La Salle junior Ethan Martin had quite a season on the Philadelphia Section PGA Junior Tour.
Martin beat players of all ages to capture the Philly Junior Tour Championship in August at Chester Valley Golf Club and was again the overall winner against all age groups in a two-day event at Hickory Valley Golf Club’s Ambassador and Presidential courses in June.
Those two wins were part of a year of excellence that enabled Martin, a Lansdale resident, to sweep to a pair of top honors in the 13-to-15 age group in 2022, winning Player of the Year and capturing the Sam Penecale Scoring Average Award.
I was hoping to get my hands on a summary of the different award winners’ accomplishments in 2022, but none was available. So, I just checked the T Mac Tees Off database, which contains results from the vast majority of the various Philly Junior Tour events in 2022.
I tried to find as many tournament victories as I could for the Player of the Year and Sam Penecale Scoring Average Award winners, but it’s possible I missed one here or there, and Dane Mohap, the coed 12-and-under Player of the Year and San Penecale Scoring Average Award winner, won way too many tournaments to list all of his victories. Suffice it to say, all of the players in this post were the best of the best on the Philly Junior Tour in 2022.
The Philly Junior Tour is almost designed to send its best players to the next level, whether that’s American Junior Golf Association (AJGA) or Golf Association of Philadelphia (GAP) or Pennsylvania Golf Association (PAGA) junior, or even open, events.
But not everybody has the option of branching out and the Philly Junior Tour schedule gives players plenty of opportunities to compete at all kinds of golf courses throughout the region. It’s fun, just by rounding up all the events, to watch them keep getting better and better.
That was certainly the case for Martin in 2022. His victory at Indian Spring Golf Course in Marlton, N.J. in April was a preview of things to come.
Martin’s victory at Skippack Golf Club in June saw his game in top form heading down the road in Montgomery County for the two-day event at Hickory Valley. The Philly Junior Tour two-day events produce an overall winner in the 13-to-18 age group in addition to breaking out the usual Junior Tour divisions.
Martin captured the overall title, beating a strong field of junior players from all over the region over two rounds.
Martin claimed another victory in the 13-to-15 division at Ramblewood Country Club in Mt. Laurel Township, N.J. in July.
Martin was at his best in again in beating the entire field of 13-to-18 players in the Philly Junior Tour Championship with a sparkling 1-over-par 71 at Chester Valley, a classic layout that once hosted the top senior pros in a regular stop on what is now known at the PGA Tour Champions in its early years.
Martin put together a solid average of 74.08 to claim the Sam Penecale Scoring Average Award in the 13-to-15 division.
Sam Penecale was the long-time head pro at Whitemarsh Valley Country Club and one of the Philadelphia Section’s top players who made giving junior players as many competitive opportunities as possible one of his priorities.
Martin had qualified as an individual for the PIAA Class AAA Championship as a sophomore in 2021. He was unable to match that feat this fall, but he did help La Salle win Catholic League and District 12 team crowns and teed it up with the Explorers in the PIAA Class AAA team competition at Penn State in October. La Salle finished in fourth place.
Quakertown junior Nick Joyce was the Player of the Year in the 16-to-18 division.
Joyce was particularly strong in the early part of the Philly Junior Tour’s 2022 schedule, starting with an impressive victory in a two-day event at Seaview Golf Club’s Pines Course in Galloway Township, N.J. in March.
Joyce added a victory in another of the Philly Junior Tour’s two-day events, this one at Turtle Creek Golf Course in June. Turtle Creek hosts the District One Championship in the fall, so the Philly Junior Tour two-day event in June always draws one of the most competitive fields since players in the Philadelphia suburbs want to get a look at the Turtle in case they earn a trip there for districts in the fall.
In between his wins at Seaview and at Turtle Creek, Joyce topped the field in the 16-to-18 division at Landis Creek Golf Club in Limerick, at Out Door Country Club in York in May and at Indian Valley Country Club in Telford in June.
Martin and Joyce both represented the Philly Junior Tour in the Jon M. Pritsch Cup, a Ryder Cup style series of matches against the top players from the New Jersey Section PGA in August at Spring Brook Country Club in Morristown, N.J. The Jersey kids retained the Pritsch Cup with a 12-6 victory.
The Sam Penecale Scoring Average Award winner in the 16-to-18 division went to Justin Forman of Sewell, N.J., whose consistency was evident in his average of 75.50.
Forman went low in taking top honors among the older guys at Medford Lakes Country Club in Medford, N.J. with a 2-over 73 in July and again when he matched par with a 70 at Indian Spring Golf Course in Evesham, N.J. to claim a Philly Junior Tour win in August.
Forman finished three shots behind Martin in the Philly Junior Tour Championship at Chester Valley with a 4-over 74, capturing first place in the 16-to-18 division in a playoff.
