INDIA CLYBURN IMPROVES, FIONA LIDDELL FALLS BACK IN JUNIOR ORANGE BOWL

TADIOTTO GOES TWO CLEAR, STROM, 

AND HOYOS SHARE GIRLS' LEAD 
 

 By DAVID MACKINTOSH

Belgian-born Giovanni Tadiotto, pictured right, 16-year-old son of an Italian  teaching pro, overcame a rocky start to post a second-round 69 that was sufficient to convert his overnight lead-share into a two-stroke advantage on six-under-par 136 at the halfway stage of the 51st Junior Orange Bowl boys' international tournament over the par-71 Biltmore course (6,742yd) at Coral Gables, the Florida home of the University of Miami. 

In the girls' tournament over a 6,089yd par-71 course, overnight leader Sweden’s Linnea Strom said she struggled and was therefore absolutely delighted to discover her second-round 73 was good for a share of the halfway lead. Strom and Colombia’s Maria Hoyos are tied at 140, 2-under par, a single stroke ahead of South Korea’s Juwon Jeong.
Scottish U21 girls open title-holder India Clyburn (Woodhall Spa\) improved to T15 on 152 with a three-over 74, made up of 16 par figures, a double bogey 7 at the long 15th and a bogey at the second - no birdies.
Scottish U18 girls match-play champion Fiona Liddell, daughter of Germany-based Scottish club pro Stephen at Schloss Vornhoz. in contrast had only eight par figures in a seven-over 78 for T19 position on 153.
Fiona had three birdies (long first, short 12th and long 18th); three  double bogeys (short second, par-4 sixth and long 15th, as well as four bogeys). 

Tadiotto (67,69 -136), who won the annual Total Belgian Junior International boys' tournament by nine strokes back in late August,  leads by two from Canada’s Tony Gil, Argentina’s Matias Lezcano (70-68) and Chile’s Joaquin Niemann (67-71). Gil posted 66, the tournament-low so far.

“I had two double bogeys and just two birdies, which is a disappointing round, so having a share of the lead going into the last two days is an unexpected bonus,” Strom confided.

“I didn’t play badly, I hit my irons better than the first day but I didn’t putt as well and didn’t make many chip-putt saves.”   

Gil, a 16-year old plus-4 handicap from Vaughan, Ontario, carded 5-under par on the front nine (his back nine) and admitted he was still in thrill-mode, but also aware there was a little luck involved.

“I was in the trees twice on the stretch but on both occasions punched out to the green and made birdies. Then at the last hole I stuck my approach in really close, so everything came out perfect.”

Tadiotto got off to an uncomfortable start, admitting he might have put himself under too much pressure after his strong opening session. He scrambled out of his first nine holes at 1-over par and from there on determined to regroup mentally.

“I went back to basics, trying hard to play one shot at a time, concentration on the application, not the outcome and from there I started swinging better and rediscovered my rhythm.”   

In proof of that regained comfort level, the 16-year old from his father's teaching base at Baisy-Thy, Belgium birdied two of his closing three holes.

Argentina’s Lezcano’s 69 was a round he considered was more solid mentally than his opening 70, where he’d reached 4-under before slipping on the closing holes. 

“I avoided trouble today, took some strain out of play,” he said with a smile. 

Chile’s Niemann also recovered strongly from three dropped shots on his opening side to post an even-par 71. Iceland’s Gisli Sveinbergsson pushed up the leaderboard with a sparkling 67 for 140 and power-driver Carl Yuan’s 68  for 139 now has him as the leading U.S. player in fifth place.

“I would like to have played better but it didn’t happen today,” said Colombia’s Hoyos, who played her first 10 holes in even par then dropped two shots before a consolation last-hole birdie. 

“It was a little windy and I never got anything going with my putter.”

England's Jamie Dick slipped back from T9 to T31 after a 77 for five-over 147.
 
