.”
Jordan referenced the number of up-and-down saves she made over the week at Ledgemont. She did it eight times in the final round alone.
When it’s not golf season, it’s hockey season for Jordan. The high school sophomore plays for her school and on a club team. When the Hingham High School team, as the No. 32 seed, knocked off the No. 1 seed in a Division I high school tournament last year, Jordan made the winning the overtime goal.
“It can be both positive and negative,” she said of the effect hockey has on her golf. “There’s definitely parts of my, hitting a hockey puck goes into my golf swing. Taking a slap shot can then cause me to hit behind the ball. A lot of good hockey players are really good golfers, too.”
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