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Both Johnson and Stollmeyer missed the cut in the LAAC.

1/13/2017

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Barbados Captain James Johnson (left) missed the cut by the smallest margin, 1 shot and sadly Scott Stollmeyer (right) is also out of the LAAC tournament after 2 rounds of golf.

January 13, 2017

PANAMA CITY, PANAMA – Barbados James Johnson and Scott Stollmeyer didn't make it to the final weekend play in the third Latin America Amateur Championship at par-70 Club de Golf de Panama.

Stollmeyer was struggling with his game on the front nine, shooting 7 over par but managed to turn his game to the better with a more solid back nine, shooting just 2 over par.

Johnson who started from the 10th tee recorded a double bogie on his second hole but gained a shot immediately after with a birdie. "I knew I was still in for a chance to make the cut", say Johnson. "I figured 8 to 9 over par could be the cut line".
Johnson being slightly off his best on the week was grinding his way through the course. With 4 holes to go and 9 over he had a good chance to make the cut but an unfortunate bogie on his 17th hole costed him. It was close though as the cut line was just about to move to 10 over late in the afternoon when the final groups came in. "It's never fun to loose out on weekend play by just one shot", say Johnson. "My game was just not there but I thought by grinding and staying in there I might make it to the weekend anyway".

Barbados Score cards (Johnson started on hole 10)
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​COSTA RICA’S ORTIZ, 48, LEADS LAAC AFTER 36 HOLES

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Alvaro E. Ortiz, 48, the 25-time national champion of Costa Rica, posted an early 4-under-par round of 66 on Friday, then watched as much of the field raced past him in the other direction to take a one-stroke lead into Round 3 of the 3rd Latin America Amateur Championship at Club de Golf de Panama.

Ortiz shared the day’s low score with Andres Gallegos, 21, of Argentina, who was in the same 7:26 a.m. grouping. Gallegos is in a five-way tie for fourth place that includes the first-round leader, Julian Perico, of Peru, who followed up an LAAC-record round of 64 on Thursday with a roller-coaster 75. Herik Machado, of Brazil, and Alejandro Villavicencio, of Guatemala, share second place, with Machado shooting a second-round 67 and Villavicencio following up his opening 65 with a 3-over 73.

For the third consecutive year, Ortiz is the oldest player to make the 36-hole cut, with his best finish a tie for 27th in the inaugural LAAC at Pilar Golf in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Perico, 17, was the youngest player in the 108-player starting field. A total of 52 players made the 36-hole cut, which came at 9-over-par 149 on the par-70 course, which played at 6,875 yards in Round 2.

“I played very smart,” said Ortiz, who played college golf at Texas Wesleyan University and works in the real-estate industry. “I’m old enough to know where my weaknesses are and where my strengths are. I only made one mistake, a three-putt on No. 9, so I’m very happy.”

Ortiz expects the challenge to ramp up on the weekend, as the field vies to become the third LAAC champion and earn the opportunity to play in the 2017 Masters Tournament, as well as The Amateur Championship and the U.S. Amateur. The winner and runner(s)-up of the event, founded by the Masters, The R&A and the United States Golf Association, also earn entry into final qualifying for the U.S. Open and The Open Championship.

“The setup the first two days was not the potentially long course that it can be,” said Ortiz, who has served as a mentor to Paul Chaplet, a fellow Costa Rican who won the 2016 LAAC at Casa de Campo in the Dominican Republic. “I’m sure tomorrow is going to be very different and I’m going to be hitting long irons and even hybrids into greens, and I’m going to be ready for that.”

Perico posted the low round of his life on Thursday, a 64 that included an LAAC-record nine holes of 29. He made three birdies on Friday, but also made three double bogeys and a pair of bogeys as he experienced the television spotlight for the first time.
“It was fun, because all the cameras were there, but I was a bit nervous during the round,” said Perico, who attends Bishops Gate Golf Academy in Howey-in-the-Hills, Fla. “I was 7 under for the tournament [after birdieing the fifth hole], and I really felt that I was cruising down the course. Suddenly I made a double on 7, and everything just went the other way. It was really an up‑and‑down round, emotionally more than golf‑wise.”

