The NCGA’s all-new Poppy Ridge debuts May 31

Very few AGAs (1) in the United States own and operate their own golf course; in fact, only four (the NCGA, and the Oregon, Washington, and Colorado AGAs) do so, and of those four only one—the Northern California Golf Association—owns and operates two courses. Those two courses—Poppy Hills, in the Del Monte Forest on the Monterey Peninsula; and Poppy Ridge, in the midst of the vineyards and golden hills of the Livermore Valley in Contra Costa County—present two very different golf experiences encompassing the wide range of landscapes that comprise “NCGA territory”.

Poppy Hills, which opened in 1986, was the first course in the country to be built and operated by an AGA. The wooded property, which is also home to NCGA headquarters, underwent a major renovation in 2014 that improved drainage across the entire property, reduced irrigated acreage, and replaced the late-1980s-vintage irrigation system with a modern system. Now Poppy Hills’ ten-years younger sibling, Poppy Ridge, which drapes across a rolling landscape of golden hills and lush green vineyards southeast of the City of Livermore, is reopening after an even more comprehensive reworking that has resulted in what is essentially an entirely new course.

The 17th green at the new Poppy Ridge gleams in “golden hour” sunlight, overlooked by rolling hills and the soaring wind turbines that line a distant ridge. (photo credit: Joann Dost)

 

 “If you were to ask people what is a postcard of California wine country, this would be it – Jay Blasi

The new Poppy Ridge will be an eye-opener for players who were familiar with the 1996 Rees Jones layout. The original 1996 design was made up of three nine-hole loops—appropriately named Chardonnay, Merlot, and Zinfandel. This configuration allowed flexibility and variety for the golfers who came to play there, but suffered from compromises in routing and terrain that made walking the course untenable for most golfers, and could lead to time-consuming rounds of golf. The new layout, designed by course architect Jay Blasi based on guidelines provided by the NCGA, has what I consider to be a more sensible use of 27 holes of golf; it now consists of an 18-hole championship layout and the Ridge 9, a nine-hole course with seven par-4 holes and a pair of par-3s.

“We basically started over, and we built a new golf course on top of a site that used to have a golf course.” – Jay Blasi

The new layout is so different from the 1996 design that even longtime course employees have had to relearn their way around the property. Players familiar with the old Poppy Ridge will note that the 18-hole course is laid out over territory that comprised the Zinfandel nine and part of Chardonnay, mostly north of the clubhouse, while the Ridge 9 encompasses part of what used to be the Merlot nine and some of Chardonnay.

Toned Down, But Still Challenging

One of Jay Blasi’s main goals for the redesign was to improve walkability on the new 18-hole championship layout. While still a hilly course, walking 18-holes at around 6500 yards (the blue tees) is now some 2,000 yards shorter than the original setup, with 400 feet less elevation change overall.

Reworking the routing to tighten and smooth the transitions between holes involved moving some 250,000 cubic yards of soil. In many cases moving that volume of earth is done to add, or increase, contouring, but in this case that work was done, as Blasi told me, “…to soften the property, to make those transitions more manageable and easier to walk. We weren’t moving dirt to make things more exciting; the landscape was already big and beautiful and exciting—we were doing it to kind of tone it down a bit and make it more suitable for golf.”

There’s no denying that the Poppy Ridge property is a dramatic and dynamic piece of landscape on which to build a golf course. It is a property of rolling hills on which some holes rise to meet you, some lay out in front of you in full view, and others test your faith with a blind second shot. It is also criss-crossed with deeper cuts, such as the area where the drop-off-a-cliff par-three 17th hole was built. Playing at distances ranging between 154 yards from the championship (orange) tees to a mere 67 yards from the most forward tees (green), the vertical aspect of this dramatic little one-shotter will challenge a player’s club-selection skills. Its neighbor, the par-three 14th, teases with an uphill carry—more so from the forward tees—over an area of native growth; a friendly hillside to the left of the green is a safe aiming strategy for the daring carry on this hole.

Another of the goals for the new course was to make it fun and playable for all levels of golfers. Compared to the old course there is less water in play, and less sand in play. The fairways are wide and accommodating, but careful attention to placement for the approach shot will pay off, and most of the greens are open at the front to allow the ball to be run up onto the green—flying it high and landing it soft will not be the only option for hitting and holding greens.

