Rylie Heflin has quietly been one of the best junior players in two states.
Heflin resides in Avondale in southern Chester County and has been a perennial contender in the Pennsylvania Junior Girls’ Championship, capturing the title in 2017. Heflin finished in a tie for fifth place in the state junior girls tourney at Lebanon Country Club last summer.
Scholastically, Heflin crosses the nearby border with Delaware, where she has competed at Tower Hill. She has been right in the middle of a golden age of girls golf on the Delaware high school scene, competing with and against players like former Tower Hill teammate Jennifer Cleary and former Archmere Academy standout Phoebe Brinker.
Cleary and Brinker were freshman standouts in the Atlantic Coast Conference this spring, Cleary at Virginia and Brinker at Duke. Heflin will join Brinker at Duke at the end of the summer.
Heflin carded a 4-over-par 76, one of four players at that figure, at the Steel Club in Hellertown Wednesday and survived a four-for-two playoff to earn her second trip to the U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship, which will tee off July 12 at Columbia Country Club in Chevy Chase, Md., in a qualifier administered by the Golf Association of Philadelphia.
Heflin qualified for the U.S. Girls’ Junior two years ago at SentryWorld in Stevens Point, Wis., also out of the GAP-administered qualifier at the Steel Club. She failed to reach match play at SentryWorld, but is looking forward to getting another shot next month.
The U.S. Girls’ Junior, like many of the United States Golf Association’s national championships, was canceled a year ago, a casualty of the coronavirus pandemic.
“Two years ago, I proved to myself that I belonged in the field and I did that again today,” the 18-year-old Heflin told the GAP website. “The first time in 2019, it was such a great experience even though I didn’t play well, it was so much fun. I’m excited to get down there and play in it again now.”
Heflin wasted no time punching her ticket to Columbia in the playoff. She sent a wedge on the first hole of the playoff, the 468-yard, par-5 15th at the 6,242-yeard, par-72 Steel Club layout, to 10 feet and drained the birdie putt. She was in.
Merion Golf Club’s Lauren Jones, who capped an outstanding scholastic career at Episcopal Academy by winning the Inter-Ac League’s individual crown at French Creek Golf Club last month, was knocked out on the next hole of the playoff, the 177-yard, par-3 16th hole.
Jones, who, like Heflin, made the U.S. Girls’ Junior at SentryWorld in 2019 out of the qualifier at the Steel Club, will be the second alternate. Jones will join the program at Richmond later this summer.
The second and final berth up for grabs Wednesday at the Steel Club went to recent Pennsbury graduate Jade Gu as she made a routine par on the third hole of the playoff while Natasha Kiel of New Hope missed the green at the 374-yard, par-4 17th hole and couldn’t get it up and down.
It will be the first USGA championship for Gu, who plays out of Yardley Country Club. Gu capped an outstanding scholastic career at Pennsbury by finishing in a tie for ninth place in the PIAA Class AAA Championship last fall at the Heritage Hills Golf Resort. Gu captured the Class AAA East Regional title at Golden Oaks Golf Club as a sophomore in 2018.
Kiel, the first alternate, was a standout at the George School in Newtown before finishing up her scholastic career at the Monteverde Academy in Monteverde, Fla. Kiel, who plays out of Jericho National Golf Club, will join the program at Southeastern Conference power Vanderbilt this summer. Kiel finished in third place in last summer’s Pennsylvania Junior Girls’ Championship at Lebanon.
Michelle Cox, who lost in a playoff for the PIAA Class AAA crown to West Chester East’s Victoria Kim last fall as a senior at Emmaus, finished two shots out of the four-way playoff for the two available berths to Columbia with a 78.
Scanning the USGA site for U.S. Girls’ Junior qualifiers, it appears Lower Merion junior Sydney Yermish had a near miss June 9th at Hawk Pointe Golf Club in Washington, N.J.
Yermish was unable to defend the District One Class AAA title she won as a freshman in 2019 last fall when the Central League couldn’t put together a district qualifier in time to get its players in the field.
Yermish, who plays out of Rolling Green Golf Club, carded a 70 at Hawk Pointe and finished in a tie for fourth place. It looks like Yermish is the first alternate, so there is some hope she might get the call from the USGA. Chevy Chase, Md. is close enough that Yermish might consider getting on site in case somebody drops out at the last minute.
Yermish was 12-years old when she earned a trip to the 2018 U.S. Girls’ Junior at the Poppy Hills Golf Course on northern California’s Monterey Peninsula. She has become one of Pennsylvania’s top junior players. She has a busy summer of golf ahead of her. Hopefully, the U.S. Girls’ Junior becomes part of that schedule.
GAP administered a qualifier for the U.S. Junior Amateur Monday at Carlisle Country Club and Bryan Lee of Fairfax, Va., seeing the golf course for the first time, fired a 3-under 68 to claim medalist honors.
Lee, who plans to join ACC power Virginia in the summer of 2022, made five birdies on the outgoing nine at the 6,400-yard, par-71 Carlisle layout as he registered a 4-under 31.
Lee started his assault on the front nine at Carlisle by knocking a wedge at the 281-yard, par-4 second hole to three feet and converting the birdie try. He hit it close at both the 340-yard, par-4 fifth hole and the 140-yard, par-3 sixth hole and made back-to-back birdies.
Lee drained a 15-foot birdie putt at the 214-yard, par-3 eighth hole before closing out the front side at Carlisle by getting it up and down for birdie after nearly reaching the 501-yard, par-5 ninth hole in two.
The only other ticket available to the U.S. Junior Amateur went to Gonzalo Oliva Pinto, a 17-year-old from Argentina who carded a solid 1-under 70.
Oliva Pinto had older brother Segunda Oliva Pinto on the bag. Segundo Oliva Pinto captured the SEC individual title at the Sea Island Club’s Seaside Course on St. Simons Island, Ga. as a junior at Arkansas this spring. Gonzalo Oliva Pinto will follow his big brother to Arkansas later this summer.
The U.S. Junior Amateur will tee off July 19th at the Country Club of North Carolina in the Village of Pinehurst, N.C.
The first alternate was Liberty junior Matt Vital, who matched par with a 71. Vital, a winner of the Boys 12-13 division in the 2019 Drive, Chip & Putt National Finals at Augusta National Golf Club, has made some considerable noise on the Philadelphia Section PGA Junior Tour circuit this spring, highlighted by a sizzling 8-under 62 at Reading Country Club that broke the course record set by Sam Snead in 19 and 49.
The second alternate was Mehrbaan Singh of Ashburn, Va., who carded a 1-over 72.
Looks like Singh survived a playoff with Norristown’s Josh Ryan, who also signed for a 72, to earn that second-alternate spot. Ryan, who plays out of the The 1912 Club, was denied an opportunity to defend the District One Class AAA crown he won in 2019 because Norristown kept its athletes off the playing field in the fall due to pandemic concerns.
Turned out to still be a pretty good week for Ryan, though, as he claimed his second straight GAP Junior Boys’ crown with a 4 and 3 victory in the final over Morgan Lofland Thursday at Overbrook Golf Club.
Looks like the player who succeeded Ryan as the District One Class AAA champion, Downingtown West sophomore Nick Gross, came up just short of a trip to the Country Club of North Carolina as he carded a 1-over 73 in a qualifier Friday at the Shadow Valley Club in Rogers, Ark.
In addition to the district title he won in his freshman season last fall, Gross ended up in third place in the PIAA Class AAA Championship at Heritage Hills. He did survive a playoff to get the second-alternate spot out of the qualifier at Shadow Valley.
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