We”re just more than one week away from that time of the year when junior golfers take over center stage on the Lake County golf scene. The Buckingham Summer Junior Golf Championship tees it up on Aug. 9. The Buckingham Junior is in its 19th year of existence. The following day, youthful golfers take to Cobb Mountain for the playing of the 18th annual Lake County Junior Golf Championship at Adams Springs.
Mark Wotherspoon (the PGA director of golf at Buckingham) and this columnist (who doubles as the tournament director of Adams Springs) have been around since these tournaments” inaugural moments in the early 1990s.
In better economic times, the Buckingham Junior and the Lake County Junior had a major portion of the field come from beyond the confines of Lake County. Past champions have come from as far north as Garberville and as far south as Paso Robles, with a solid contingent of kids coming from the Bay Area. In fact, the reason the two junior events were scheduled on back-to-back dates was to accommodate the parents of the youthful golfers who came from out of the area.
Of course, economic times have changed, and during the past two years, the fields at the Buckingham Junior and the Lake County Junior have been exclusively from Lake County. Nonetheless, the caliber of golf has been rock solid and entertaining, regardless of the smaller size of the fields.
I historically envision three tiers of talent at the junior golf tourneys.
The first tier includes high school golfers of note. This time around those headliners include Wyatt Ferrell and Corey Huber, both of whom are two-time all-conference golfers from Kelseyville High School (KHS), along with Daniel Eagle of Middletown High School, who received all-conference recognition last spring. The overall champions of the Buckingham Junior and the Lake County Junior will most probably come from this threesome, and the winning stroke-play score will be somewhere in the 70s.
The second tier of junior golfers consists of the up and coming linksters who are either still in middle school or have just started high school. That group includes Wyatt Sells and Justin Johnson, who played in a handful of varsity golf matches for KHS earlier this spring, along with Joe Tannous and Brandon Huber, who are among the top golfers in the Lake County Junior High golf league last autumn.
This foursome is still one or two years away from consistently posting scores in the 70s and 80s, yet they do have the ability and the talent to get to that level. Aaron Waldrop, who goes to school in Vacaville and spends summers on Cobb Mountain, also fits into this category, and may be the best of the bunch.
The third tier includes those kids who are pre-middle-school age. They play youth sports throughout the year, which means they play summer golf between Little League baseball and the youth soccer seasons. A threesome of talented 10 and 11 year olds include Michael Camacho of Lakeport, Jacob Lopez of Finley and Matt Wotherspoon of Buckingham. All three of these boys took up the game with their golfing fathers, and this will be the third year that the trio has played in the junior golf events.
With an ever-evolving field, one aspect of running the junior tourneys is that in most years there are no defending champions entered in the event. Such is the case this year. Defending champions Blaine Ruggio and Liz Berry have not only graduated from high school and are preparing for college, but have also turned 18 years old, meaning they”re no longer eligible to play junior golf.
Finally, both junior tournaments rely heavily upon local donors to help fund the tee prizes, trophies and luncheon, which are important aspects of these events. The Buckingham Junior and the Lake County Junior are fortunate to have continuing financial support from the Buckingham Tournament Players Club and the Clearlake Callayomi Masonic Lodge as well as junior golf advocates from the Mullins, Lucich, Hoberg and Berry families.
There is still time to enter the Buckingham Junior and the Lake County Junior. Boys and girls between the ages of 10-17 can enter by contacting the pro shop at Buckingham at 279-4863 and at Adams Springs at 928-9992.
Youth was well-served several levels above the Lake County golf course scene this past weekend at the Nationwide Tour”s Children”s Hospital Invitational in Columbus, Ohio. Harris English, an amateur golfer who now plays collegiate golf at the University of Georgia, birdied the final hole on Sunday to beat a largely professional field. English shot 66-66-68-70 for a 270-aggregate and a 14-under-par total.
Some five years ago, a college golfer winning a Nationwide Tour event would have been nothing short of shocking, yet English”s victory at Ohio State University”s historic Scarlet Course, an Alister MacKenzie design, is just more of the same. Russell Hanley, a college teammate of English, won the Nationwide Stadion Classic this past May. Hanley was also the low amateur at the 2010 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach.
English and Hanley are not alone. At last week”s tourney in Columbus, John Peterson of LSU finished tied for second, one shot behind English. U.S. Amateur champ Peter Uihlein finished ninth. Three other amateurs made the cut, including a pair of Southern Methodist golfers, Wes Homan and Will Dodson, along with U.C. Irvine”s Garrett Sapp.
Yes, there are a lot of really good, young golfers out there, led by 22-year-old U.S. Open champ Rory McIlroy. Youth is being well served nowadays in the world of golf, both on the game”s major and minor tours all the way down the line to Lake County junior golf.