That’s not to say that the course will be a walkover for the more highly skilled player; once in position to go for the green, careful inspection of the contours around the greens will show that there is usually a safe side and a risky side, so skillful placement of your drive or second shot will often be key to having a safer approach.

A good example of this is the par-four 6th hole, the first hole that I played during the recent preview day scramble. The fairway is wide and confidence-inspiring, as most of the fairways on the new course are, but you must be mindful of where you place your tee shot. A drive to the right side of the landing area yields an inviting approach to the green, while landing too far left leaves your approach shot blocked by mounding that leaves you facing a blind shot (2) to a (thankfully), generously sized green. In turn, the mound on the left side forms a backdrop that can help direct an overcooked approach shot, even from good position in the fairway, back onto the green.

The greens at Poppy Ridge are well-contoured, with challenging but not drastic shaping. An interesting design feature that applies to the greens as a whole is that their size relates to the difficulty of the approach shot—holes that are likely to require a long-iron approach have larger greens; those that are going to be taken on with a wedge or a short iron give the golfer a smaller target to aim at. It is risky to judge the greens of a brand-new golf course; they will always need some bedding-in time before their true character is revealed, but I think that golfers will find the greens at Poppy Ridge testing, but fair.

Teething Problems?

As I mentioned above, the new course is intended to be fun for all skill levels. Each hole features five teeing areas accommodating a range of standard yardages from 7,010 (orange) to 4,225 (green).While good in theory, my group—with one playing from the tips and three from the golds—found that the forward tees were stretched so far ahead of the longer tees that staying connected was problematic, and that, when playing from a cart, getting from the cart path to the gold or green tees often required trekking through native areas.

Another new-course teething issue that we encountered was confusion about the location of the teeing areas in the corner of the course where the 13th green, 14th tees, 18th green, and 17th tees are all clustered within a small and quite hilly area. Better signage and better definition of the teeing grounds themselves would go a long way toward eliminating confusion for players that are new to the course (as everyone will be in the near term.)

A Strong First Impression

Even with only one round on the new layout under my belt, I have already selected a favorite hole—the par-five 4th. This uphill three-shotter plays longer than the scorecard yardage thanks to the elevation gain, and while fairly straight, hands you a peek-a-boo second shot that teases the possibility of getting onto the green in two. A low, running shot with a fairway wood or hybrid might get you there if you thread the needle between a trio of smallish but well-placed bunkers placed right-left-right along the way to the putting surface. I hit one of my better 3-wood shots in recent memory on this hole and just caught the first, and largest, of those bunkers or I might have found myself, maybe not on the green in two, but certainly within Texas-wedge territory.

Windy conditions will be a testing proposition at this somewhat exposed course. It is dotted with native oak trees, but not lined with the fairway-defining rows of tall trees of a typical parkland course that would protect play from the wind. The green of the 4th and the entirety of the 16th hole are the highest points on the course, I believe, and special attention to the strength of the wind, especially in the afternoon, is warranted there.

“If you are an out-of-town guest, if you’re coming from the Midwest or the East Coast, I would venture to guess that two of your three best public options in Northern California are Poppy Ridge and Poppy Hills.” – Jay Blasi

Course designer Jay Blasi, the NCGA, and everyone associated with the creation of the new Poppy Ridge can be justifiably proud of this new course. It is a property that will take some familiarization to come to terms with, but I think that the variety of the golf holes, and of course the newness of the layout, will tempt players back again and again to build course knowledge and test strategies for assaying its dramatic landscape. It’s a good thing, then, that 60% of the NCGA’s membership lives within 60 miles of this stunning new addition to the bounteous variety of Northern California golf.

Poppy Ridge opens for play on May 31st, and the tee sheet is already full a few weeks out, but I urge everyone in the region to experience this new course as soon as they can.

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1) Allied Golf Associations, the local golf associations that collaborate with the USGA to support the game of golf in the country.

2) Despite a bit of friendly advice from the guide who led us out to the tees at #6, this is exactly what I did...

Starting my second decade at the Crosby

Once again, my favorite week of the year has rolled around. No, it’s not Spring Break, or even Christmas vacation – it’s Crosby Week.

The poster for the first “Crosby” hints at the
fun-loving nature of the event in the early days.

For those in my audience who are below the age of, say, 50, “the Crosby” (officially the “Bing Crosby Pro-Amateur Golf Championship”, aka “the “Crosby Clambake”) is what the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am was called before AT&T brought a bucket of money to the table and started a decades-long run as presenting sponsor of the tournament. Started in the 1930s by crooner Bing Crosby (you youngsters can Google him) as a weekend get-together  for a bunch of his showbiz friends at Old Brockway Golf Course on Lake Tahoe’s North Shore, the tournament was later moved to Rancho Santa Fe, just north of San Diego, where the event’s pro-am format began. Bing would pair touring pros with amateur players drawn from the ranks of his show-business friends and the member of the Lakeside Golf Club in Hollywood, where he was a member (and five-time club champion).

The event came back from a 1942 wartime postponement with a move to the Monterey Peninsula in 1947, where it was played at Pebble Beach Golf Links and a rotating cast of supporting courses such as Cypress Point, the Monterey Peninsula Country Club’s Shore Course, Poppy Hills (home of the NCGA) and Spyglass Hill, over the years. In 1986 the people at AT&T bought out Bing’s widow, Katherine Crosby, changed the name of the tournament, and have been carrying on the tradition ever since.

My own history with this tournament started with watching it on TV as a kid growing up in nearby Salinas. I didn’t play golf, nor did any of my friends or their fathers, but everyone we knew watched the tournament. When I finally got interested in golf, many years later (thanks to the golf writing of Dan Jenkins…) and started playing and then writing about golf, I was lucky enough to get a foot in the door of the golf media world as a part-time freelancer, and get the privilege of entry to the media center at Pebble Beach for this event.

I actually wrote about this event for the first time in 2011, the year that saw long-time celebrity entrant Bill Murray and his then-new pro partner D.A. Points score the historic double, their team taking the pro-am trophy while Points won the pro event. I wrote that article (Cinderella Story) based on watching the event on TV at home, but two years later I was walking into the media center in the conference rooms above the Pebble Beach Gallery shops, a 50-something semi-rookie (I had started my official golf media career the previous year at the 2012 U.S. Open at the Olympic Club), rubbing elbows with the men and women who do this for a living.

I have covered the event every year since (though physically absent during the lockdown year of 2021), so the 2023 tournament marks my eleventh go-round, and the first year of my second decade as more than just a fan of the event.

In that time I have made friends amongst the ranks of the people who cover sports for a living. I kept my ears open and my mouth shut (for the most part), learning what I could from the pros in what used to be called the “press room”, and have enjoyed enlightening conversations with the likes of Bay Area sports writing legend Art Spander; the San Francisco Chronicle’s Ron Kroichick; and Mark Purdy, the now-retired sports maven for the San José Mercury News. When my first media affiliation, with the Examiner.com website, ended with the site’s demise in 2016, the connection I had made with the NCGA through my fellow Salinas homeboy and now NCGA Communications Director, Jerry Stewart, has kept me “in with the in-crowd” (PGA Tour press credentials are not available to freelancers without an affiliation with an acknowledged media outlet.)

It has been a privilege to walk the cart paths of Pebble Beach and the affiliated courses over the past decade, and to write about the events that transpire over these four days. I have seen a varied cast of characters leading and even winning this event, from big names like Phil Mickelson (twice) to no-names like Ted Potter, Jr. (sorry, Ted), and the storied venue and its companions in the rota haves never failed to provide drama and excitement – not to mention the best scenery on the PGA Tour. I look forward to at least a few more years of bringing my audience the stories from Pebble Beach (I’m no spring chicken, after all…) and hope that people enjoy reading about it as much as I enjoy writing about it.

When It Comes to the Pebble Beach Pro-Am, John Hawkins Doesn’t Get It

Earlier this week Morning Read pundit John Hawkins posted an opinion piece about the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am entitled “Pebble Beach deserves better fate with PGA Tour”, in which he opined “A golf tournament at Pebble Beach in February is like Christmas in June”. The gist of the article is that this magnificent seaside venue deserves better than to be saddled with a February slot in the schedule and a hit-and-giggle pro-am. Among his suggestions? Make Pebble Beach the venue for the Tour Championship, in August.

After the statement above, Hawkins went on to write, “…instead of hosting a premium event in glorious conditions on prime-time television, Pebble peddles a Saturday full of Bill Murray in a multi-venue pro-am featuring some of the most inclement weather known to golfkind.”

Let me say this right now – Hawkins hasn’t got a clue. He tries to spin the piece as if he is suggesting improvements to better showcase this iconic venue, but what he doesn’t get, among other things, are the traditions of the event.

