Top 10 junior golf moments of the decade highlight early careers of current pros

When the decade began, PGA Tour phenoms Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas were still teenagers, tearing up the junior golf circuit.

6. Alexa Pano nearly wins on the Symetra Tour

Alexa Pano during the 2019 U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball. (Photo: USGA/Steven Gibbons)

The Symetra Tour’s SKYiGOLF Championship was new to the schedule in 2019. The best publicity it could have gotten came in the form of Alexa Pano, a South Florida native.

Pano is the rare 15-year-old who can jump from junior golf one week to professional golf the next. Case in point, Pano won the Dustin Johnson World Junior Championship the week before her Symetra start.

Pano was just 14 in March when she played her way into the final group on the final day of the tournament at Charlotte Harbor National Golf Club in North Port, Florida, and was aiming to become the tour’s youngest winner. It was an historic week even though she ultimately finished five shots behind winner Alana Uriell.

A month later, she teed it up in the Augusta National Women’s Amateur, where she was the youngest player in the field.