There is always a lot of confusion about where to play to improve a juniors chance of getting a college golf scholarship. Most junior golfers are hopeful that their golf games will improve enough to become a college golf recruit, however where and how do get the needed exposure is the question many parents and juniors are seeking as they enter the junior golfer arena. The short answer is simple; play tournament golf as often as possible and if you play in Junior Golf Scoreboard (“JGS”) ranked competitions it will greatly improve your status. This is the reason NCJT offers WRJS events, as they are JGS ranked events that are specially designed to help our players get college golf exposure.
So why are JGS competitions important? JGS serves as the #1 source for college golf recruiting by providing a world ranking service for junior golfers. To gain a world ranking a junior golfer must have a minimum of 8 qualified rounds in a rolling calendar year. A qualified round must be played within a scheduled 36-hole competition or more (like a 54 hole or 72 hole competition). All WRJS events on the NCJT schedule are 36-hole competitions.
The next thing to know is how the JGS rankings work. There are three elements used to compute the rankings.
- 65% – Is simply the average difference of each individual score compared to the USGA course rating. It’s a simple calculation: if you shoot 77 and the course rating is 71.2, you have a differential of 5.8 for that round.
- 10% – How you finish in a qualified competition. Credit is given to 1st place, top 5 and top 10 finishes (based on the field size, top 10 requires 20 players or more).
- 25% – Is the Strength of Field criteria. The stronger the players in the field the more credit is given. Think of it as the lower the average differential (as computed in the 65% criteria above), for the entire field, the stronger the Strength of Field.
Now let’s evaluate! This all means that 75% of your JGS world ranking can easily be achieved through the 9 WRJS events (or 18 qualified rounds) on the 2018 NCJT schedule, without getting into strength of field criteria. And when the field is filled with our better players the Strength of Field criteria goes up as well. This is good reason to signup for all the WRJS events you can and if you can shoot well and finish high you can climb the world ranking on the local stage. If you are a dominate player on NCJT you should also seek to play in more statewide competitions from time to time as well. If you can finish top 5 in those play in more, if not keep it limited and continue to build your status in our regional competitions.
How does WRJS sign-ups work? Most of the WRJS events are a combination of two single day events, except for the Sand Ridge Junior Invitational and the Tour Championship, which are two-day mandatory events. When registering for two-day optional events like WRJS #1 LostEagle, you must first enter both Lost Nation ($60) and Gleneagles ($60) to have the option to play in the ADD-ON LostEagle ($10). The total entry for those three competitions is $130. Since Lost Nation and Gleneagles are both single day competitions you can also play in one without the other, but that will eliminate the option to play in LostEagle. When you register for LostEagle you are not signing up to play additional golf, it only means your score from Lost Nation and Gleneagles will be combined into a 36-hole competition and posted to JGS.
We hope this information is helpful to our college golf hopefuls and we also encourage everyone to read through our College Golf section at www.ncjt.org, which provides a good guideline for understanding the whole recruiting process. If you have additional questions regarding the WRJS events or other tour matters, please email or call the tour office.
