Article by: Rick Pledl

    Hundreds of junior golf tournaments are held in Wisconsin each season, and among them are a handful of key events that every teenage golfer would love to win.

    It’s true, there are no “majors” in junior golf, but this week’s WPGA Junior Championship held at two Milwaukee courses comes close. It is one of those events at the top of any list of “wanna have” junior tournament titles – a win that can put a shine on any college golf resume.

    The sun wasn’t shining Thursday evening when the last putts finally dropped after a long, rain-delayed day of golf, but two players still felt the glow.

Bryson Mercier of Powers, Mich., won the overall boys title with a fine round of 2-under 69 Thursday at Brown Deer Park GC. Mercier shot 73 on Wednesday at Dretzka Park GC to finish at 1-under-par 142, which allowed Mercier to pass first round leader Ty Kretz of Marinette, who shot even par both days.

    Meantime, Elise Hoven of Cedarburg also came from behind in impressive fashion, shooting a 2-under 69 Thursday to overtake first-round leader Kylie Walker of Kenosha and win the overall girls title. Combined with her 76 Wednesday at Brown Deer, Hoven finished at 2-over-par 145.
    The WPGA Championship is annually the largest junior golf tournament held in Wisconsin. This year it attracted 325 competitors, including 21 more girls than in 2021.
    The Boys 16-18 division played Dretzka Park on Wednesday and Brown Deer Park on Thursday. Boys 13-15 and all girls competitors started at Brown Deer and finished Thursday at Dretzka.
    Mother Nature intervened in a big way for the final round. Play was halted at both courses around 12:25 p.m. Thursday, when strong

thunderstorms blew through the north side of Milwaukee. Play resumed at 2:15, with tournament officials pledging to get the tournament completed before dark. And they did just that. Mercier, 17, recorded five birdies and three bogeys in his final round, which allowed him to pass Kretz who was in his grouping. Mercier said the final round came down to putting. “It was a blast to kind of duel with him,” Mercier said of Kretz. “We had a competitive back nine – we both made a couple birdies. In the end I ended up beating him by one because I made a couple more putts than he did today, but he hit a lot of good putts that didn’t fall. He was hitting edges all day today.”

    The race for the overall boys title was up for grabs after the first round with 27 players on the jam-packed leaderboard within five strokes of the lead heading into the final 18. Mercier was warming up on the putting green when the storms rolled in. “It was still raining when we went back out,” he said “The thunder and lightening stopped, but the rain stayed for all of the front nine. So the course was wet and it played long.”
     Hoven, an 18-year-old North Dakota State recruit, almost had a clean card Thursday at Dretzka, as she recorded just one bogey along with her four birdies. She called it her best round of the summer so far. Her 69 was the only sub-par round of the tournament on the girls side.
    “I was trying to get back to even par,” Hoven said of her goal for the final round. “I just knew I had to go low because I didn’t have the best stuff yesterday, so I was excited about today.”
    Walker took the first-round lead among girls with a round of 71 Wednesday, but she stumbled on the back nine Thursday with the tournament on the line, shooting 40 on her final nine. Walker shot a final-round 76 and finished at 147, two strokes behind Hoven.

    William Schlitz of Eau Claire won the title in the boys 13-15 age-division, highlighted by his final round of 71 Thursday morning at Dretzka. Schlitz shot 78 at Brown Deer on Thursday for a 149 total to finish one stroke ahead of William Harned of Nashotah, who shot 74-76–150.
    Mercier won the boys 16-18 division, followed by Kretz. Walker won the girls 13-15 division, followed by runner-up Treva Dodd of Brookfield (76-74–150). Hoven won the girls 16-18 division by three strokes over Cassandra Psuik of Greenfield (74-74–148).
    There was also another tournament-within-the-tournament in the form of 10 exemptions into the Notah Begay III Junior Golf National Championship – seven exemptions for boys and three for girls. The berths send the players to regional qualifying in the tournament series. The boys who qualified are: Mercier, Kretz, Mason Schmidtke of Sheboygan, Braeden Resnick of Rice Lake, Sebastian Kasun of Elm Grove, Bennett Swavely of Hudson and Kaeden Nomm of Minocqua. The girls who qualified are: Hoven, Walker and Psuik.