Champion Spotlight: Byram Ott Wins Boys 14- 15 at the HJGT Myrtle Beach Summer Junior Open
by Keith Bach · PGA Member, President and Director of Instruction JPGA (Also called JRPGA)
JPGA’s Byram Ott went wire to wire at the Hurricane Junior Golf Tour’s Myrtle Beach Summer Junior Open, closing out the Boys 14-15 division at Tradition Golf Club with the win, and he wasn’t the only JPGA player who had a strong week in Pawleys Island. When the final scores were posted, five of the twelve golfers who completed the division were JPGA players, a showing that stretched from the top of the leaderboard all the way down the board.
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A Win at the Top
Ott opened with a 76 in round one, good enough to sit near the top of the field heading into day two, then backed it up with an 80 in tougher conditions to finish at 156, or +12 for the tournament. It was enough to win outright by four strokes over a tie for second between Jack Bell and Enoch French, who each finished at +16. For a division where scores stretched from +12 all the way past +60, a four-shot cushion is a comfortable margin, and it made Ott’s the only name at the top of the board without a tie next to it. It’s his latest win of the summer and a strong result in a field that included players from as far away as New York, North Carolina, and Georgia.
JPGA Fills Out the Leaderboard
The win came inside a deep JPGA showing in the Boys 14-15 division:
- Byram Ott, Oklahoma City, OK, 1st, +12 (156, rounds of 76-80)
- Reed Neumark, Greenwich, CT, 6th, +28 (172, rounds of 87-85)
- Liam Minnich, Greenwich, CT, 8th, +40 (184, rounds of 96-88)
- Charlie Schwarz, Greenwich, CT, 11th, +53 (197, rounds of 104-93)
- Jake Spooner, Greenwich, CT, 12th, +61 (205, rounds of 101-104)
Neumark’s 6th place finish put him just outside the top five, with a second round 85 that pulled him up the board after an opening 87. Minnich’s 8th place finish followed a similar shape, an 88 in round two after a 96 to start, the kind of improvement from day one to day two that showed up across most of the JPGA group. Schwarz cut eleven strokes off his opening round to card a 93 in round two, while Spooner rounded out the group at 12th.
Add it up and the five JPGA golfers averaged a finish of roughly 7.6th place in a 12 man division. Three of the five, Neumark, Minnich, and Schwarz, actually lowered their score on day two, a sign of golfers adjusting mid-tournament rather than just hanging on. That’s a win, a top 6, and a top 8 finish among the group, the kind of across-the-board showing that says more about a program than any single trophy does.
Two Rounds at Tradition
Tradition Golf Club played to a par 72 across both rounds, 6,726 yards on day one and 6,755 on day two, a tough enough test that Ott’s opening 76 was the only round under 80 posted by anyone in the entire division. That cushion held up through a second round where scores across the board climbed. The rest of the JPGA contingent ground out two full rounds of competitive tournament golf against a regional field that included players from eight different states, exactly the kind of setting where a deep bench, not just a single low round, ends up mattering.
Looking Ahead
Congratulations to Byram Ott on the win, and to every JPGA player who competed in Myrtle Beach this week. The group will be back in action as the HJGT schedule continues through the rest of the summer.
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