Highlander Junior Tour @Summerglen 14th March 2020 Golf Club results and report.
On Saturday we took our Junior Golf Tour back to Summerglen in Ocala. Prior to doing so Friday had become a day of consultation with parents in an effort to reach a decision on whether to proceed with this event or not due to the current health concerns that we are all very much aware of!
We were pleased to receive overwhelming agreement to go ahead and play from everyone who responded and as a result a great turnout of young golfers took to the tee to compete with a number of family and friends joining to spectate, caddy and support their efforts.
Summerglen Golf Club like many during this busy season is showing some signs of heavy use around their greens. Despite this it still always provides many of our juniors with some good opportunities to put a strong score together..Saturday’s competition was no exception to this!
Before we summarise the results we would like to take the opportunity to thank Summerglen for providing a great welcome to all players and visitors. We do really appreciate those venues we visit who are supportive of the development of junior golf and open their doors to us especially during busy periods.
As is now the norm for these Highlander events we flight our players predominantly by age groups.
Images of all scores for all players are shown below but we will start with our oldest, most experienced group of juniors in The Old Tom Morris Flight.
As always this group fight hard every bit of the way to take the medal. There were several notable scores with the majority posting 80 or less and a few of our regular competitors posting their lowest scores on a Highlander event so far. This stands them (and indeed us as neutral spectators!) in really good stead going forward as so many are now showing us how strongly they are improving and their desire to be challenging for the win.
It’s going to get tougher and tougher to win this flight and we think that’s exactly how this group of players want it! Well done to you all, you were great to watch at times and you made it a really exciting flight for all of us!
When the scores were in our winner on Saturday and taking what we think may be the first of many Highlander gold medals home was Elle Folland with a 74 to win by 2 strokes from Nick Zarillo and EJ Maupin. Elle has played with us regularly and since the beginning of our Tour, she has strong support and she is a very popular winner!
Over the last few events we have watched Elle grow in confidence in our competitions and on Saturday she finally got the reward she works so hard to achieve in competition golf and against a strong field of competitors.
Flight 1 – The Old Tom Morris
Winner – Elle Folland (74)
Congratulations Elle. Great Job Young Lady.
Next up and every bit as competitive is our rapidly developing mid range age group who compete in The Young Tommy Morris Flight.
They may be younger but when you look at the quality of player in this flight you realise that the one thing that sets some of them apart from the others is their wealth of strong competition experience. Players like Bella Dovhey, Luke Wood, Maggie Potash and Tripp Watkins may be young but they have already collectively competed in several hundred junior golf events.
That level of experience benefits everyone playing in this flight. It may make some more likely to take the medal than others at times but overall it ensures great competition for all and it assists enormously in providing some great role models for players hoping to develop and improve when they have the opportunity to play in competition or alongside these young “veterans” of the game!
While it wasn’t possible to post a personal best for any of our players in this group on Saturday Tripp Watkins successfully took the medal with a really hard fought 76 winning by 4 from Luke Wood.
Flight 2 – The Young Tommy Morris
Winner – Tripp Watkins (76)
Another popular and very experienced young junior who took the Highlander gold medal home with him. Tripp is actually coming back from injury right so even more to come from him we think but he showed resilience and battled all the way for this one.
Congratulations Tripp. Great job !
And so to our youngest junior players. There is never a shortage of good competitive golf in this group from these kids and once again it was a pleasure to welcome yet another new player making his debut appearance on the Highlander Junior Tour.
Welcome to James Buckelew who was playing his first full 18 hole competition on Saturday. It’s never easy to take that first step up to full competition play but you should be very proud of yourself for doing so and competing the way that you did. We hope to see you develop and have fun at many more of our events in the future!
This flight was closely contested by two wonderful young developing talents who both work really hard to develop their game. To watch competitors at this age/flight level is a real joy as it’s very clear how much our great game already means to them. Every emotion is on full view, they listen closely to advice when it’s given and then try with everything they have to beat their last score!
Both Bobby Jones Potash and Aiden Skrocki are such strong developing talents and both are previous gold medal winners on our Tour. When the dust settled on this one it was Aiden who took the medal by one stroke.
Flight 3 – The Bobby Jones
Winner – Aiden Skrocki (86)
Aiden has played in number of our Tour events and it was hugely satisfying to see him post his best score yet to win this one. Every part of his game is improving and he is very obviously becoming a more consistent all round competitor. His forever upbeat personality is infectious and he will happily recount to you every good or bad shot he had throughout his entire round! Don’t ever change on the golf course Aiden!
Congratulations Aiden. Good job, great score!
And so that was it for yet another great Highlander event! Thank you everyone for making it happen and for helping us respect the need to be cautious during the event where everyone’s health is concerned.
Let all hope and pray that solutions can be found soon to end the crisis we are all enduring. Keep you and yours safe everyone and we hope to see you on the tee again soon.
Keith and Mark