In the Girl’s Championship Flight, things are much closer as Casie Cathrea (Livermore), Ashley Noda (Roseville) and Christine Uhalde (Modesto) all shot 78 to share the lead. Alicia Binneboese (Carmel Valley) was one stroke back at 79.

Troy Maxoutopolis from Pleasanton leads the Boys First Flight by five stroke with a fine 80. Eamonn Coughlin, Fair Oaks is second at 85 and Tim Lamascus of Visalia is one more stroke back.

The Girls First Flight features a two-way tie between Monterey’s Chloe Corriveau and Amy Huang from Fremont at 83.

The tournament concludes tomorrow with a 1PM shotgun.

Full results.

As a result, a proposal was made to the NCGA’s Tournament Committee March 3, 2010 and has been approved.  The following procedure will be used to select the field for any tournament which fills in the first 24 hours after general registration opens.  Signups for all tournaments will start with this new procedure in place beginning with the tournament at Hunter Ranch which opens next Monday for general registration.

The field will be filled as follows:

1) All players who took advantage of pre-registration will be automatically entered in the field.  At the time that the pre-registration period ends, the remaining spots in the field will be divided in half.  50% will be available on a first-come/first-serve basis.  The remainder will be chosen on a random selection basis.  For example, if the total field was 112 and 9 players pre-registered, 103 spots would be available.  52 spots would be first-come/first-serve, while 51 would be in the random pool.  The number of players who will get in via first-come/first-serve will be listed in the tournament description shortly after 8 PM on Sunday.  Players who have pre-registration rights, but do not enter until General Registration opens will have no special rights and will be processed as any other entry.

2) The first-come/first-serve spots will be filled starting at 8AM and these players will be immediately notified that they are in the field.

3) All entries beyond those spots will be placed on the waiting list until 8AM the following morning.

4) If, at that point, there are not enough players to fill the field, all those players will be placed into the tournament and notified of that fact.  The tournament will then be strictly first-come/first-serve.

5) If more entries have been received than can be accommodated, the remaining spots will be filled through a series of random draws as follows.

6) First we will attempt to guarantee the following minimum flight sizes:

If enough entrants have been received to fill the flights to these levels, random drawings within the list of players in the specific flight will be held to fill the flight to that level.  For example, if the combination of pre-registration and first-come/first-serve had resulted in 29 players in the Boys Championship Flight, three boys will be randomly selected from the list of those on the wait list in the Boys Championship Flight to bring it to 32. 

If a flight does not have enough players to meet these minimums, all players who would be in that flight will be added immediately and enough spots will be reserved to bring the specific flight to an even number of players (divisible by 4).  For example, if only 15 girls had entered the Championship Flight, they would all be entered and one more spot would remain available for a girl to enter that flight.  The Girls Championship Flight would then only have a maximum of 16 players for that tournament.

Otherwise, there will continue to be no maximum on the number of players in a particular flight.

7) Once these minimum numbers have been met, the remaining spots will be selected by random drawing until there are 9 spots left.  The random drawing will take place across all flights which have at least 4 players on the waiting list.  Once a flight has three or fewer players left on the list, these players will be kept on the waiting list to replace any withdrawals.

8) When 9 spots remain, we will conduct random drawings within specific flights to ensure that each flight has an even group of players (divisible by four).  For example, if the Boys High Handicap Flight has 14 players in the field, two more players from that flight will be randomly selected to bring it to 16.

9) Occasionally we are able to balance the field in step 8 and still have 4 or 8 spots available.  If that is the case, a player will be randomly selected.  Three more players will be randomly selected from the same flight to create another group.  This would be repeated if 8 spots were available.

We feel this selection process will give all those who enter in the first 24 hours a chance to get into the field.  Those who can access their computers at 8 AM will still have the opportunity to get in first, but others who unable to do so will have a chance to play. 

The order of entry for the players still on the wait list will be based on time of entry and players will move in based on openings within their flight as before.

http://www.ncgajuniors.org

http://www.ncgajuniortour.org

These will take you to our recently redesigned website just as clicking on the Junior menu item on our homepage (http://www.ncga.org).

Entry deadline is May 7.  Applications and other information can be found at http://www.westernjunior.com.

For those of you who weren’t able to get in, please be aware that we are looking into other ways to select the field.  We want to be fair and to make sure we have a good mix of players.  I can’t guarantee that there will be changes, but if we can come up with something that seems more equitable we will do it.

If you have any ideas on possible ways to handle registration, or if you like it as it is, please feel free to e-mail me at jborght@ncga.org.

Thank you, 

John Vander Borght
Manager, NCGA Junior Tour

You can read more about this award at http://www.ncga.org/_pdf/nelson.pdf

To nominate a junior for this award go to http://www.scdallas.org/byronnelson/byron-nelson/junior-golf-awards/ and click on Submit a Nominee

Casie Cathrea from Livermore has been featured in an article on Golfweek magazine’s website.  Casie has won three NCGA Junior Tour events in the past two years along with winning the California Women’s Amateur Championship last November.

Qualifiers for the US Junior will be held at the following sites and times:

Yolo Fliers Club – Woodland - June 21
San Joaquin Country Club – Fresno – June 21
Stanford Golf Club – Palo Alto – June 28

Qualifiers for the US Girl’s Junior will be held at the following sites and times:

Mira Vista Golf and Country Club – El Cerrito – June 14
Merced Country Club – Merced – June 21

Therefore, if you are using a smart phone such as an iPhone, it can not have an application such as a compass or clinometer (gradient measurement) installed on it, even if you do not use it.  Since the newer iPhone 3GS  has a compass built in, it may not be used as a distance measuring device.  The older iPhone 3G does not have the compass pre-installed and can be used as long as you have not installed any non-conforming applications.

The penalty for using a non-conforming device is disqualification.  Please be very careful about this.