BOYS' LEADERBOARD
Par 142 (2x71)
136 G Tadiotto (Belgium) 67 69
137 T Gill (Canada) 72 66, M Lezcano (Argentina) 70 68, J Niemann (Chile) 67 71
139 C Yuan (USA) 71 66
SELECTED SCORE
147 J Dick (England) 70 77 (T31)

TO VIEW ALL THE BOYS' SCORES

CLICK HERE      

GIRLS' LEADERBOARD
Par 142 (2x71)
140 L Strom (Sweden) 67 73, M Hoyos (Colombia) 68 72
141 J Jeong (S Korea) 69 72
142 L Altmann (Brazil) 71 68
143 L Harm (Germany) 71 72

SELECTED SCORES
152 I Clyburn (England) 78 74 (T15)
153 F Liddell (Scotland) 75 78 (T19)

TO VIEW ALL THE GIRLS' SCORES

CLICK HERE      

TENNIS COURTS, SWIMMING POOLS, BIKING, FLY-FISHING TO NAME BUT A FEW

USA shows UK golf clubs the way forward:

 extra amenities all the family can enjoy

FROM GOLFWEEK.COM 

By Josh Sens, Golfweek contributor

At 50, Ray Landes qualifies as middle-aged, but he counts himself as part of golf’s younger generation, a fresh-faced breed not fully sold on the hidebound private hangouts of yesteryear.
The senior vice president of finance for HBO, and a resident of Manhattan Beach, near Los Angeles, Landes has made the rounds at Southern California’s most exclusive clubs and calls many of their members his close friends.
He has the cash and connections to join their ranks. Just not the inclination.
“I love those lay-outs and appreciate the atmosphere at those clubs,” he says of redoubts such as Riviera, Bel-Air and Los Angeles Country Club. 
“But they’re also pretty much all about the golf. And at this point in my life, if I’m going to write a check, it can’t just be all about me.”
An avid player and nine-handicapperf, Landes has written a cheque, but he signed it over to a club better suited to his standing as a busy family man with a wife and two kids. Four years ago, he bought a home, and a membership, at Pronghorn, a residential and resort community in Bend, Oregon. 
A two-hour flight gets Landes there. But just as often, he piles the entire gang – and occasionally the in-laws – into the car and makes the day-plus drive to the high-desert retreat, which rollicks over 640 acres through a 1,000-year-old juniper forest.
Pronghorn boasts two courses: a dramatic Jack Nicklaus design and a pristine, members-only Tom Fazio track. But their green-fingered fairways don’t come close to covering the club’s full reach.
 The options extend to such activities as hiking, biking, white-water rafting, rock-climbing, wine tasting and fly-fishing, to name just a few.
 Landes’ kids, ages 9 and 14, can take part in outdoor adventures through Camp Pronghorn, or hang out all day at the Trailhead, a recreational centre with two pools, a basketball court, a tennis court and more. There is refined dining. There are casual restaurants. There’s a spa that deals in everything from hot-stone facials to aromatherapy massage.
Pronghorn, in short, gives Landes all the golf that he can handle, at a club that his whole family can embrace.
“When we arrive, it’s like pulling into a Four Seasons, except that we have a home there,” Landes says. “It’s absolutely beautiful. And it’s got pretty much everything we could ever want.”
Put your ear to the ground at top private clubs from coast to coast, and you hear echoes of the same refrain.
Distant are the days when a guy – and mostly, they were guys – could vanish behind a veil of cigar smoke for a weekend of hoots and hacks with his buddies, only to reappear at the family dinner table on Sunday night.
 Society has changed, along with economics and expectations.
Those grand old clubs of your grandfather’s era, which required not just thick bankrolls but the right bloodlines, which encouraged spouses to play but maybe only on ladies’ days, which allowed kids on the grounds so long as they kept mum – those clubs still exist, and probably always will. 
But increasingly they seem like hickory-shafted 1-irons: impressive artifacts used only by a rare few.
Eavesdrop on today’s clubhouse conversations, and the chatter sounds different than it once did. Patrician tut-tutting and good-old-boy backslapping have given way to talk of “kids’ camps,” “family programming” and “lifestyle amenities.”
“My belief is that the old-school country club was where guys went to get away from their families,” says Michael S. Meldman, founder and president of Discovery Land Co. 
“We want the kind of places where you go to be with your family.”
Established in 1994, Discovery Land has 16 properties in its portfolio, posh residential communities designed to appeal across generations. Though a number of the clubs sit in traditional golf meccas, they all put the grand old game to a contemporary turn.
Take The Madison Club, in La Quinta, California, an upscale but understated getaway that embodies golf’s new era of relaxed sophistication. Cellphones are permitted, as are board shorts and T-shirts. Rock-and-roll pumps from speakers on the practice range.
