In the end, no one else could come close to Anna Davis, the 15-year-old from the San Diego suburb of Spring Valley, California. After a long week at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Kentucky, Davis won the Girls Junior PGA Championship by a seven-shot margin over Julia Misemer.
Davis strung together rounds of 69-68-73-67 to finish 15 under at Valhalla.
“It feels so good to top off the summer this way with a big win at a tournament like this,” Davis told the PGA of America minutes after being doused with bottles of water by some of her fellow competitors, a tradition often seen on the LPGA. “If I was put in this situation a year ago, I definitely would have struggled mentally. That’s for sure. But my mental game has improved so much, just keeping my head in the game, worrying about me and not what the other girls are doing.”
The Girls Junior PGA is Davis’s biggest win of the year, so she also claimed the title at the AJGA’s Ping Heather Farr Classic back in April. Davis was third at the AJGA’s Under Armour/Albane Valenzuela Girls Championship in May and finished fourth at the Rolex Girls Junior Championship the next month. At this month’s U.S. Girls’ Junior, she bowed out in the first round of match play.
For finishing 1-2 at Valhalla, Davis and Misemer earn spots on the U.S. Junior Ryder Cup team. Despite the fact that the formal matches have been called off because of COVID, a U.S. team consisting of six boys and six girls will still be selected. That squad will travel to Whistling Straits in September to compete in an early-week exhibition match.
Behind Davis and Misemer was a familiar name in Megha Ganne, the 17-year-old who wowed golf fans in June with her U.S. Women’s Open run. She ended up finishing 14th, the low amateur. Ganne will now head to the U.S. Women’s Open next week.
Yana Wilson, a U.S. Girls’ Junior quarterfinalist, was fourth at 6 under.
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