Greetings!
Who ordered the weather? You did a great job! What a great weekend for some challenging yet competitive golf. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. Talking about weather,
remember, the High 90's and humidity is coming, but good news not until after THE PLAYERS. Enjoy this weeks event and don't forget to wear your NFJG hats and shirts. Show it off, be PROUD of the best Junior Tour in Florida. Thanks for doing so and we'll see you out there.
OK, let's get down to business!
Maybe "The Orange Park Open" should have been called "The Orange Park Challenge" as the players of the two day Web.com Junior Players Tour event witnessed two different conditions of play during the weekends event. Round one with 46 players in the field was battled out at The Golf Club at Fleming Island with aerified and sanded greens while round two was played at The Country Club of Orange Park where the greens, only less than a year old where firm to hard and fast. After the completion of round one it was any ones title to have and it didn't matter which division you were in as each division had some very competitive scores atop the leaderboard.
During the opening round Elliott Wright and Peyton Billings had no issues navigating the course to an even par round of 71 with Hunter Layne one back at 72 and Kyle Jewett and Drew Neilen just two back with a 73 for the low rounds of the day. In the Foundation Tour young Colton Swartz corralled a nice 39 with Nolan Harper within a length of the lead with a 41.
Day two and the final round however would paint a different picture as the average score for most of the players was around eight shots higher than the first round scores. For a few it was a move to catch up to the leaders. Like William Levinson who was one of the few to better his scoring average. Levinson started out with an EAGLE on the second hole followed up by a birdie on the third and dropped eight strokes off his score from round one. Maybe a little too late, but a great showing none the less.
The one thing for sure is that golf is a game about understanding conditions and the elements of play, like hot, cold; wet, dry; hard, soft; fast and slow. These are just a few, add wind, slope, elevation, sand and grain and it can be overwhelming, but those who learn to understand it and accept it will rise to the top like Peyton Billings who shot the low total 71-76=147
Congratulations to all our players who competed in this past weekends event, for this was a good test of physical endurance and mental strength and special congratulations to our Tournament Champions and Runner-ups for your fine play. Don't forget to dust off those trophies once in a while.
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