The spring portion of the Philadelphia Section PGA Junior Tour’s wraparound 2019-2020 season was supposed to get going in March, just about the time that life as we once knew it came to a screeching halt.
Uncertainty then, as now, was everywhere. Whether or not junior golfers would get back on the golf course was the least of the world’s worries at that point.
But by early June, they were out there competing. It was the time of year when, with the youngsters getting out of school for the summer, that the Philly Junior Tour transforms from a weekend undertaking to three or four events during the week, everywhere from central Pennsylvania to Delaware to the Jersey Shore.
It had become apparent by then that playing golf, even tournament golf, was something that could be done safely. Various golf organizations worked out the various protocols that were being issued by the various health departments and, guess what, people everywhere were able to get around a golf course and the coronavirus never seemed to be the wiser.
And when it came to the region’s junior golfers, there seemed to be a huge pent-up desire to get out on the course with their friends and compete. As early as April, they had been teeing it up on their home courses – heck, carrying their own sticks was no big deal, they did that all the time anyway.
But it wasn’t the same. They could take a mulligan and nobody would know. They could give themselves that tricky three-footer for birdie. Every shot didn’t count. They didn’t have to grind out pars like that would in a tournament.
So, when the Philly Junior Tour started staging tournaments again, the kids came out to play.
I’ve been sitting on the Philly Junior Tour’s 2019-’20 Graham Company Players of the Year and Sam Penecale Scoring Average Leader awards for a couple of months now. The good news is that I just couldn’t get to them because there’s been so much golf going on, including the start of the Philly Junior Tour’s wraparound 2020-’21 campaign.
The fall portion of the Philly Junior Tour schedule, which reverts to a mostly weekend deal – although they did sneak in a series of midweek nine-hole events – has been conducted in some of the best weather conditions ever. Last weekend’s tournaments were played in sunshine and temperatures in the 70s in November. Hey, we’ll take it.
Devon Prep senior Ryan McCabe, a product of The Springhaven Club’s junior program, was one of those youngsters who couldn’t wait to get out and compete again in June.
His burst of strong play in that first month back was enough to make him the Graham Company Player of the Year and the Sam Penecale Scoring Average Leader in the 16-to-18 division. McCabe didn’t even tee it up in the fall portion of the 2019-’20 season as he was busy making a second straight serious run at a PIAA Class AA Championship at the Heritage Hills Golf Resort. He finished in a tie for third place, his second straight top-3 finish in the state tournament.
McCabe played in seven Philly Junior Tour events, capturing a victory in a Jersey Shore stop at Avalon Golf Club, one of the first events back from the pandemic-enforced layoff.
McCabe contended in two of the Philly Junior Tour’s Precision Pro Golf Open events, 36-hole tournaments that offer points that can translate into opportunities to play in American Junior Golf Association (AJGA) events.
He finished in second place in the two-day test at Hickory Valley Golf Club’s Ambassador and Presidential Courses – including a hole-in-one in the second round -- and in a tie for second at Hershey Country Club’s East Course. Those three high finishes, in particular, helped McCabe pile up 937 points in the Philly Junior Tour Player of the Year standings.
All five of the Graham Company Player of the Year winners on the Philly Junior Tour also claimed the Sam Penecale Scoring Average Leader award. McCabe’s scoring average of 74.5 left him at the top of the heap in the 16-to-18 division. Players must complete 10 rounds in Philly Junior Tour competition to be eligible for the Sam Penecale Scoring Average Leader award.
There was plenty of uncertainty when the scholastic season got under way, but the PIAA never backed off its original dates for postseason play, although the East and West Regional Championships were skipped and top finishers from district tournaments advanced directly to the state championship.
Somehow in all of that, McCabe did not get a chance to compete for the PIAA Class AA Championship that he had been closing in on for the last three seasons. Pretty sure District 12, which Devon Prep competes in, didn’t get as many berths to states in Class AA as it normally would get to regionals. So, it appears McCabe was unable to advance out of the District 12 Championship to the PIAA Championship.
None of which diminishes the scholastic career McCabe did have, winning a District One Class AA title and finishing 15th in the PIAA Class AA Championship as a freshman and then, coming out of District 12 after Devon Prep joined the Philadelphia Catholic League, finishing in a tie for second and a tie for third as a sophomore and a junior, respectively, in Class AA at Heritage Hills.
And in the pandemic year of 2020, he was the best and most consistent player among the older guys competing on the Philly Junior Tour.
Much like McCabe, when Junior Tour play resumed in June, Nathan Guertler of Merchantville, N.J., playing in the 13-to-15 division, was ready. Unlike McCabe, though, Guertler already had two wins to his credit during the pre-pandemic fall portion of the 2019-’20 season, claiming victories at Linwood Country Club and in a Precision Pro Golf Open event at the Seaview Resort across the bay from Atlantic City.