West Chester Rustin junior Sophia DeSantis was the winner of both Player of the Year and the Sam Penecale Scoring Average Award in the girls 16-to-18 division.
DeSantis got her season off to a strong start by topping the field of older girls in the Philly Junior Tour stop at Out Door in May.
She followed that up by earning runnerup honors in the 16-to-18 division in the two-day Precision Pro Golf event at Penn State and finishing third in the overall scoring.
When her high school season wrapped up in October, DeSantis went back to work on the Philly Junior Tour, earning victories in the 16-to-18 division at Garrisons Lake Golf Club in Smyrna, Del. in October and then sweeping to wins on the final weekend of the season at the Jersey Shore last month at Avalon Golf Club and Cape May National Golf Club.
DeSantis took the Sam Penecale Scoring Average Award with an average of 85.18 for the season.
In searching around a little, DeSantis’ name appeared on the Daily Local News All-Area Girls Golf first team. DeSantis finished in fourth place in a very competitive field in the Ches-Mont League Championship at Applecross Country Club.
Like DeSantis, Katherine Liu of Moorestown, N.J. was both the Player of the Year and the winner of the Sam Penecale Scoring Average Award in the 13-to-15 division.
Liu played a lot of golf on the Philly Junior Tour in 2022 and she won a lot.
She topped the 13-to-15 division field at Centerton Golf Club in Pittsgrove, N.J. in April, won at Indian Valley in June at Medford Lakes and Ramblewood in July and was a back-to-back winner at Paxon Hollow and Indian Spring in August.
Liu finished in fourth place among the younger girls and sixth overall with a solid 84 in the Philly Junior Tour Championship at Chester Valley.
Liu then added a third win in August in the 13-to-15 division at Philmont before wrapping up a busy month by representing the Philly Junior Tour in the Pritsch Cup at Spring Brook.
Liu’s season was nowhere near over, however. She won the 13-to-15 division at Bala Golf Club in September, topped her age group at Linfield National in October and bested the field of younger girls on that final weekend last month at Avalon.
Liu won the Sam Penecale Scoring Average Award with a solid 85.00 average and that included a ton of Philly Junior Tour starts.
Then there was Mohap, the youngster from Nazareth who dominated a very competitive coed 12-and-division.
When he shared first place with Ian Rotto of Kennett Square, each carding a 1-over 36 at Spring Hollow Golf Club in Spring City in October, the Philly Junior Tour release said it was 23rd time that Mohap had bested the field of nine-holers.
On the final weekend of October, Mohap added two more victories, earning a sweep of events at Berkleigh Country Club and Lebanon Country Club. So, figure Mohap had in the neighborhood of 25 wins. It was a lot of wins, whatever it was.
What makes Mohap’s year even more impressive was that it was achieved in probably the Philly Junior Tour’s most competitive age group. Rotto really had it going late in the year and regularly challenged Mohap’s dominance.
Early in the year, Mohap’s fellow Nazareth entries, Alex DiGiacinto and Holden Sparks, could routinely be found on the nine-holers’ leaderboard. If Mohap, DiGiacinto and Sparks all end up on the same high school team in a few years, look out.
Mohap’s consistency was rewarded with the Sam Penecale Scoring Average Award as he averaged 39.41 for the season.
In 2018, the Philly Junior Tour’s coed 12-and-under division Player of the Year was Nick Gross of Downingtown. Last summer, Gross was playing in the quarterfinals of the U.S. Amateur at The Ridgewood Country Club in Paramus, N.J., having not quite reached his 16th birthday.
I’m not saying that any of 2022’s nine-holers are going to be in the quarterfinals of the 2026 U.S. Amateur – scheduled to be played at Merion Golf Club’s historic East Course in the Ardmore section of Haverford Township, by the way. But Gross has shown what’s possible when a kid gets turned on to the game at a young age.
The beauty of the Philly Junior Tour is that these kids are out there playing real golf. They’re counting all the shots, they’re holing all the putts. They’re learning that every shot matters when you’re playing competitive golf.
They’re also learning to enjoy playing a game that some of them will still be playing in 2072.
This is always a good time of the year to give a shout-out to all the people who got all these kids to the first tee for their starting times. Some parents spent some serious time behind the wheel getting their kids and, I’m sure some of their kids’ friends, to golf courses in every corner of the region, from Lebanon to the Jersey Shore from Scranton to Rehoboth Beach, Del.
A much-deserved shout-out as well to the Philly Junior Tour’s title sponsor, the Valley Forge Tourism & Convention Board. The VFTCB is a tireless supporter of golf, particularly in Montgomery County, but its sponsorship of the Philly Junior Tour is an investment in helping to ensure there will be plenty of golfers who want to play all of the golf courses in the region for years to come.
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