A Wealth of Junior Golf Talent has decended on Stillwater, Oklahoma for the 10th AJGA Ping Invitational - played at Karsten Creek, home of the Oklahoma State Cowboys.
On the men's side, you have top ranked Noah Goodwin ('18, SMU), trying to wrap up Player of the Year honors. He's ranked #1 in every poll. However, there are other players in the field with great resume's this year. Davis Shore ('17, Alabama), Norman Xiong ('17, Oregon) and Joaquin Niemann ('17, South Florida) have high rankings and major tournament victories. A couple of Oklahoma State commits, Austin Eckroat and Matthew Wolff (both 2017) should also be considered favorites.
Two schools have nine commits in the field. LSU has a pair of '17 players in Philip Barbaree and Jacob Bergeron, as well as two '18 players in Garrett Barber and Hayden White. However, the Longhorn's of Texas have five: Cash Carter ('17), Kristoffer Reitan ('17), Coody Pierceson ('18), Mason Nome ('19) and Will Thomson ('19).
Other players to keep an eye on include John Pak ('17, FSU) and a pair of un-committed young guns, 2019's Khaish Varadan from Malaysia and 2020's Karl Vilips, from Australia.
Only ten players, out of a field of 48, have not committed to a college, yet.
The women might have a smaller field size, but most of the top ranked players have made the trip to play the difficult Karsten Creek. It's a good mixture of older and younger players, with 10 of the 24 girls committed to play college golf.
Duke has three players in the field, Jaravee Boonchant ('17), Miranda Wang ('17) and Gina Kim ('18). Keep an eye on these highly ranked golfers as well: Paphangkom Tavatanakit ('17, UCLA), Emilia Migliaccio ('17, Wake Forest), Yujeong Son ('19, un-committed), Kaitlyn Papp ('17, Texas) and Lucy Li ('20, un-committed).
Come Monday, two well deserving champions will be crowned.