It was a little later in the summer of 2020 when Guertler really got it going, adding wins at Running Deer Golf Club, Chesapeake Bay Golf Club in Maryland and Rock Manor Golf Club in Delaware to the two he had in the bank from the previous fall. In 19 tournaments over the wraparound 2019-’20 season, Guertler added five second-place finishes and four thirds to his five wins on his way to Graham Company Player of the Year honors in the 13-to-15 division.
Guertler’s consistency added up to a whopping 1,491.33 points.
Guertler’s 78.52 average in 21 rounds enabled him to capture the Sam Penecale Scoring Average Leader award among the younger guys as well.
Olivia Strigh of Hammonton, N.J. swept to the Graham Company Player of the Year and Sam Penecale Scoring Average Leader awards in the girls 16-to-18 division.
Strigh claimed eight wins in 14 tournaments during the wraparound 2019-’20 season and piled up 898 points in the POY standings. Strigh got off to a good start last fall when she earned victories at Union League National Golf Club at the Jersey Shore and at Medford Village Country Club.
But Strigh showed she was ready to compete when play resumed in June as she captured wins at Yardley Country Club, Running Deer, Indian Spring Country Club, Rock Manor, Cedarbrook Country Club and Pennsauken Country Club. Strigh also had a pair of runnerup finishes.
Strigh’s average of 85.14 in 14 rounds gave her the Sam Penecale Scoring Average Leader award among the older girls.
Rhianna Gooneratne was recovering from an injury and was unable to tee it up in the summer of 2020. But the Plymouth Meeting youngster had piled up eight wins in 10 starts in the fall portion of the wraparound 2019-’20 season and that was enough to give her the Graham Company Player of the Year and Sam Penecale Scoring Average Leader awards in the 13-to-15 division.
Pretty sure Gooneratne’s eight wins came in eight straight starts as summer gave way to fall in 2019, including victories at LuLu Country Club, Odessa National Golf Club, Spring Hollow Golf Club, Bala Golf Club, Medford Village, Linwood, Greate Bay Country Club and Spring Ford Country Club.
The 378 points Gooneratne piled up stood up throughout 2020 and earned her the Graham Company Player of the Year award for the 2019-’20 season. Her average of 81.6 also held up for the Sam Penecale Scoring Average Leader award.
Nobody was more dominant in the wraparound 2019-’20 season than Davis Conaway, the winner of both the Graham Company Player of the Year and Sam Penecale Scoring Average Leader awards in the coed 12-and-under division.
The Malvern Prep seventh-grader, an East Bradford resident, teed it up in 30 Junior Tour events, winning 17 of them while piling up 1,954 POY points. It began quietly enough with a victory last fall at Odessa National.
When play resumed following the coronavirus-enforced layoff, Conaway took off. Conaway claimed a victory in the first event back at the Pine Meadows Golf Complex in Lebanon and never looked back.
Conaway got wins everywhere over the summer, including Wild Quail in Dover, Del., the Precision Pro Golf Open two-day event at Hickory Valley, at Scotland Run Golf Club in Williamstown, N.J., in the Rehoboth Junior Open in Rehoboth Beach, Del., at Medford Lakes, a tie for first at Northampton Valley Country Club, a win not far from home in an event at West Chester Golf & Country Club limited to the coed 12-and-under division, at Meadia Heights Golf Club in Lancaster, at Kennett Square Golf & Country Club, at Skippack Golf Club, at Yardley Country Club, at Paxon Hollow Country Club, in a tie for first at Rock Manor, another tie for first at Springhaven and at Raven’s Claw Golf Club in Limerick.
The participation was very high all summer among the nine-holers. Might have had a little to do with the fact that other sports struggled to get off the ground with the restrictions caused by the pandemic. For whatever reason, though, a lot of youngsters were hitting the links.
And Conaway just might have raised the bar for the whole group. Several challengers to Conaway’s dominance emerged as the summer went along, Lawson Leeper of York and Hank Kancher of Philadelphia come quickly to mind, but there were others.
Conaway’s average of 40.83 gave him the Sam Penecale Scoring Average Leader award. Leeper had a 41.9 average in 20 rounds and Kancher was a little better than Leeper at 41.67 in 15 rounds.
By the end of the summer, the coed 12-and-under division was remarkably competitive. You’re going to be hearing from a lot of these kids in the years to come when the crazy coronavirus summer of 2020 is a distant and very bad memory.
Give the kids and their parents credit. Nobody really knew what to expect when tournament play resumed in early June. But people got out there and played and followed the protocols. I haven’t heard of any golf event that led to the spread of the coronavirus.
The reason for this post was to honor the best of the best on the Philly Junior Tour in 2019-’20. But, in a very real way, it honors all the youngsters that took the sticks out and played some golf while much of the rest of the world was stuck in neutral, trying to figure out a way to get out of the house and do something.
How about some golf was their simple answer.
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