The Pebble Beach Pro-Am, in its original incarnation as the “Crosby Clambake”, originated the pro-am format, and still defines it. The event started in 1937 at the San Diego-area’s Rancho Santa Fe Golf course when Bing Crosby got a few golf pros and entertainment-business friends together to play golf and raise money for local charities. The original “Clambake” went into hibernation in 1942 due to the onset of World War II, and was revived in the familiar Monterey Peninsula location in 1947. 

Another prominent California-based pro-am golf tournament, the Palm Springs-area event now known as the Desert Classic, is a copy-cat that got its start when Crosby’s “road movie” co-star Bob Hope decided that he wanted to host a pro-am tourney of his own. It’s a tried-and-true formula that draws legions of spectators. You wouldn’t want to see it every week, but a time or two per year, it’s fun.

Another of Hawkins’ gripes is the weather during the event. Originally played in mid- January, the weather was known to sometimes be… tempestuous – not for nothing is the term “Crosby weather” a Monterey-area shorthand for wind and rain – and yes, there was a snow delay in 1962.

The tournament bounced around within the month of January over the years in search of better weather before settling into its current early-to-mid February time slot in 1979. The weather can still be problematic – witness last year’s delay due to a brief but intense hailstorm, which forced that bane of golf writers everywhere, a Monday finish – but compared to the weather patterns that dominate most of the continental United States in February, the Central California coast generally serves up the kind of enviable conditions that put smiles on the faces of the local Chamber of Commerce, and realtors.

One of Hawkins’ suggestions is to move the Tour Championship, with its late-August time slot, to Pebble Beach, fleeing the heat and humidity of Atlanta, or as he put it: “Playing for $15 million in gleaming August twilight on golf’s largest postcard turns common sense into the ultimate no-brainer.” While it’s true that the Monterey area serves up weather that’s much preferable to Atlanta’s late-summer conditions, the summer months tend toward overcast on the California coast, so – and as a native of the area I say this with love – his “gleaming August twilight” is more likely to be a gloomy, gradual dimming instead.

That summertime gloom is the reason that the PGA Tour Champions event that is held at Pebble and nearby Poppy Hills (home course of the Northern California Golf Association), the PURE Insurance Championship Benefitting the First Tee, moved from June back to its original September time slot a few years ago.

Hawkins’ ultimate proposal is to reposition the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am back-to-back with the First Tee event. This idea has as its first drawback an untenable logistics problem; as its second, a diminishing of the event by moving it into the former Fall Tour portion of the schedule; as its third, a potential conflict with the Safeway Open, an established early-season event held at the Silverado Resort in the Napa wine country, three hours north of Pebble Beach; and last but not least, a major loss of revenue for the resort resulting from shutting down for two weeks during its best-weather high season period.

The bottom line is that Hawkins’ opinion piece displays a comprehensive level of ignorance of the essence of this event. It may no longer be the glamorous “Clambake” of old (Bing’s widow sold the tournament to AT&T in 1986, deleting the Crosby name over son-and-tournament-director Nathaniel’s objections) – but the weather, which even in rainy (or worse) conditions cannot completely disguise the beauty of the locale, and the pro-am format, with its slow rounds, ugly swings, and sometimes silly behavior (I’m talking about you, Bill Murray…) are hallmarks of the event.

Any significant change to the tournament, whether a time slot move or a change in format, would compromise the history and traditions of an event which holds a unique opposition in the PGA Tour’s parade of week-to-week, cookie cutter tournaments.

Bay Area golf fans face a decision next September

2019 holds the promise of being a very good year for Bay Area golf fans. The 119th U.S. Open will be played at Pebble Beach Golf Links, in the storied seaside course’s centennial year; a new PGA Tour event sponsored by the Golden State Warriors’ Steph Curry will appear on the schedule, played at Lake Merced Golf Club in Daly City†; and the LPGA will return with the second year of the reboot of their Bay Area tournament of recent years, also at Lake Merced.

However, a week before the Steph Curry event, in the last week of September, Bay Area golf fans will have a decision to make. In late September, as the 2019-2020 PGA Tour season is starting up, and the 2019 PGA Champions season is winding down, both tours will be playing in Northern California, at the same time, 160 miles apart. The PGA Tour will be kicking things off with the Safeway Open, at Silverado Resort and Spa in Napa, and the PGA Champions will be bringing along the next generation of golfers in the PURE Insurance Championship Impacting the First Tee, at Pebble Beach and Poppy Hills in the Del Monte Forest.

