Get to know the player who took down the two U.S. Junior Amateur favorites in the same day.
Welcome to the Luke Clanton show.
If you’re unfamiliar with the 17-year-old from Miami Lakes, Florida, let me hit you with some knowledge. He’s committed to Florida State, has won the Class 2A state title in two of the last three years and is off to a blistering start at this year’s U.S. Junior Amateur at The Country Club of North Carolina in the Village of Pinehurst.
“It was kind of funny because me and Ben were talking on the first tee and we kind of knew the whole day was going to be one-sided with the crowd,” explained Clanton.
Clanton took down top-seed Kelly Chinn in the morning Round of 32 on Thursday, 1 up, and then defeated Pinehurst local favorite Jackson Van Paris, 2 and 1, in the Round of 16.
“But it was an unbelievable experience with everyone out here. I can’t even think – I was looking down an iron shot and I saw like a bunch of people surrounding the green, so that’s kind of cool,” he continued. “I just said, ‘one shot at a time,’ and I played really well today. I think I only had one bogey and five birdies. It was just kind of one of those days where I took it one shot at a time, and Jackson is a great opponent, great player, known him for a while. It was fun today, and I just played a little bit better today. That’s it.”
Already this year, Clanton has three top-5 finishes, including a T-2 at the Dustin Johnson Junior Worlds. Last year he won the Arnold Palmer Invitational Junior and posted three top-10 finishes.
“He’s a great player, and he’s definitely a guy that you go into the match knowing you have to play good to beat,” said Van Paris after the match. “He’s not going to lay over. He’s a great competitor. I have no doubt that he’ll continue playing well and keep it going for the rest of the week.”
Awaiting Clanton in the quarterfinals is Vanderbilt-bound Gordon Sargent, a two-time defending Alabama State Amateur champion and three-time Rolex Junior All-American.
For Clanton, he believes in himself just as much as Van Paris.
Chinn is one of two players in the field making a third U.S. Junior appearance this week.
Kelly Chinn has been thinking about this one for two years. It’s the last hurrah.
Chinn, 18, is one of only two players in this week’s U.S. Junior Amateur field at the Country Club of North Carolina in Pinehurst, North Carolina, making a third U.S. Junior appearance. In 2018, he was medalist at this event. In 2019, he lost in the semifinals.
“There was no doubt I would play this,” he said. “Probably the biggest junior event in the world and the most prestigious. No chance I’d miss this one.”
The close calls give Chinn, the AJGA’s Rolex Player of the Year in 2020, a little extra motivation, and a little extra experience – not that he needs it. So far this summer, Chinn has played the Sunnehanna Amateur, the Northeast and the North & South. He and partner David Ford were stroke-medalists at the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball at Chambers Bay in May.
“I think also my past experience gives me a lot of confidence going into this event,” he said. “I think out of all the top players, I think I’ve had a lot more experience than them. I think, especially going into match play, I’ll have a lot more experience and confidence going into that.”
“I think kind of just play your own game, not really focus on — obviously you’re playing match play against one person but the worst thing you can do it get ahead of yourself and start thinking about the outcomes of what you did before, in the previous match,” he said.
“You really just have to play your own game and really just avoid outside of what you can control. That’s something I’ve worked on over the years and something I’ve gotten a lot better at.”
If there’s one area that’s really improved since that 2019 semifinal run, it’s mental game. That, Chinn says wisely, just comes from the experience of playing more events and at a higher level.
The Pinehurst area has been a constant for many juniors. That starts with the U.S. Kids Golf World Championship. Pinehurst Resort hosts the North & South Junior and many players eventually graduate to the amateur version of that championship. Chinn has seen success there, too, and just last month made it to the Round of 16.
Chinn has also bounced around more than most, which adds considerable experience to his golf toolkit. Chinn’s father Colin retired as an admiral in the U.S. Navy in August 2019. Before that, the Chinn family moved frequently – Hawaii, California, Washington and then to Great Falls, Virginia, where they’ve been based the past four years.
Chinn has a familiar caddie on the bag this week in Danel Neben, his swing coach at TPC Potomac, a club just northeast of Washington D.C. Neben has caddied in Chinn’s last two U.S. Junior runs.
What’s perhaps a little unfamiliar? The courses. Chinn has seen them plenty before, having played a fair amount of golf in Pinehurst in general, but not in a USGA setup.
“They grew up the rough a little more – I think they’re trying to get to 3 inches – which is pretty long for Bermuda,” he said. “I know the greens are a lot firmer. So I think the setup, USGA usually always makes the courses really tough.”
A pair of teens take the No. 1 seed into match play at the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball, but there’s plenty of experience on the bracket, too.
The U.S. Amateur Four-Ball owns a short history as one of the newest U.S. Golf Association championships. The tournament has only been played since 2015 (minus 2020, when – like many USGA championships – the Four-Ball was canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic), but this year has been one for the books.
In the previous five iterations of the championship, a combined 19 sides managed to post 36-hole totals of 10 under or better in stroke play. Over the weekend at host site Chambers Bay in University Place, Washington (and stroke-play co-host the Home Course), 20 sides produced such scores.
At the top of that list, and with the No. 1 seed now that stroke play is set to begin, are two teenagers: David Ford and Kelly Chinn. They are the Nos. 1- and 3-ranked players in the Golfweek Junior Rankings, respectively, and Chinn is the reigning AJGA Rolex Player of the Year. The two combined for rounds of 62-65 for medalist honors.
“I know David and I were trying to go as low as possible,” said Chinn, who is headed to Duke University in the fall, while his partner will enroll at Atlantic Coast Conference in-state rival North Carolina. “To shoot [that low of a score] for 36 holes is awesome.”
The cut was made on Sunday evening to the top 32 sides that will advance to match play – or at least, it was almost made. Eleven sides returned to Chambers Bay first thing Monday morning to play off for the final six spots on the bracket.
So far, both youth – like Chinn and Ford – and experience – like defending champions from 2019 Scott Harvey and Todd Mitchell (who finished T3 at 14 under) – are represented.
In the youth category, don’t overlook Luke Potter, who won the Maridoe Amateur last winter, and Preston Summerhays, the 2019 U.S. Junior Amateur championship, who combined to take the No. 5 seed.
Teens Carter Loflin and Wells Williams as well as Maxwell Ford (David Ford’s twin brother) and Bruce Murphy also advanced.
The bracket will also include current collegians and 2017 champs Frankie Capan (Florida Gulf Coast) and Shuai Ming Wong (SMU) plus inaugural Four-Ball champs Nathan Smith and Todd White – both of whom have taken turns on the U.S. Walker Cup squad.
Kelly Chinn and Rose Zhang were named the Rolex Junior Players of the Year by the AJGA. It’s a major award in junior golf.
After Kelly Chinn listened to last year’s Rolex Junior Player of the Year, Maxwell Moldovan, give his acceptance speech at the AJGA’s annual award banquet, Chinn walked out of the room and made a remark to his dad.
“I want to be the one that makes the speech next year,” Chinn remembers saying. “I’m going to do it.”
It won’t be in front of a live audience – a global pandemic has forced this year’s “Greatest Night in Junior Golf” to go virtual – but Chinn will be the one in the spotlight. He accomplished his goal, which wasn’t an easy thing to do considering that golf shut down for months mid-year in the face of COVID.
When Chinn delivers his thoughts, he wants to express, first of all, what a miracle it is that the opportunities presented themselves in the first place – that he got to play as many tournaments as he did.
“Just want them (the AJGA) to know how much it meant to me, how much I worked for it,” he said. “That’s what I’d like to convey.”
Chinn, 17, won the AJGA’s top honor on the strength of victories at the Ping Invitational and last year’s Rolex Tournament of Champions, plus a runner-up at the Junior Players. He goes back to a conversation he had roughly a year and a half ago with Duke assistant coach Bob Heintz. Chinn has committed to play for Duke in 2021.
“He kind of told me that in order to be great, you gotta be somewhat arrogant, which seems kind of different, just by saying that,” Chinn said. He took it to heart, and admits that mental game, more than anything, produced results in 2020.
Chinn’s father Colin retired as an admiral in the U.S. Navy in August 2019. Before that, the Chinn family moved frequently – Hawaii, California, Washington and then to Great Falls, Virginia, where they’ve been based the past four years.
Chinn didn’t mind the moving so much because it allowed him to branch out in his golf. He’s seen a vast aray of course conditions and grasses. Hawaii tops that list. It was where he learned to get comfortable playing in wind.
Despite his ties to the military, Chinn said the service academies didn’t enter his mind in his college recruiting process. His dad’s influence is felt in other ways.
“My dad is one of the hardest workers I know, one of the most disciplined people I know,” Chinn said. “Growing up around him, I really understand that it takes hard work to be great.”
That comes through in the junior-golf grind. Between golf, tournament travel and school, it’s constant. When that let up late-spring, Chinn buckled down on a major swing adjustment. He worked with instructor Daniel Neben at TPC Potomac to get his swing more on plane. That resulted in a consistency boost.
Chinn will play the South Beach International Amateur in Miami to end the year, and hopes to be in the Jones Cup field in early 2021 as he transitions to amateur golf.
Rose Zhang during the final round of The PING Invitational – 2020. (AJGA photo)
In women’s golf, Rose Zhang has started that transition in a more rolling way. She won the U.S. Women’s Amateur in August, and finished 11th at the ANA Inspiration, an LPGA major, a month later. She also won the Rolex Junior Player of the Year award for the second year.
Zhang has tried not to focus on the hardware. It doesn’t take a medal to validate the work she’s doing in the game. She checked off several accomplishments in 2020 that would have made any other junior golfer’s bucket list. She has been careful to focus on the short-term.
Zhang checks boxes on a daily basis.
“I see these awards that I really want to earn but I don’t think about it on a daily, it’s more of if I can get my practice done, if I can get my schoolwork done,” she said.
If there was one thing Zhang learned in 2020, it was that there is no such thing as a perfect game. There’s always something to improve.
After she left the ANA Inspiration, Zhang realized she needed more work on her short game, needed to sharpen her irons, hit the fairway more often and gain a little distance. Most importantly, she kept a laser eye on how LPGA players prepare for a tournament and how they still fit in everything – like workouts and practice – even when they’re on the road every week.
“They weren’t hitting as many golf balls, they weren’t even putting as much,” she said of that practice round. “They were more just getting a feel of the course.
“I would be one of the juniors who would practice a little less during practice rounds and it seemed to me that I was practicing more than these pros out here, so it was definitely very different.”
Before she won the Rolex honor, Zhang also was named the Mark H. McCormack medal winner for rising to the top spot in the World Amateur Golf Rankings. The Women’s Am victory and her ANA finish certainly helped get her there, but there were three AJGA invitational titles too.
As for what we didn’t see? Zhang called up memories of multi-tasking.
“Definitely trying to stay on top of schoolwork and coming back from events, I went to school the next day and it was like nothing happened,” she said. “Especially with online classes that were very tough. Coming back and living a normal life and trying to catch up on schoolwork and do whatever I need to do is definitely something I’m very proud of.”
