In our professional opinion, there are two options for choosing junior golf tournaments that will help your junior golfer develop into their potential.

The first type of junior golf tournament we would recommend is on the local level. For Houston Junior Golf, that would be junior golf tours like the Houston Golf Association, The Legends Junior Tour, or The South Texas PGA Tour. These tours offer a platform for your child to get the experience they need on great golf courses and competing against solid competition. The cost of these tournaments are low compared to the Texas Junior Golf Tour or American Junior Golf Association.

After junior golfers test their abilities in the tournaments listed above, the parents should then start researching opportunities through the the American Junior Golf Association (AJGA). The AJGA is the best platform for a junior golfer to gain recognition to college golf coaches. There are other ways to get noticed by college golf coaches, but the AJGA is the best organization to do so. When diving into the AJGA, they offer a number of lower level tournaments for your child to gain “performance stars” and earn their way into the “open events”.

The AJGA tournament “chain of command” is described below:

1. Start with the Preseason Events (For junior golfers that have not yet played AJGA). This gives your child a better opportunity to earn performance stars against less competition.

2. Junior All-Star Events. These are junior golf tournaments for 13-15 year olds. This also offers less competition with the opportunity to earn performance stars.

3. Open Qualifiers. These are open to anyone. The AJGA now offers the option to “opt out” if you qualify and save the exemption for a future AJGA event. I would recommend playing as many as you can to earn exemptions.

4. Local and regional organization tournaments. Junior Golf Tournaments like the HGA, Legends Tour, and STPGA offer performance stars in their tournaments. This is a good way to build up your AJGA ranking without spending a fortune.

5. Open Events. These are the main events. Think of them as the PGA Tour events for junior golfers. This is your goal to get into through the performance stars you have earned.

6. AJGA Majors. Think of these as The Masters of Junior golf tournaments. Once you have earned your way into “open events” you play well, then you gain exemptions into these tournaments. The junior golf tournaments will have dozens of college golf coaches in attendance.

If you do not have the resources to play in the AJGA, there is still hope for you! You will need to market yourself to college coaches. Using tournaments on the local level offer you cost effective ways to get tournament experience and scores to put on a resume. It is then all about how you market yourself to college golf coaches!

If you need more help email me!

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While growing up in the 90’s and early 2000’s there was not many options when it came to national junior golf tournaments. The AJGA junior golf tour ran the national junior golf tournament scene in our country. The best of the best played in these events and it took a great resume or qualifying score just to get into the field.

Nowadays it seems the AJGA golf schedule has become a bit watered down. There is more than 3 tournaments per week and a division for nearly every junior golfer. This makes it hard for the college golf coach that once had a one stop shop with the AJGA, which was like the PGA tour for junior golf. Now we have to do a little more research when scouting out a junior golfer. 10 years ago if you won on an ajga golf tournament, you would be looked at as an elite prospect, now it is similar to winning your regional junior golf tournament

The AJGA golf tournament entry fee can be quite expensive compared to local and regional junior golf tournaments. Local junior golf tournaments can be a much better option for the junior golfer that is trying to build a resume and get low scores on paper. Local tournaments starting coats at merely $40 per event instead of the $275 entry fee required by the AJGA (not to mention their high membership fee). Local events give your junior player to play a familiar course, with less pressure, which enter gives them a better opportunity to shoot a low score. You need to learn how to win on the local level before you can win on the regional and then national level. It’s all about confidence building and providing the proper road to success for your junior golfer.

After all this being said, we believe that the AJGA is the easiest platform to getting recruited to play college golf and receive a college golf scholarship. Parents do not need to get ahead of themselves, because there is a lot of value to playing local and regional tournaments while saving money until your junior golfer is ready for ajga golf tournaments. Junior golfers should play a balance of local, regional, and national junior tournaments in order to navigate the junior golf world and land you a spot to play college golf!

If you need help navigating the performance based entry for AJGA tournaments CONTACT US today and we will gladly help you out!

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