Oakley Mayner And Amy Lee Grab First-Round Lead At B.C. Junior Boys & Girls Championships
By Brad Ziemer, British Columbia Golf
KELOWNA — Oakley Mayner feels right at home at Gallagher’s Canyon Golf Course and it showed in Tuesday’s first round of the B.C. Junior Boys Championship.
The 17-year-old has played Gallagher’s more times than he can count the past few years and feels like his intimate knowledge of the course gives him an edge over many of his fellow competitors.
Mayner certainly put it to good use in the first round when he fired a four-under 68 to take a one-shot lead.
“I have been playing here for as long as I can remember,” said Mayner, who just finished Grade 11 at Kelowna Secondary. “I definitely feel like I have an advantage over the guys who haven’t played here. I know it pretty good. I have to use that to my advantage.
“Just knowing where to hit it off the tees here is important because there are some tee shots where you can’t see where the ball is going to go and where the hole is. So just knowing where to land those kinds of shots is big.”
In addition to knowing the course well, Mayner has also been playing great of late. In the past month or so, he has fired two rounds of 62 — one in a high school competition at the Okanagan Golf Club’s Bear course and the other at Kelowna Country Club.
Mayner’s first round was relatively stress-free. He had five birdies and just one bogey that came on the par 5 12th hole when he lipped out a two-foot putt for par. “I rebounded after that and made a couple of birdies,” he said. “I had a couple of big putts that I made. I had a couple of birdie putts inside five feet that I didn’t make. I am not going to worry about that. I made the putts I had to make.”
Mayner leads Surrey’s Joshua Ince by one shot. Ince’s 69 included a five-under 31 on the front nine. “Then I started thinking about my score on the back nine rather than going through my process,” Ince said with a smile. “It’s something I have been working on this year.”
Ince’s back nine troubles began on the 10th tee. “I hit it pretty far right,” he said. “I will leave it at that.” Ince went on to make a double-bogey after that errant tee shot. “I almost saved bogey,” he said. “That kind of thing happens to everyone at some point.”
Two players who have already won big events this year, Nanaimo’s Matthew Wilson and Austin Krahn of Christina Lake, are tied for third after each shooting 70. Krahn won his second straight B.C. Indigenous Championship this spring at University Golf Club in Vancouver, while Wilson won the NextGen Pacific Championship in May at Summerland Golf Club.
Whistler’s James Lee, who won the last two B.C. Junior Boys Championships, is not competing at Gallagher’s. But Langley’s Amy Lee, who won last year’s B.C. Junior Girls Championship at Prince George Golf & Curling Club, is back to defend her title and is off to a fine start.
Lee fired a two-under 71 (Gallagher’s is set up as a par 73 for the girls) and has a three-shot lead heading into Wednesday’s second round. She rebounded nicely after a sluggish start to her round. The 16-year-old Lee was a two-over par through her first four holes after starting her round on Gallagher’s challenging back nine.
“The first few holes I couldn’t hit a fairway or a green,” she said. “I was having to chip my way out of trouble. But I made my first birdie on No. 16 (her seventh hole of the day) and I started to get some momentum.”
Lee, who won last month’s B.C. Women’s Amateur at Balfour Golf Course, almost made a hole-in-one on the par 3 third hole when her eight-iron from 145 yards bounced off the pin. “This course demands some precise shots,” Lee said. “If you hit in the wrong spots, it becomes really difficult.”
Victoria’s Chelsea Truong and Lilian Zhao of Port Moody share second place after both fired one-over 74s. Surrey’s Ha Young Chang is fourth after her 75. A total of 126 boys and 29 girls are playing this week. The field will be cut in half following Wednesday’s second round.
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CHIP SHOTS: Jaden August of Pitt Meadows finished his first round in style, holing a gap wedge from 125 yards for an eagle on the par 4 18th hole. August shot a one-under 71. . .UBC-Okanagan golf coach Clay Stothers took a tee shot to the back as he was walking the par 5 10th hole during the first round. “Just missed my spine,” Stothers said. “I didn’t see it coming.” It took Stothers about 15 minutes to recover but he later said he was okay.