The golf course itself is plenty grown-up, a 7,400-yard Tom Fazio design, dug out of the desert in a feat of engineering reminiscent of Shadow Creek. But the club doesn’t take itself too seriously.
“Let’s be honest: a lot of golf clubs are intimidating,” Meldman says. “The policies are intimidating. The whole experience is intimidating. We’re going for the opposite.”
Meldman’s youthful ideas about the game took shape in the early ’90s when his own children were young. Though Meldman loved taking them to the course, he hated fighting with them to don the proper threads. 
So he did away with dress codes at his own clubs, and added other elements (coolers with Cokes and candy bars, for instance) that he knew his kids would like.
Over the years, those small gestures have swelled into sweet amenities for all ages. At The Madison Club today, three comfort stations await you during your round, including a self-serve restaurant stocked not just with Coke and candy but also Kobe beef sliders, a cocktail bar and an ice cream sundae station.
 Alongside the 14th green, a fruit market brims like Carmen Miranda’s headdress with pineapples, papaya, mangos, you name it. 
There’s a reason we call The Madison Club ‘the five-pound round,’ ” Meldman says.
While The Madison Club has created a kid-in-the-candy-store culture, Martis Camp feels sprung from a children’s fairy tale. Set high in the Sierra Nevadas, between Truckee, Calif., and North Lake Tahoe, the club provides perks you might expect from a private luxury second-home community: championship course, killer clubhouse and cuisine, custom homes on lots with generous setbacks. But the biggest draw for members is the family-centric climate.
Emblematic of the vibe is Martis Camp’s red Family Barn, an outsize facility equipped with pool tables and a pool, an old-fashioned soda fountain, a basketball court, a two-lane bowling alley, a 44-seat movie theatre and more.
Some 26 miles of hiking and biking trails snake out from the property, while a scenic 12-mile drive takes members from the main gate to the Beach Shack, a sandy oasis, on the shores of Lake Tahoe, with valet parking, kayaks and paddleboards.
In the Tahoe region, golf season ends in early autumn, but Martis Camp thrums year-round with its own ski lodge and private access, by way of a high-speed quad chairlift, to Northstar California, one of the West’s top ski resorts.
“Yes, we’ve got a great course; we’ve got a great clubhouse,” says Martis Camp general manager Mark Johnson. “But more than anything, we’re a family community, and that shows in everything we do.”
Even as private clubs evolve, certain golf traditions remain untouchable.
“Members still want to come out and play in under four hours,” says Jason Epstein, director of golf at the Club at Las Campanas in Santa Fe, New Mexico. “They want to play for a little money. They want to grab a drink or have lunch together. You’ve got to protect the sanctity of all that.”
And Las Campanas does, leaving plenty of room for serious golf on its two Jack Nicklaus Signature courses. But while protecting cherished aspects of an exclusive club, Las Campanas also takes pains to feel inclusive. 
Throughout the year, Epstein and his staff pepper the calendar with free lesson days and junior golf clinics; barbecues and cocktail mixers; and relaxed competitions such as a couples championship, and a three-hole Fourth of July tournament in which novice golfers can play to enlarged cups.
“We’re not trying to reinvent the game,” Epstein says. “We’re just trying to make it more fun.”
Fun, of course, takes different forms for everyone, which is why today’s top clubs are such versatile places. Few range as widely as The Cliffs, a collection of seven communities spread across the Blue Ridge Mountains from Asheville, North Carolina, to Greenville, South Carolina.
Each community has its own distinctive character. Each also has a golf course, but they all share a commitment to offering a rich life beyond the links. Scott Spiezle, 61, and his wife, Susan, spend roughly half the year in their home in The Cliffs at Mountain Park community, alongside a new Gary Player lay-out that both play regularly.
When Scott isn’t on the course, he might be hiking, biking or fly-fishing. Odds are Susan will be playing tennis. In the evenings, their social calendar keeps full. At The Cliffs, there’s a wine club, a whiskey club, a bridge club. 
There are elegant dinners in the clubhouse, and relaxed get-togethers at the pool.
“We’ve got so much going on,” Spiezle says, “that every now and then I’ll turn to Susan and say, ‘How about tonight, we sit around and do absolutely nothing?’ ”
At today’s private clubs, that’s an option, too.
–Josh Sens is a freelance writer from Oakland, California

MOST SUCCESSFUL PLAYER IN EUROPEAN SENIOR TOUR HISTORY

                           Carl Mason in action. Picture by courtesy of Getty Images(c)

CARL MASON RETAINS OVER-60s' 

 ORDER OF MERIT AWARD

EUROPEAN TOUR COMMUNICATIONS

Englishman Carl Mason, the most successful player in the history of the European Senior Tour, has added another accolade to his impressive list of accomplishments after winning the Lawrence Batley Award for a second consecutive year.
The award is given to the leading player on the Senior Tour Order of Merit over the age of 60, with 61 year old Mason holding off a strong challenge from compatriot David J Russell.
Mason finished 19th on the 2014 Senior Tour Order of Merit with earnings of €69,738, while Russell ended the year in 21st position with €66,684.
It was the 12th consecutive year that Mason has finished inside the top 20 on the Senior Tour Order of Merit, having won the John Jacobs Trophy as the leading player on three occasions, in 2003, 2004 and 2007.
Mason’s best performance of 2014 was a share of third position in the Senior Open de Portugal, while he also finished tied fourth in the Bad Ragaz PGA Seniors Open, an event he has won three times.
The winner of a record 25 Senior Tour titles first scooped the award in 2013 and he was presented with the trophy at the Senior Tour’s Annual Awards Dinner held at Woburn Abbey in August on the eve of the Travis Perkins Masters.
In his acceptance speech he remarked: “It’s 50 years ago that I first won my age group prize. Isn’t this a wonderful game that at 60 year old I can win another? I hope it is not the last.”
It proved not to be, with Russell unable to overtake him in the Order of Merit following the season-ending MCB Tour Championship in Mauritius, meaning Mason becomes just the second player to win the award more than once, following three-time winner Jerry Bruner of America.
Andy Stubbs, Managing Director of the European Senior Tour, said: “Carl has been a terrific ambassador for the European Senior Tour since he joined us in 2003, and at the age of 61 he continues to perform to a very high level.
“With players of the quality of David J Russell, Des Smyth, Sam Torrance, Mark James and Nick Job all eligible for the Lawrence Batley Award in 2014, it is yet another superb achievement in Carl’s Senior Tour career.”
First awarded to David Creamer in 2003, when it was known as the Hardy’s Super Senior Award, the accolade has also been given to Malcolm Gregson (2004), Noel Ratcliffe (2005), Jim Rhodes (2006), John Bland (2007), Jerry Bruner (2008, 2009, 2010), Nick Job (2011) and Dick Mast (2012).
The John Jacobs Trophy, given to the leading player on the 2014 Order of Merit, was won by Colin Montgomerie and the Rookie of the Year went to Argentine Cesar Monasterio, the winner of the English Senior Open, who finished the season in fifth position on the money list.

LINNEA STROM LEADS GIRLS AT JUNIOR ORANGE BOWL

 TADIOTTO AND NIEMANN LEAD BOYS

ON FOUR-UNDER 67

DAVID MACKINTOSH REPORTS FROM FLORIDA

CORAL GABLES, Miami: Belgium-born Giovanni Tadiotto and Chile’s Joaquin Niemann sprinted to the first round lead, tied at four-under par 67, closely followed by Argentina’s Alejandro Tosti and Czech Republic’s Vitek Novak on 68 at the 51st Junior Orange Bowl International golf tournament over the Biltmore course.
England's Jamie Dick, a member at Forest Hills Golf Club, Coleford in Gloucestershire, is joint ninth with a one-under 70.
The other England boy in the field, Daniel List (Wentworth)

hurt his back and withdrew after six holes. Apparently he was having back issues in the practice round but decided he'd try and compete.

Unfortunately it did not work out.

In the Girls' division, Sweden’s Linnea Strom posted also 67 to lead Colombia’s Maria Hoyos and France’s Agathe Laisne by a stroke.  
Germany-based Scottish U18 girls champion Fiona Liddell, dauther of the Scots-born pro, Stephen Liddell, at Schloss Vornholz, had a 75 and is T12 while Scottish U21 open girls champion India Clyburn (Woodhall Spa) from Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire, had a 78 for a share of 23rd place.

Under sunny skies and a mild breeze six girls completed the opening round at even-par or better; in the Boys, 21 players posted 71 or lower.   

Strom finished 3^rd in the tournament last year, 5^th in 2012 and has high hopes for her final year before taking up a U.S. university place in 2015.

“I’m really very pleased with the score,” she said, explaining that although her iron game was not as sharp as she’d have liked, she was able to overcome some errors with a sound short game.  

“I missed a number of greens but my chipping and putting made up for everything. I was able to get up and down from around greens and from several bunkers. It’s a start that gives me confidence.”

Strom dropped just one stroke to par all day, at the 7^th (her 16^th) and proved her quality by bouncing back with consecutive closing birdies.

Tadiotto, 16, whose Italian father is a teaching professional in Belgium, is working hard to understand the subtle breaks of the Biltmore’s Bermuda-grass greens and was thoroughly satisfied with his day’s play. “I hit the ball well, but I missed four greens and was able to chip and putt three of these, so my practice is paying off.”  

 Tadiotto cemented his position with consecutive birdies at the 13^th, 14^th and 15^th.

Niemann, a 16-year old from Santiago, Chile, was rock steady, just one bogey, completing both sides of this famed Donald Ross-design test in 2-under par. 
 Argentina’s Alejandro Tosti, 18, seemed to be coasting to a stunning round after opening with an eagle-3 and reaching 5-under par thru 7, but lost momentum on the back nine to card 68. 
Another Argentine player, Matias Lezcano, 18, also challenged strongly for the lead, reaching 4-under with four holes to play, but from there dropped three shots to fall into a seven-way tie for 9^th.   
FIRST-ROUND LEADERBOARD
Yardage of courses: Biltmore GC. Boys - 6,742yds: Girls - 6,089yds
BOYS 
  Par 71
67 Giovanni Tadiotto (Belgium), Joaquin Niemann (Chile)
68 Alejandro Tosti (Argentina), Vitek Novak (Czech Republic)

SELECTED SCORES
70 Jamie Dick (England) (T9)
Retired after six holes: Daniel List (England), back injury.   

GIRLS
Par 71
67 Linnea Strom (Sweden) 
68 Maria Hoyos (Colombia), Agathe Laisne (France)
69 Juwon Jeong (South Korea)
70 Renate Grimstad (Norway)
71 Leonie Harm (Germany)

SELECTED SCORES
75 Fiona Liddell (Scotland) (T13)
78 India Clyburn (England) (T23)  
 

For full scores, including individual hole by hole play, please visit us on www.jrorangebowl.com/golf