What's Different About This Year's Junior World Golf Championships

There is something easily noticeable in this year's Qualifying Rounds of the Junior World Golf Championships held last week at Riviera, this week at Capitol Hills, and next week at Splendido.

Easily seen is the absence of reference to Callaway and the proliferaton of flags and banners with the IMG Academy logo.

This is because last July 2014, IMG Academy announced that it will replace Callaway Golf as the title sponsor of the Junior World Golf Championships beginning in 2015.

The San Diego-area championship, first played in 1968, is played in 12 age divisions, ranging from 6 and under to 15-17 year olds, and typically fields more than 1,200 golfers annually. Past champions of the event include Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Ernie Els, Nick Price and Lorena Ochoa.
Callaway Golf held title sponsorship from 2002-14.

From the Philippines we have seen a number of champions too including last year's Class A Girls Champion, Daniella Uy.

“The Junior World Golf Championships and the San Diego County Junior Golf Association have significantly contributed to the development of youth players for more than 40 years,” said Gary Pluchino, IMG's vice president. “With the development of student-athletes also being our core mission at IMG Academy for the past 35 years, we recognized the tremendous opportunity for impact by joining our two organizations in this way.”

2008 Philippine Team delegates, Kristoffer Arevalo
and Joaquin Tronco

In addition to assuming title sponsorship, the Florida-based IMG also plans to add a match-play championship to be played this December in Florida. The IMG Academy Junior World Golf Match Play Championship will host five age divisions for 36 holes of stroke-play qualifying and three days of match play.

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