Wake Forest 12-year-old puts the ‘junior’ in U.S. Junior Amateur
Fifty-four teenaged golfers teed off on a steamy June morning at Greenville’s Ironwood Golf & Country Club. By late afternoon, there were only a few left with a chance to play for a national title. The four qualifiers for the U.S. Junior Amateur stood shoulder-to-shoulder for a photo, or at least three of them did.
At the end of the line, the top of 12-year-old Davis Wotnosky’s cap only came up to the chins of his once and future competitors, all several years older.
While college coaches in logo polos gathered in the parking lot afterward to go over their notes from a day spent being visible to potential recruits, Wotnosky has a while to wait. He’s going into seventh grade as a home-schooler in Wake Forest.
Wotnosky is the youngest golfer in the 264-player Junior Amateur at the Country Club of North Carolina in Pinehurst this week, almost seven years younger than the oldest competitors. He’s the second-youngest ever to qualify for the tournament and 16 months younger than anybody else in the biggest junior golf event of the summer.
“I’ve had my eyes on it since whenever it came out,” Wotnosky said. “I told my mom two years ago, when it’s at CCNC, I want to play in it somehow.”
Wotnosky had a 2-over-par 74 on CCNC’s Dogwood course in the first round of stroke play Monday. The tournament concludes Saturday.
The Junior Amateur — the U.S. junior, as the kids call it — doesn’t stand alone like it once did before the explosion of junior golf, but it’s still the big stage where future stars often reveal themselves to the world.
That includes some of the biggest names in the sport: Tiger Woods won it three years in a row, Jordan Spieth in 2009 and 2011, Scottie Scheffler in 2013, Will Zalatoris in 2014. Justin Thomas was a finalist in 2010. Some of those names have come out of the Triangle. Webb Simpson, the honorary chairman of this year’s tournament, was a quarterfinalist in 2003. Three years ago, Akshay Bhatia was a finalist.
Wotnosky’s not alone this year, either: Raleigh’s Smith Summerlin is only 14; his caddie at his qualifier was another rising Triangle star, ACC freshman of the year Peter Fountain. Summerlin is the third-youngest player in the Junior Amateur field. Cary’s Hampton Roberts is 16. Two other players from the Triangle also qualified: Holly Spring’s Owen Kose and Raleigh’s William Webb.
The precocious Wotnosky may be too young to be expected to challenge for the title against the top junior golfers over two rounds of stroke play and six rounds of match play this week on CCNC’s Dogwood and Cardinal courses, but he qualified. He’s got a chance. Playing against his peers, he won the North Carolina Junior Boys 14-and-Under championship in Asheboro last month.
He is also surrounded by role models, being young enough that he looks up to the 19-year-old Bhatia, the Wake Forest teen who skipped college and is one of the youngest players on tour, as an elder. Bhatia is one of several touring pros who play out of Wakefield Plantation, where Wotnosky and his low-handicap family play.
Wotnosky’s older brother Grayson is a rising sophomore at Virginia and partnered with Bhatia at the 2018 U.S. Amateur Four-Ball. Wotnosky’s older sister Haeley played at Virginia and qualified for three U.S. Girls Juniors and the 2019 U.S. Women’s Amateur. She caddied for Davis at the Greenville qualifier and is on his bag again this week.
It’s too early to call Wotnosky the future of Triangle golf, but the early returns are promising that he could be the latest in an increasingly long list of pros to sprout from the Triangle, with Simpson at the top of a generation that includes Chesson Hadley, Brendon Todd, Doc Redman, Grayson Murray, Bhatia and others.
“It’s a long time away,” Wotnosky said. “I’m 12 right now. I’ve got a couple years. I’ve always had the goal of going professional. I believe i can do it. This is just another step in that direction. My brother and sister and Akshay have really helped me in that belief that I can do it and getting to the point where I believe and I have the ability to do it.”
North Carolinians at the U.S. Junior Amateur
Ryan Curran, Waxhaw
Holland Giles, Pinehurst
Owen Kose, Holly Springs
Ethan Paschal, Fayetteville
Hampton Roberts, Cary
Silhan Sandhu, Pinehurst
Eli Schmidly, Charlotte
Smith Summerlin, Raleigh
Caleb Surratt, Indian Trail
Wilson Thrift, Charlotte
Spencer Turtz, Charlotte
Jackson Van Paris, Pinehurst
William Webb, Raleigh
Maddox Whittington, Lenoir
Davis Wotnosky, Wake Forest
