41st Junior PGA Championship - Boys Preview

Tue, Aug 9 - Fri, Aug 12 at Wannamoisett Country Club

The 41st Junior PGA Championship will start next Tuesday at Wannamoisett Country Club in Rhode Island, and features one of the strongest fields in junior golf.  Of the seventy-eight participants on the boys side, over half (42) have either signed, or committed to play college golf.

The University of Texas Longhorns lead the way with 4 participants, two for each of the 2018 and 2019 high school graduating classes.  Parker Coody and Cole Hammer are the two 2018's, Will Thompson and Mason Nome are the 2019's.  Wannamoisett CC is no stranger to Nome, who has a hole-in-one on number 3, just last year.

Alabama and LSU each have 3 participants in the field, committed to their respective schools.  The entire 2017 class for Alabama will be on hand: Davis Shore, Wilson Furr and Ben Fuller.  Shore and Furr have consistently been ranked near the top of their  2017 graduating class.  LSU has players that graduate high school in 2017, 2018 and 2019 in former US Junior Amateur champion Philip Barbaree, Garrett Barber and Crosby Guercio.

Georgia Tech, Oklahoma State, Texas A&M and UCLA have two players committed, each.  For the Ramblin' Wreck, local Will Dickson, and Californian Noah Norton, are each expected to help Coach Bruce Heppler's squad starting in the fall of 2017.  With his familiarity of the course, Dickson (who has qualified for the US Amateur the week after the Junior PGA) will be one of the favorites.

Oklahoma State has one of the best pair of 2017's committed in Matthew Wolff (another US Amateur qualifier) and Austin Eckroat.  The Aggie's also sport a pair of 2017's in the field in Walker Lee and Reese Ramsey, who both have the ability to go low.  The final duo is UCLA's Sean Maruyama, apart of their 2018 class, and 2019's Cole Ponich, a recent commit during the week of the US Junior Amateur.

The field has a good group of guys that will be starting college this fall. Perhaps the best of the bunch is the soon to be Iowa Hawkeye, Alex Schaake.  He didn't play a lot of national tournaments, but make no mistake, he's one of the better freshman entering college this year.  The 3 time Nebraska Junior Amateur champion (he just won again this week, so you could argue he's one of the hotter participants entering the Junior PGA), is a dark horse to contend next week in Rhode Island.

Perhaps another dark horse to consider is another local player, Patrick Welch.  The 2018 graduate is garnering a lot of interest from college golf recruiters, but this multiple sport athlete (baseball/basketball) could help further school's interest with a high finish in the strong field.  Like Dickson and Shore, Welch played in the 55th Northeast Amateur Invitational Golf Tournament earlier this summer on the same course as the Junior PGA.

Other players to watch include the medalist from the US Junior Amateur a few weeks ago, Travis Vick.  The Houston Texas native is one of the younger players in the field, being a 2019 high school graduate, but is also one of the most talented.  He is garnering attention from just about every major golf program from coast to coast.  Then, you have the US Junior Amateur runner-up, Noah Goodwin.  The 2018 commit for SMU has had perhaps the best year among the junior golfers.  He's currently the top ranked player in the Junior Golf Scoreboard, and has many top finishes in both junior and amateur events (ie, against the college guys).  He too played in the Northeast Am, and was the highest junior golfer with rounds of 67-65-74-68.  Good for a T13 finish.  Then you have Norman Xiong, a 2017 commit for the defending National Champion University of Oregon.  The San Diego (Canyon Lake, CA) native won the prestigious American Junior Golf Association's (AJGA) Thunderbird Invitational at the end of May.  Finally, there is John Pak, a 2017 commit for Florida State who has made the quarterfinals and semifinals the past two years at the US Junior Am.

The strong field will help determine which 6 boys will make up the US Junior Ryder Cup team that will play September 26 and 27 in Minnesota.

Below is a list of the college committed players in the field: