Noh emeges from the fog as the clear winner of U.S. Girls' Junior at Poppy Hills

   The U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship was played in a fog last week at the Poppy Hills Golf Course in Pebble Beach, Calif.

   I posted on the match-play qualifying rounds, but never quite managed to get back to it. But the stubborn fog that kept rolling in early and holding up the start of play and then rolling in late to force an early suspension of play made it a disjointed affair with matches starting late one day and finishing the next.

   There’s not a whole lot you can do about the weather, although I’m sure the United States Golf Association officials running this event will be more than happy not to have to hear about the marine layer for a while.

   One thing was very clear at Poppy Hills, though. Yealimi Noh, who will turn 17 this week, is the best junior player on the planet right now and that includes 15-year-old phenom Lucy Li, the qualifying medalist at Poppy Hills who’s having a pretty good year herself.

   Noh of Concord, Calif. came to Poppy Hills on the heels of a dominating performance in the Girls Junior PGA Championship. Noh went 24-under over four rounds at the Kearney Hill Golf Links in Lexington, Ky. to lead the rest of a very talented field choking on her exhaust.

   But the U.S. Girls’ Junior would be different. It would be match play. It didn’t matter.

   The only real obstacle to Noh’s march to the U.S. Girls’ Junior title was that incessant fog Mother Nature kept throwing at her and the rest of the field.

   The scheduled 36-hole final was to be an all-day affair Saturday, but the semifinals hadn’t started by the time the fog enveloped northern California’s Monterey Peninsula Friday night. The plan was to play the semifinals Saturday morning and then the first 18 holes of the final.

   Noh knocked off Gina Kim, a Duke recruit from Chapel Hill, N.C., 3 and 2, to book her spot in the final. On the other side of the draw, 13-year-old Alexa Pano of Lake Worth, Fla. pulled out a 1-up win over Li of Redwood Shores, Calif. in what sounds like was a wonderful match.

   Noh and Pano, like all standout junior golfers at this time of the year, had places to go and tournaments to play. They appealed to the USGA to try to get the 36-hole final in before the fog returned Saturday. And so they played.

   By the time Noh completed a 4 and 3 victory, she had played 49 holes. Pano, gallant in defeat, had played 51 holes. Hey, they’re young.

   Earlier this year, Noh had decided to scrap Plan A, which was to play college golf at UCLA beginning at the end of the summer of 2019. She would go with Plan B, which is to turn pro at some point in 2019 and bypass college golf. Her performances in two weeks in July might have validated that decision.

   “It’s just amazing and especially the timing,” Noh told the USGA website after playing nearly three rounds of high-stakes golf Saturday. “I recently decommitted from UCLA and I told everyone I’m going to go pro and a lot of people didn’t think it was a good idea.

   “Just having this win and last week’s stroke-play win and then a match-play win, it means so much to because I feel like I’ve kind of, at least a little bit, proven that I can do it.”

   There are a lot of paths you can take to get to where you want to go. Will Noh regret turning pro right out of high school? We’ll see. But she wants to be a professional golfer and after the two weeks she just had, she might as well just get on with it.

   It is one thing to get hot for a week in a 72-hole stroke-play event and run away with a title like she did at Kearney Hill, although 24-under is 24-under. But to grind your way through 36 holes of match-play qualifying and then win six matches at a tough course like Poppy Hills, that’s another matter entirely. And Noh got it done in the U.S. Girls’ Junior.

   In the final, Pano jumped out to a 2-up lead through seven holes, but Noh made birdies at eight, nine and 10 go to 1-up. Noh finished off the first 18 holes with winning birdies at 17 and 18 to take a 4-up lead. Factoring in match-play concessions, Noh had carded a 4-under 67. Pano had an even-par 71 and found herself 4-down.

   After losing the 20^th hole to Noh, Pano made one last stand by winning the 21^st hole with a birdie to get her deficit back to 4-down. But Noh birdied the next two holes to increase her lead to 6-up.

   The match I would love to have seen was Pano and Li going at it in the semifinals.

   I was at Rolling Green Golf Club for most of the 2016 U.S. Women’s Amateur and Li had caught my attention when she fired rounds of 67 and 68 to finish second in match-play qualifying at age 13.  Everything she has done since then has only reinforced the notion that she is a special player.

   Last month the 15-year-old found the spotlight of the Curtis Cup stage at Quaker Ridge Golf Club in Scarsdale, N.Y. very much to her liking as she went 3-0-1 as the United States’ 17-3 victory over a pretty strong side from Great Britain & Ireland. She is 10^th in the latest Women’s World Amateur Golf Ranking.

   Pano was at Rolling Green, too, although the then-11-year-old failed to make match play. Less than a month later, having turned 12 in the interim, she won in her second American Junior Golf Association start at the PDQ / Philadelphia Runner Junior at Saucon Valley Country Club’s Weyhill Course.

   Pano made match play at last year’s U.S. Women’s Amateur at San Diego Country Club, but looked a little green in falling, 4 and 3, in the opening round to Mexico’s Isabella Fierro, who was coming off an impressive victory in the North & South Women’s Amateur Championship at Pinehurst.

   It is probably a pretty good measure of how far Pano has come since then that she reversed that outcome in the second round at Poppy Hills, last week, eliminating Fierro, 4 and 3.

   Li, who had fired an otherworldly 9-under 62 in the opening round of qualifying at Poppy Hills, actually struggled in a couple of her matches, but kept grinding out wins. Li and Noh appeared headed for a showdown in the final.

