Unless you follow junior golf you may have never heard of the Junior Invitational at Sage Valley. It’s an elite (invitation only) golf tournament for the world’s best juniors. Sage Valley is an ultra exclusive club and only a few minutes from Augusta, Ga. This year a few “celebrity juniors” are in the field. I label them “celebrity” because I don’t consider Charlie Woods and Kia Trump (grand daughter of Donald Trump) as top junior golfers in the world. Don’t get me wrong they are skilled golfers but are not the “cream of the crop” of elite juniors.

The invitational started in 2011 and past boys champions of Sage Valley include Scott Scheffler and Joaquin Niemann. A girls division has only been part of the invitational since 2022. The most notable winner from 2023 is Anna Davis; the 2022 Augusta National Women’s Amateur Champion. All past winners and participants are listed in the “record book.”

If you do follow junior golf you will recognize names of the top players. For the boys, Miles Russell #1 junior in the world and at 15 years old played in a PGA Tour event this year. For the girls, Asterisk Talley #1 girls junior who played in the LPGA Hilton Grand Tournament of Champions and won the Amateur Division. Talley is the 2024 (defending) champion in the girls division at Sage Valley. She didn’t play her best this year. Another well known junior girl is Gianna Clemente who won the 2023 USGA U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball and was named 2024 AJGA Girls Player of the Year. Both Talley and Clemente will be at the 2025 Augusta National Women’s Amateur April 2-5.

RANKING OF GOLFERS

I did a bit of research and looked at AJGA rankings and European Golf Rankings for the 36 boys and 24 girls in the field. What surprised me was not the fact that the top players were represented from all over the world; but what did surprise me was that both Charlie Woods’ ranking of 838 and Kia Trumps ranking of 815 were so far off from the other players. I get it but I feel bad for the elite players that missed out on this event because two spots were given to less skilled players.

Frankly I did not see any other player (in the field) lower than 156 in the AJGA (and if they had a AJGA ranking over 100 then their European rank was usually in the top 20 for European world rankings). This is obviously due to where they play the majority of their junior golf. In other words, what tournaments are used to calculate the rankings. For Example, Oscar Covilleau (from France has an AJGA ranking of 156 and a European Ranking of 10). But still Covilleau’s rank of 156 is certainly much better than Woods at 838.

One other caveat for rankings is that it could be that both Woods and Trump do not play many tournaments that contribute points to world golf rankings. So let’s compare; Russell Miles and has seven events listed on his AJGA recap (with a few wins, of course) and Charlie Woods has four events and his best placement was a T24. Looking at Astrisk Talley; she has eight events with four wins (of the eight); Kia Trump only has one event in her bio – the Dustin Johnson World Junior (two-day event) where she placed 29.

Based purely on junior world golf rankings, I would say that Charlie Woods and Kia Trump do not deserve to be playing in the event; but the reality is that it is an “invitational” and their names will provide additional publicity; even if Woods and Trump don’t play well.

HANDICAPS: One last fun comparison from GHIN are the handicaps. Miles Russell is a +6.6 and Charlie Woods a +4.1 Aphrodite Deng is a +7.1 and Kia Trump is a 0.3

RESULTS

I waited until the end of the invitational to publish this blog post to share results. And no surprise that both Woods and Trump did not finish in the top five or even top 10. In fact, Woods finished the four day tournament T25 (out of 36) with a score of +11 (299). See Screenshot below for Charlie woods.

Unfortunately for Trump, she finished in last place (24) with a 4 day score of +52 (340). Trump is big into social media and has a YouTube channel focused on golf content. Her channel has 1.7 million subscribers (most of the growth has been in 2025). She has made a verbal commitment to the University of Miami Golf team. She’s going to have to get much better if she wants to actually play in college competitions. See screenshot of Kia Trump’s scorecard below.

THE CHAMPIONS

The 2025 Champion for the Boys division is Miles Russell (AJGA Rank #1 from the USA) with a score of -9 (279). It must have been exciting to watch because Jackson Byrd lead most of the day and then had a double bogey on 17. Boys champion, Miles Russell’s, scores below:

The 2025 Champion for the girls division is Aphrodite Deng (AJGA Rank #9 from Canada) with a score of -7 (281). Deng may be Canadian but she lives in Short Hills, New Jersey. Girls champion Aphrodite Deng’s scores below:

All results of the Junior Invitational can be seen on their Golf Genius website.

Both of the champions were interviewed and commented on the difficultly of the course and the wind (side note: it’s was gusting up to 30-40 mph in SC on Tuesday and Wednesday). Miles Russell was 2 behind with 3 holes to play and he said he just stayed patient. Aphrodite Deng said she just kept telling herself “par would be good today” which is very smart given her lead going into the final round. Deng’s 66 on Friday really set her apart from the field.

CLOSING

I’m looking forward to watching Clemente and Talley during the television coverage of the Augusta National Women’s Amateur. I’ll be curious to see if Aphrodite Deng is added to the field because she is not currently on the ANWA website players list.

I’m not sure which if any of the USGA amateur championships will be televised in 2025 but hopefully Golf Channel will show The Amateur because it is a the Olympic Club this year. Part of the fun of watching the USGA events is seeing the beautiful private courses that host the events.