Three emerging sa国际传媒 golfers will be among the seven total on the Canadian boys’ and girls’ teams teeing off this morning at Royal Colwood in an attempt to make it across the Pacific to the 2022 Toyota Junior World Cup at the Hakusan Village Club in Tsu City, Mie Prefecture, Japan.
Among those who have played in the Junior World Cup are the heady likes of Justin Rose, Henrik Stenson, Jon Rahm, Hideki Matsuyama and Camilo Villegas.
The three-round regional qualifier at Royal Colwood begins today and features sa国际传媒, Mexico, Guatemala and Puerto Rico on the boys’ side and sa国际传媒 and Mexico on the girls’ side.
The host nation will be represented by junior national team players. They are Cooper Humphreys of Kelowna, J.P Parr of St-Célestin, Que., Ethan Wilson of St. Albert, Alta., and Felix Bouchard of Otterburn Park, Que., on the Canadian men’s squad and Michelle Liu of Vancouver, Yeji Kwon of Port Coquitlam and Nicole Gal of Oakville, Ont., on the girls’ team.
The 15-year-old Lui has had good results on the Island, including becoming the youngest player to win the sa国际传媒 Amateur Women’s championship at Campbell River Golf and Country Club when she was 13. The year before, Liu tied for 12th in becoming the youngest player to compete in the CP Canadian Women’s Open at age 12, breaking the record of current LPGA player Brooke Henderson, who was 14 when she made her debut.
Kwon, 16, golfs out of Swaneset and won the 2020 Alberta Women’s Amateur Open championship and last year won the World Stars of Junior Golf and FCG San Diego Junior Amateur championships.
Canadian boys’ team member Humphreys, 16, plays out of Predator Ridge in the Okanagan and is an NCAA Div. 1 commit to the Oregon State Beavers of the Pac-12.
The junior national team training centre is located on Bear Mountain, so the Canadian players don’t have far to roll down into Royal Colwood for the 54-hole stroke play Junior World Cup qualifier, which runs through Thursday, with tee-offs starting at 8 a.m.
The boys’ division consists of four golfers per national team with the lowest three scores per round counting. The team with the lowest combined score after the three rounds will qualify for the 2022 Junior World Cup.
The girls’ division is comprised of three golfers per team with the lowest two counting per round. The team with the lowest combined total after the third round will qualify for the World Cup.
The Canadian girls’ team tied for 3rd and the Canadian boys’ team placed 6th in the 2019 World Junior Cup, with the 2020 and 2021 tournaments cancelled due to the pandemic.
The boys’ World Cup was inaugurated in 1992 with South Africa the defending champion from 2019. The U.S. has won nine it times, Japan four, England and Norway three times each and South Africa twice. Also with boys’ championships are Australia, Sweden, South Korea, Venezuela, Denmark and Argentina. sa国际传媒 has five medals with one silver and four bronze.
Nolan Thoroughgood of Royal Colwood was a member of the Canadian team in the 2018 Junior World Cup, which came out of the regional qualifier held that year on Bear Mountain. Other Canadians to have played in the Junior World Cup for sa国际传媒 include Jeevan Sihota of Gorge Vale and Corey Conners, who tied for sixth at the Masters on Sunday.
The first girls’ Junior World Cup was in 2014 with Japan winning four times and the U.S. once.
