Top amateur golf moments of 2018, No. 6: The next big thing?
Yealimi Noh (Photo illustration)
At AmateurGolf.com, we admit to loving the amateur sector of this game for the stories, the depth of the players, the remarkable courses, the history of the tournaments and the sheer love of the game displayed by amateur golfers. As 2018 comes to a close, we’ve gathered the year’s best stories for a countdown to the end of the season. Be sure to come back each day to relive the moments that made amateur golf great this year.
Click here to see the whole list as it is revealed
A solid month of the amateur golf season belonged to 17-year-old
Yealimi Noh. For weeks, she seemed unstoppable, and at the end of the summer, it wasn’t all that surprising to hear her say she would be looking past college golf and into turning pro in the near future.
Noh logged victories in consecutive weeks at the Girls’ Junior PGA Championship (where she was 24 under for 72 holes), the U.S. Girls’ Junior (where she had to play 49 holes on the final day when NorCal fog chopped up the early-week championship schedule) and the Canadian Women’s Amateur (where some of the nation’s top college players were at her heels).
Related: Yealimi Noh Goes 24 Under(!) to win the Girls Junior PGA
Related: Noh ends marathon day as U.S. Girls' Junior champion
Related: Noh's Winning Streak Continues at the Canadian Women's Am
The Concord, Calif., native also won the California Girls Junior at the end of June for a second time. She was a wire-to-wire winner at the Joanne Winter Silver Belle in December. Clearly, Noh found something in her game over the past few months that clicked.
“So Junior PGA, I was at the peak of my game, I was playing really well and I was really confident in my game,” Noh said at the end of the summer. “I was hitting it well, I think the main thing was I was putting it really well, making everything inside 15 feet, and same thing with the U.S. Junior.”
Other players noticed Noh’s streak, too, and felt the heat when they drew Noh in match-play events. Ultimately, Georgia senior Bailey Tardy ended Noh’s spectacular summer run in a dramatic 23-hole match in the second round of U.S. Women's Amateur match play.
“I knew it was going to be a good match,” Tardy said of a showdown that demanded precision from every aspect of her game to get the better of Noh.
AmateurGolf.com caught up with Noh in September to hear what she had to say about that magical summer amateur run and how it sets her up for an upcoming pro career.
ABOUT THE U.S. Girls' Junior Amateur
The Girls Junior Amateur is one of 14
national
championships conducted by the USGA.
The
event is open to female golfers who have
not
reached their 19th birthday prior to the
close
of competition and whose USGA Handicap
Index does not exceed 9.4. 36 hole
stroke
play qualifying from which 64 players
advance
to match play. Regional qualifying held at
sites
around the United States.
View Complete Tournament Information