Still, Perico will play in the third-to-last grouping on Saturday, starting at 9:43 a.m. with Raul Pereda, of Mexico, who is at even-par 140, and Jose Luis Montano, of Bolivia, another of the players at 1-under 139. The second-to-last grouping will include Gallegos, Nicolas Echavarria, of Colombia, and Toto Gana, of Chile, all at 1-under 139. Ortiz, Villavicencio and Machado will start at 10:05 a.m. in the final grouping. The top eight players on the leader board represent eight nations.

Joaquin Niemann, the top-ranked player in the field at No. 5 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking™, is in a tie for 15th place at 6 over par after rounds of 72-70, while defending champion Chaplet is tied for 28th at 6-over 146. Inaugural champion Matias Dominguez, of Chile, and Alejandro Tosti, of Argentina, who was runner-up in 2015 and tied for third last year, both stand at 8-over 148, one stroke inside the cut line.

Perico, who iced the middle finger on his right hand after injuring it on his incoming nine, belied his youth as he discussed his performance.

“Now I know what it feels like to play on TV and I know what to do to not make it distract me,” he said. “I made a lot of doubles today, but still, 5‑over with three doubles, it could have been worse. But it could have been way better also.”
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Spoken like a golfer who has accepted the challenge of the LAAC.
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Not the best start for the Bajan duo in round 1 of LAAC.

1/13/2017

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January 12, 2017

PANAMA CITY, PANAMA – Barbados James Johnson and Scott Stollmeyer didn't get the best start in Round 1 of the third Latin America Amateur Championship at par-70 Club de Golf de Panama, which played to 6,878 yards in the opening round.

Stollmeyer was struggling from start to end on the Championship course mostly scoring bogies and ending up with 15 over par on the par 70 course. An inspiring finish with birdie, par, par can hopefully bring some momentum into today 2nd round.

Johnson had a nightmare start posting bogie and triple bogie on the first two holes but displayed good character and mental strength by digging in and grinding out a respectable 6 over par at the end. Johnson is now looking to improve in todays 2nd round. "My target is to bring a solid game out on the course and make the cut", say Johnson. "It's not going to be easy but I'll give it my best".

Barbados Score cards (Stollmeyer started on hole 10)
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​Peruvian Perico, 17, seizes the day in round one of LAAC.


Julian Perico, 17, of Peru, picked a fortuitous day to shoot his career-low round, while Miguel Ordonez of the host country delivered an emotional birthday present to his daughter on Thursday in Round 1 of the third Latin America Amateur Championship at par-70 Club de Golf de Panama, which played to 6,878 yards in the opening round.

Perico, the youngest player in the field, broke the LAAC 18-hole scoring record with a 6-under-par 64, which included a 29 on his first nine holes of the day, also a championship record. Perico holds a one-stroke lead over Alejandro Villavicencio, 37, a reinstated amateur who owns a steakhouse in his native Guatemala.

Ordonez, 33, joined fellow Panamanian Jose Guillermo Lewis as the first players to hit tee shots in the championship, the first LAAC to be held in Central America. Ordonez started on the 10th hole and made the turn in 1 over par before reeling off five birdies on his incoming nine. He bogeyed his final hole, the 479-yard, par-4 ninth, but was thrilled to open with a 3-under 67, three strokes back of Perico, in a three-way tie for third place with Nicolas Echavarria, of Colombia, and Jose Luis Montano, of Bolivia.

“It’s probably the round I will cherish the most in my life,” said Ordonez, who rushed to compete in the inaugural LAAC in 2015 in Argentina following the birth of his daughter, Aurora, who turned 2 on Thursday. “To have her in my thoughts and in my heart, she’s everything to me. Look, I hope to be there on Sunday and have a chance to dream of winning, but this was special.”

Perico’s day was equally special, though he certainly would not have predicted anything of the sort.

“Actually, I was hitting the ball pretty bad on the range, and I was like, I don’t know what will happen today,” said Perico, who attends Bishops Gate Golf Academy in Howey-in-the-Hills, Fla. “On hole No. 10 [his opening hole], I pushed my tee shot and I had to hit this stinger from underneath the trees. I hit it to 7 feet for birdie and I made it. After that, I don’t know what happened. I was hitting the ball perfect, the putts were falling in perfect; it was amazing.”

Perico birdied four consecutive holes (Nos. 12-15) and added a birdie on No. 18, one of just six birdies by the 108-player field on the 454-yard par 4. After making the turn and parring No. 1, Perico’s dream round almost turned to a nightmare after he deliberated over his approach shot on the par-4 second.