How did this happen? Aren’t the PGA Tour and the PGA Champions part of the same organization? Do their scheduling people talk to each other? Do they own a calendar—and a map?

Call it a first-world problem for Bay Area golf fans: Which world-class destination do we head to that week to watch golf—the Silverado Resort & Spa in America’s most venerated wine region, the Napa Valley; or Pebble Beach, the ne plus ultra of American public golf, on the picturesque Monterey Peninsula? Do we want to see the young guns of the PGA Tour (but probably few, if any, big stars), or the old-pro PGA Champions, playing alongside youngsters the same age as their grandkids?

What’s a golf fan to do?

Actually, there’s no wrong answer here—either choice results in a great time at a beautiful venue. Late September is prime time for visiting either the California coast or the Napa Valley; the weather is ideal: neither too hot nor too cold, generally sunny and clear, and there’s rarely any fog at the coast. It’s a shame that this scheduling conflict prevents local golf fans from possibly enjoying two weeks of great golf, but we’re still lucky that we have the choice of these two great events at beautiful destination venues.

† (Correction: In early January it was announced that talks with the potential title sponsor of the Steph Curry-sponsored event, Workday, had fallen through, and that the event would not be held in 2019. There is hope that the event will appear in the schedule in 2020, potentially at TPC Harding Park, in San Francisco.)

All-NorCal final a possibility in 70th U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship

A week of “June Gloom” fog delays for the 2018 U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship at the NCGA’s Poppy Hills Golf Club peaked on Friday, when the completion of the last Round of 16 matches, and tee times for the Quarterfinal matches were eventually pushed back six hours from their original 7:00 a.m. starts.

When the fog had cleared and play was completed, the semifinal matchups are down to a quartet of American players, including two from NCGA territory – Yealimi Noh, 16, of Concord; and Lucy Li, 15, of Redwood Shores. Noh will face off against Gina Kim, 18, of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in the semifinal round; and Li will play Alexa Pano, 13, of Lake Worth, Florida.

Yealimi Noh, of Concord, is one of two NorCal players in the semifinals of the 70th U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship, being played at Poppy Hills Golf Club this week. (Copyright USGA/JD Cuban)

Noh, who is fresh off of a record-setting 24-under win in the PGA Jr Girls’ Championship last week, is particularly strong on the par-5s at Poppy Hills, though she has yet to see the par-5 18th in match play (she birdied all three of the par-5s that she played in her quarterfinal match) – her matches have finished on 16, 16, 17, and 13.

Li, who played in the 2014 U.S. Women’s Open as an 11-year-old, will face a tough opponent in Pano, who has only played past the 15th hole once in the match play portion of the tournament, when her Round of 16 match against Stephanie Kyriacou of Australia went to the 18th hole. Li has been played down to the wire in two of her matches, but closed out her opponents in the Round of 32 and Quarterfinal matches with late birdie runs.

Semifinal matches are scheduled to start Saturday morning at 7:00 a.m., with Li/Pano, followed by Noh/Kim at 7:15 a.m. – weather permitting. The 36-hole championship match will be split: 18 holes on Saturday, after the conclusion of the semifinal round, and the final 18 on Sunday morning.

70th U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship coming to Poppy Hills GC

The golf courses in the Del Monte Forest are no strangers to championship events. Pebble Beach and Spyglass Hill, and the private courses, Cypress Point and Monterey Peninsula Country Club, have hosted PGA Tour and Champions Tour events, and Pebble Beach Golf Links has hosted several national championships – five U.S. Opens, and four U.S. Amateur Championships.

Poppy Hills, the home of the Northern California Golf Association – the largest regional golf association in the United States, and the only one to have its own home course – has been in the mix, too. In addition to the NCGA’s own state and local championship events, Poppy Hills was for many years one of the host courses for the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, and currently co-hosts the Champions Tour’s First Tee Open (presented by PURE Insurance.) In a few weeks from now, July 16 – 21, the NCGA’s flagship course will host a USGA championship of its own – the 70th U.S. Junior Girls’ Championship.

The Northern California Golf Association (NCGA) will host its first national championship when the 70th U.S. Girls’ Junior Chanpiosnhip comes to Poppy Hills GC July 16–21, 2018.

