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By Ben Walls
WILLIAMSBURG–After the first day of play at the 53rd VSGA Junior Girls’ Championship, Chesapeake’s Paris Fieldings shot 4-under-par 67 and leads the championship field at Williamsburg National Golf Club Wednesday.
“I’m trying to stay positive as much as possible,” Fieldings said after her round. “I’m not here to say, ‘oh yeah, I expected that to happen.’ I know what I’m capable of doing.”
Birdieing five on the back nine, Fieldings found herself in a comfortable spot for the final round on Thursday, adding that she will have to stay consistent but still improve her short game to be the next VSGA Junior Girls’ Champion.
Also quoting her performance on the back nine at the club’s Jamestown course as surprising Wednesday, Fieldings said her nerves increased after bogeying the first hole but added that she “didn’t do anything different–just kept on setting a good pace and hitting greens.”
Sharing the 11:29 a.m. tee time with Fieldings and Elsie MacCleery, Lillian McDermott also had an impressive back nine–she birdied the last three holes to surge to second place, ultimately shooting 3-under par 68.
“I told myself I need to stand the same ground as my peers, especially my groupmates,” McDermott said. “They pushed me a lot.”
According to McDermott, what made the difference in her Wednesday round was trusting herself and changing a personal habit in her previous rounds–reinventing her swing mid-round.
“Today I really feel like I came out and I was true to myself,” McDermott said. “Committing 100% to every shot I hit–that was my goal today.”
After play Wednesday, Fieldings leads the championship and the 16-and-over divisions, McDermott leads the 15-and-under division and Macie Rasmussen leads the intermediate division with one-under par 70.
Notes:
- New for the 53rd VSGA Junior Girls’ Championship is the addition of an intermediate division welcoming golfers aged 13 and younger.
- Rasmussen hit a hole-in-one during her practice round Tuesday on the Jamestown course’s fifth hole. She had previously hit a hole-in-one on Bow Creek Golf Course’s tenth hole in April 2022.
- Posting a two-day aggregate 1-under par 143, Rasmussen won her division at the U.S. Kids Golf’s Red, White & Blue Invitational on July 3.
- Lilly Hall, tied for 17th, from Yorktown has played the second most 18-hole Youth on Course rounds in Virginia with 36 since March 2021. Youth on Course allows junior golfers to play rounds at 1,700 participating courses in 38 states for $5 or less. Learn more at https://vsga.org/youthoncourse/
- The 52nd VSGA Junior Girls’ Champion Addie Doroh from Charlottesville is tied for 8th at two-over par 73.
Walls is a P.J. Boatwright intern with the VSGA.