“I hit the best 7-iron of my life – 180 yards into the wind, and it flew the green,” said Perico, who was introduced to the game at age 3 and moved to Florida from his native Lima at 14. “I was trying to find my ball and suddenly a girl came up to me with my ball in her hand. She had grabbed it. I laughed a bit, and I got distracted. I called the Rules official and placed it back where it was, but I ended up making a double bogey.”

Somehow, the youngster shook off the incident and birdied his next two holes. He finished with five consecutive pars to post his first-ever round of 6 under. His 64 eclipsed rounds of 65 by Matias Dominguez (2015), Alejandro Tosti (2016) and Echavarria (2016).
Villavicencio, who has represented Guatemala in three World Amateur Team Championships (2000, 2002 and 2016) but is competing in his first LAAC, made eight birdies and three bogeys in matching the championship’s previous low score of 65. He played in the first group of the day off No. 1 with Lewis and Henry Kattan, of Honduras, dropping a shot on the difficult 18th to slip behind Perico.
“I felt nervous, especially being in the first group,” said Villavicencio, who abandoned golf in his late teens to compete in jet-skiing, then returned to the game as a professional until 2010. “But I think anyone who plays competitive golf is going to feel nervous. It’s just a matter of trying to control it and trying to handle it and embracing it.”

Villavicencio played Club de Golf de Panama as a junior and made the first hole-in-one of his career on the par-3 13th here. He also competed twice in the Web.com Tour event that the club has hosted since 2004.

Eight countries are represented among the top nine players on the leader board, with Gaston Bertinotti (Argentina), Santiago Gomez (Colombia), Jeronimo Esteve (Puerto Rico) and Toto Gana (Chile) in a four-way tie for sixth at 2-under 68.
Dominguez, of Chile, winner of the inaugural LAAC in 2015, is in a group of five players at even-par 70. Defending champion Paul Chaplet, of Costa Rica, and 2016 runner-up Jorge Garcia, of Venezuela, played together and shot rounds of 1-over 71, leaving them tied for 18th place, in a group of 12 players.

Ordonez, whose mother, Berta, followed him on his incoming nine, was realistic – but hopeful – about what this championship means to his home country.

“I teed off early, so I don’t think a lot of people were aware of how well I was playing,” said Ordonez, a graduate of the University of North Florida. “But I’m going to be really honest. I don’t think people in the country quite comprehend what this means. If I told you the presidents of FIFA, UEFA and CONMEBOL [South America’s soccer federation] were here, the country would be upside down.
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“We have the three most important institutions in the game here,” said Ordonez of the Masters Tournament, The R&A and the USGA. “I don’t think there’s a better tournament in the world, in the sense of the love that the three institutions pour into it to grow the game. I hope my good round today sheds a little interest, not in me, but in what this means to the country. And hopefully one kid out there sees what I did today, and he can get inspired and hopefully take up the game.”
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The 2017 Latin America Amateur Championship tee off today in Panama.

1/12/2017

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Scott Stollmyer and James Johnson (middle) together with members of the Trinidad & Tobago team during the opening ceremony the third Latin America Amateur Championship in Panama.

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The Latin America Amateur Championship (LAAC) was originally created to become the “Major” event for leading amateurs in the region. After just two editions, this championship, created by the Masters Tournament, The R&A and the United States Golf Association (USGA), continues to inspire amateur golfers throughout Latin America by providing a top-tier platform in which to compete.
Those present at the LAAC at Pilar Golf (Argentina) in 2015 and at Casa de Campo (Dominican Republic) in 2016 witnessed tremendous performances by emerging stars. Witnesses and followers at home watching on television or via the Internet, saw first-hand the thrilling battle between Chile’s Matias Domínguez and Argentina’s Alejandro Tosti, and the accomplishment of Costa Rican teenager Paul Chaplet against the Venezuelan Jorge Garcia.