The Girls’ Junior, which is a showcase for the Curtis Cup, Solheim Cup, and LPGA stars of the future, last visited Central California in 2012. That year’s event saw current LPGA stars such as Ariya Jutanagarn, Lydia Ko, and Minjee Lee playing for the Glenna Collett-Vare trophy at Lake Merced Golf Club in Daly City. The tournament has been played on the Monterey Peninsula before, in 1952 at Monterey Peninsula Country Club, when future World Golf Hall of Fame member Mickey Wright, then 17 years old, was the champion. Next month at Poppy Hills some of women’s golf’s stars of years to come will certainly be in the field.

Renovated Poppy Hills course is ready for a championship

When qualifying concludes on June 28th, a field of 156 girls up to the age of 18 will be headed for the Monterey Peninsula to contest their national championship on the beautifully renovated Poppy Hills course.

The course closed in March 2013 for a complete makeover, reopening in April 2014 after a 13-month-long renovation. Completely sand-capped to improve drainage, the course also received a state-of-the-art irrigation control system for more efficient water use. Native areas were restored, eliminating 25 acres that were previously irrigated turf to reduce water requirements. Water hazards were reduced or eliminated, some holes were realigned, and many of the greens significantly revamped.

Later that year, once the renovation was firmly in place, the NCGA approached the USGA about the possibility of hosting a national championship on the now “firm, fast, and fun” course, and in 2015 were selected to host this event. Planning for the tournament began in 2016.

Expect a different look than the Poppy Hills you play

The course will play a bit differently for the tournament than day-to-day players are used to. The nines were flipped after a couple of years’ experience with the new layout, improving pace of play by eliminating the backups that occurred on the then-front nine, which has an early run of difficult holes.

Tracy Parsons, the USGA’s tournament director for the event, first walked the course with the original order in place.

“The very first time that I came on this golf course, the First Tee was here, and that’s the way that I walked the course, that’s the way that I began preparing, and that’s the way that I envisioned the championship being played. When the NCGA flipped the nines I started walking the golf course the opposite way…and it didn’t make much sense to me for our championship.”

“When we go to match play we go to a single-tee start, and I’d like to have the crowd around the first tee for all the players. It obviously makes more sense for us to have it (the first tee) right here (near the clubhouse), and to have both the finishing holes right there as well. In match play, obviously some of our matches won’t make it to the 18th hole, and some of those holes on the front nine are so key to the round that I don’t want to skip them. The way that the routing was originally works in our best interests for the championship. I understand why they (the NCGA) flipped it for regular play, but for our purposes I think it makes the most sense to stick with the original routing.”

A record 1,609 entries were received for this year’s event, 103 more than in 2017. Forty sites around the country are hosting qualifying tournaments, where 140 girls (156-player field minus 16 exempt players) will advance to the championship event at Poppy Hills. They will play the course to a par of 71, at a length of 6,182 yards.

These Girls Are Good

Entry into the championship requires that the player carry a handicap of -9.4 or better.

“People who have never come to the Girls’ Junior think, ‘Oh that’s so cute, with their little pigtails and their bows,’ tournament director Tracy Parsons told the media during the recent preview day, “but I think that if they were actually to come and watch these players compete – because that’s what they are, they’re competitors – they would be surprised, and in awe of what these girls can do. I think the testament to that is the fact that the USGA has recognized the level of play, and last year awarded this champion an exemption into the U.S. Women’s Open.”

A USGA review of the level of play in both the Girls’ Junior and the Junior Amateur Championship two years ago led them to raise the maximum age from 17 to 18, and also to raise the bar for the required handicap. Prior to 2017 the requirement for the Girls’ Junior was -18.4; it was slashed nearly in half to the current -9.4. In 2017 no player that advanced to the championship was above a 6.0.

For a taste of the level of competitor who will be playing in this tournament, Concord’s Yealimi Noh, 16, a member of the Junior Tour of Northern California who qualified for the championship with a 5-under 67 on the par-72 course at The Reserve at Spanos Park, in Stockton, carries a +4 handicap.

Play begins July 16, with rounds of stroke play on the 16th and 17th to trim the field down to 64 players. Single-elimination match play at 18 holes will cut the field down to an eventual two finalists squaring off for the championship, which will be decided by a 36-hole match on 21 July.

Admission to the tournament is free for spectators.