   But Pano arrived at the 18^th tee all-square with Li after the match went back-and-forth all morning. Pano proceeded to drop an eight-foot birdie putt on the 18^th green to earn a 1-up decision over Li.

   The junior contingent at this year’s U.S. Women’s Amateur, which tees off Aug. 6 at the Golf Club of Tennessee in Kingston Springs, Tenn., is going to be a force.

   When I last posted on the U.S. Girls’ Junior, Archmere Academy junior Phoebe Brinker had earned a spot in the match-play bracket.

   Brinker dropped a 2-up decision to Valery Plata, a native of Colombia who was the medalist in a Golf Association of Philadelphia-administered local qualifier for the U.S. Girls’ Junior at the Steel Club, in the opening round.

   Brinker didn’t go down without a fight, however. Staring at a 3-down deficit with seven holes to play, Brinker ripped off wins at 12, 13 and 14 to square the match. Plata, who will join the program at two-time reigning Big Ten champion Michigan State later this summer, won the last two holes to finally oust Brinker.

   Plata made a pretty nice run after that, including a stunning 3 and 2 victory over defending U.S. Girls’ Junior champion Erica Shepherd of Greenwood, Ind. in the second round. Shepherd will join the program of perennial powerhouse Duke later this summer.

   Plata reached the quarterfinals after a 3 and 2 victory over Ashley Menne of Surprise, Ariz. before running into Pano and falling, 7 and 5, to the eventual finalist in the quarterfinals.

   The boys had a little better luck with the weather as the U.S. Junior Amateur was contested on the East  Coast on Baltusrol Golf Club’s Upper Course in Springfield, N.J.

   Much like the girls, the most intriguing matchup might have occurred in the semifinals when Akshay Bhatia, a 16-year-old from Wake Forest, N.C. and the hottest player in junior golf, squared off with Cole Hammer, an 18-year-old from Houston who will join the powerful Texas program later this summer.

   Bhatia was an impressive winner of the Boys Junior PGA Championship at the Country Club of St. Albans’ Lewis & Clark Course in St. Albans, Mo. last summer and captured the Junior Invitational at Sage Valley earlier this year. Hammer claimed a USGA win this spring when he teamed up with Garrett Barber to capture the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship at the Jupiter Hills Club’s Hills Course in Tequesta, Fla. Barber, an LSU recruit, reached the second round of match play at Baltusrol before falling.

   Bhatia surged in front of Hammer when he won the sixth hole with a par and the eighth and ninth holes  with birdies and Hammer could never recover in suffering a 4 and 2 setback.

   On the other side of the draw, 16-year-old Michael Thorbjornsen of Wellesley, Mass. outlasted Cameron Sisk, an 18-year-old from El Cajon, Calif. who is headed for Arizona State later this summer, in an epic 21-hole semifinal.

   It was match play at its best with the two halving 14 of the regulation 18 holes and two more on the first two extra holes before Thorbjornsen parred the third extra hole to book his ticket to the final against Bhatia, the two having formed a friendship during their years of junior golf.

   It was Thorbjornsen who captured the title, needing every one of the final’s scheduled 36 holes to claim a 1-up win over Bhatia.

   But Thorbjornsen battled from behind the whole way after Bhatia grabbed a 3-up lead in the early going when he won the first, fourth and sixth holes with pars. Bhatia’s lead was 2-up after the morning 18.

   Thorbjornsen never stopped battling. Arriving at the tee on the 302-yard, par-4 14^th hole, the 32^nd of the match, all-square, Thorbjornsen pulled out driver and reached the green. A two-putt birdie finally enabled him him to put a nose in front and he executed well enough in the final four holes to make the 1-up lead hold up.

   Did he dodge some bullets? Sure. Bhatia missed a four-footer for birdie at the 17^th, but a Thorbjornsen par had made the putt matter.

   I did catch a little of the coverage of the final on Fox Sports. As always, the top junior players are impressive, as players and as people.

   When I last left the U.S. Junior Amateur, Palmer Jackson, the Franklin Regional senior who finished tied for second in last fall’s PIAA Class AAA Championship, had earned a spot in match play.

   Jackson, the medalist in a GAP-administered local qualifier at Carlisle Country Club, fell in the first round, 2 and 1, to Jacob Bridgeman of Inman, S.C., who will join the Clemson program later this summer. Jackson was only 1-down when Inman birdied the 16^th hole to take control of the match.

   Jolo Timothy Magcalayo isn’t local, he’s from the Philippines. But he came to the United States to get a taste of the junior competition here and had shown up at a couple of Philadelphia Section PGA Junior Tour events in the spring.

   Magcalayo finished tied for 16^th in qualifying and reached the second round of match play with a 1-up victory over Jediah Morgan of Australia. A birdie at the 16^th hole put Magcalayo ahead to stay.

   That earned Magcalayo a second-round date with Shuai Ming (Ben) Wong, who was making his fifth appearance in the U.S. Junior Amateur. Wong is a native of Hong Kong, but has made Houston his base of operation in the United States and will join the SMU program later this summer.

   Magcalayo was 1-down with four holes to play and suddenly turned the tables on Wong by winning the 15h hole with a par and the 16^th with a birdie to take a 1-up advantage. But Wong’s experience showed as he evened the match with a par at 17 and won the match with a birdie on the 19^th hole.

   Still, a pretty good showing in his debut on the national stage in this country for Magcalayo.