• Junior Tour Monterey Championship Recap
• Junior Tour Central Valley Championship Recap
• NCGA Junior Tour Membership Information and Application

Welcome to the Northern California Golf Association Junior Tour website. The NCGA Junior Tour is a new series starting in 2008 that will provide opportunities for juniors to compete in a tournament atmosphere in Northern California. As a member of the NCGA Junior Tour, you will be able to play golf with other junior players of equal ability and move up to higher levels as your game improves. The Tour will initially include 7-8 events, with a goal of expanding in the future.

Because the NCGA Junior Tour is new in 2008, the tournaments that will be held in the spring will be conducted in a different format than those in the future. For this reason, you should read all the information for both the spring and fall carefully.

Part of being an amateur golfer is establishing a handicap. The NCGA feels that this is important for all golfers, regardless of age. Because of this, your membership in the NCGA Junior Tour makes you a member of the NCGA and the NCGA Junior Tour Golf Club. As an NCGA member, you should follow all the rules for posting your scores and establishing a handicap.

By joining the NCGA Junior Tour and the NCGA Junior Tour Golf Club, you will be able to establish a handicap so that you can play in future tournaments. Remember that if you want to play in USGA championships such as the US Junior, US Girls or the US Amateur, you will need to have a valid USGA Handicap Index®. Joining the NCGA Junior Tour will help you establish this handicap.

Spring Series
The tournaments in the spring of 2008 will be open tournaments for all players who have joined the tour. Players in these tournaments will be grouped by age. There will be three age groups for the boys and two for the girls. The age groups for the boys will be 12-13, 14-15 and 16-18. For the girls the groups will be 12-15 and 16-18. In order to give as many players as possible an opportunity to play in some tournaments, you will only be allowed to register in two of the three tournaments in the spring initially. If a tournament is not full at the time that registration closes, players who have expressed an interest in adding a tournament will be contacted.

There will be no online registration for the spring series. You should enter the tournaments at the same time as you send in your tour membership form.

The Spring Series consists of the following events:

Fall Series
Starting in the fall of 2008, players in NCGA Junior Tour tournaments will be grouped by handicap as opposed to age. This is different than most junior golf tours and tournaments. The reason for this is that we feel that it is more fun to compete against players of similar ability than to be grouped with some players just because you are the same age. If you want to compete with the really good players and you work hard at your game so that you can lower your handicap you won’t have to wait until you are a certain age. If you are 16 or 17 and new to the game, you won’t have to go up against players who are capable of shooting scores around par. You will be competing with players who play the game at a similar level.

The boys will play in three divisions: Gold – less than 9.5 USGA Handicap Index®, Silver – between 9.5 and 18.4 and Bronze – 18.5 or higher Index. The girls will have two divisions: Gold – less than 15.5 and Silver 15.5 or higher. The Gold divisions will have two age groups 12-15 and 16-18. The other divisions will not have age groups, but will have net winners as well as gross.

Players who win a particular division will be moved to the next higher division for the remainder of the year. This is intended to reward players whose game might be improving at a rate faster than their handicap can update to reflect their new ability.

Since many of you won’t have handicaps when you join the NCGA Junior Tour, most tournaments will have an open division where all players without handicaps will compete until their handicap is established. If you play in three NCGA Junior Tour tournaments, you will have enough rounds posted to get a temporary handicap index which will move you into the appropriate handicap division. If you post all the rounds you play, your handicap will be established faster and you will find it more fun to play with your friends as well as in competitions.

The overall winner of any NCGA Junior Tour tournament will be the player who shoots the lowest 36-hole gross score.

The overall winner and the first, second and third place finishers in each division or age group (including the open division) will be awarded medals similar to the medals that are awarded at other NCGA tournaments. The top three net finishers in each division with net competitions will be awarded certificates.

If you have already joined the NCGA Junior Tour, you will be able to register online starting July 1. If you haven’t joined by then, you will have to join the tour before registering for the Fall Series tournaments.

The following events are currently scheduled for the Fall Series: