Nine birdies in each of his previous two rounds in the 49th Junior PGA Championships put Charlie Woods in contention for a U.S. Junior Ryder Cup spot. But just an ordinary round on Friday knocked him down the board on the final day.
Woods, 16, managed only two birdies and suffered a double bogey on the Birck Boilermaker Golf Complex’s Ackerman-Allen Course in West Lafayette, Ind., to shoot three-over-par 74 to finish tied for ninth place at nine under par. He was 10 shots behind winner Lunden Esterline (71).
With back-to-back 66s in the second and third rounds, Woods, the son of Tiger Woods, entered the final round tied for second, and he had the opportunity to secure an automatic spot on the American Junior Ryder Cup team if he finished first or second.
Woods is a rising junior at the Benjamin School in Palm Beach, Fla. Heading into the Junior PGA, he was ranked 20th among all boys in the Rolex AJGA Rankings, based on the results from four events.
The boys winner, Esterline, who hails from from Andover, Kansas, took a seven-shot lead into the final round on the strength of shooting 62 on Wednesday to tie the course record. He was ranked 46th in the AJGA heading into the week.
In the Girls Division, Californian Asterisk Talley shot a final-round 71 to finish at 12 under and win by one stroke over Zoe Cusack (70). Talley, 16, was the No. 14-ranked player in the World Amateur Golf Rankings going into the PGA Junior, and No. 2 in the AJGA Rankings. She was the runner-up in this year’s Augusta National Women’s Amateur.
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