A third LAAC is now on the horizon, scheduled from January 12-15, 2017, at Club de Golf de Panama. Among the contenders are several top players in the World Amateur Golf Ranking™, including Joaquin Niemann (No. 7, of Chile), Tosti (No. 43), Dominguez (No. 44), Jorge Garcia (No. 48, of Venezuela), Claudio Correa (No. 57, of Chile) and Cristobal del Solar (No. 99, of Chile). These players have tremendous potential, as do Luis Fernando Barco (Peru), Gaston Bertinotti (Argentina), Nicolas Echavarria (Colombia), Santiago Gomez (Colombia), Herik Machado (Brazil), Jose Luis Montano (Bolivia), Alvaro Ortiz (Mexico), Iván Camilo Ramirez (Colombia) and Lucas Rosso (Chile).

This year’s players making up the competitive field use many different playing styles and tactics. Tosti and Echavarria enjoy length off the tee, which often pushes them to be risk-takers. Tosti, the 2015 LAAC runner-up, is having a successful second year at the University of Florida, including a victory at the Tavistock Collegiate Invitational. Echavarria has qualified for Second Stage Q School on the Web.com Tour, as well as the final tournament of the Developmental Series of the PGA TOUR Latinoamérica.
Other players focus on swing technique and course management, excelling with their short games. Niemann has notched six victories in 2016, including the IMG Academy Junior World Championship, and reached the Round of 16 at the U.S. Amateur Championship. The player from Chile was the best amateur at the 111° VISA Open de Argentina and won the Pereyra Iraola Cup. Garcia, who finished second at the 2016 LAAC, has finished in the top 10 of his last two tournaments at the University of Florida, and also tied for seventh at the 2016 World Amateur Team Championship. Ortiz, a graduate of the University of Arkansas who finished third at the 2016 LAAC, has a lot of experience.

Barbados representives Scott Stollmyer and James Johnson are up for the challenge. Both players have participated in the two first LAAC tournaments and gained valuble experince of golf at this higher level than normal. Johnson managed to stay in competition until the last day of play last year coming into the final round as 17th but faded down the leaderboard to a 24th place. Both players have prepered during the last days in Panama and are eager to tee off and take on the challenge.
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The opportunities offered by the LAAC are unprecedented within Latin American golf. Each year, the LAAC champion receives an invitation to compete in the Masters at Augusta National Golf Club, as well as full exemptions into The Amateur Championship, U.S. Amateur Championship and any other USGA amateur championship for which he is eligible. In addition, the winner and the runner(s)-up are exempt into the final stages of qualifying for The 146th Open at Royal Birkdale and sectional qualifying for the U.S. Open Championship at Erin Hills.
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James Johnson and Scott Stollmyer (right) are up against some of the best Amateur Golfers in the world during the LAAC.
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The 2016 BGA Junior golfers programme is concluded

1/10/2017

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Barbados Captain James Johnson (left) and head of the BGA junior programme Denny Foster (right) was handing out awards during a ceremony at the BGC clubhouse.

The Barbados Golf Association recently concluded its 2016 programme for junior golfers with the staging of the 2016 Barbados Junior Championships at the Barbados Golf Club.

National junior players Iz Hustler and Emily Odwin took the top prizes in the championships and will hold the titles until December 2017.
Fifteen year-old Hustler took the overall boys' title with a 36-hole gross of 154 while Odwin  took the girls' equivalent with a two-day gross 168.

Hustler followed up his first day 81 with a one-over-par 73 over the final 18 holes while Odwin shot 82 and 86 and was  followed by fellow national player Alyssa Inniss-Gittens with a gross 177.

It was a tournament which saw the fast improving Oaziah Layne, the early leader in the boy's 14-17 years Division, stumbled on the final day after holding a 3-stroke lead going into the last nine holes.

Hustler won by five stokes over fellow national player Xavier Wiggins , who was second with a gross 159, while  Layne was third on 160.

Among the boys in the 10-13 years age-group, Qinton Heljenek emerged winner with a gross 196 while Nathan Chee-a-Tow was second (200) and Dominic Jordan , third with a gross 201.

Players in the nine and under catergory contested 9 holes and the title was shared by Sunjeet Hariramani and Jason Johnson as both shot 92. Second was Callum Cave (94) while Nicholas Murrell was third with 110.   

Around 20 players contested the 2016 BGA Barbados Junior Championships and awards were presented by senior Barbados captain James Johnson, during a ceremony at the BGC club-house .

The championships followed a series of Order of Merit competitions in 2016 , which form part of the BGA's development programme for juniors, and several of the junior players have been awarded scholarships to continue their training at the Barbados Golf Club in 2017.

​By Bernard Babb

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