By Brad King Alex Smalley didn’t quite play his way into the six-man playoff to determine the 2021 Wyndham Championship, eventually won by Kevin Kisner. Nevertheless, the former Duke star captured plenty of attention along the way. Playing on his home course at Sedgefield Country Club, the 24-year-old Smalley carded three rounds in the 60s,…
By David Droschak Few golfers – outside of Tiger Woods – have had a more successful junior career than Jason Widener. The former Greensboro native won over 50 junior tournaments, including the U.S. Junior Amateur, was the No. 1 ranked junior player in the country for two years in the late 1980s and became one…
By David Droschak If there was ever a “can’t miss” golf prospect it’s Gina Kim. The rising junior at Chapel Hill High School has skill and talent – and maybe even more importantly – the desire and drive to become the best. The 16-year-old Kim is the No. 1 female junior golfer in North Carolina,…
Part 1 of 2 part series on the Carolinas PGA By DAVID DROSCHAK Golf has a way of pulling you back in. Ron Schmid, a former golf pro at Duke University Golf Club for more than a decade, believed the game was in his rear view mirror heading into the 1990s. He was sailing along…
By STEVE WILLIAMS Check off a couple more boxes on Gina Kim’s to-do list. Only a couple months into her sophomore year at Chapel Hill High School, Kim had an October to remember. Early in the month, she verbally committed to Duke’s perennially potent women’s golf program and then she capped it Oct. 27 by…
By Kurt Dusterberg When Jason Widener was a teenager, golf came easily. He won the USGA’s Junior Amateur championship in 1988, and followed it up by signing with Duke University, where he won medalist honors at the ACC Championship as a freshman in 1990. Then everything changed. “Three quarters of the way through my freshman…
BY JOHN DELL After owning the ACC Women’s Golf Championships for more than a decade, the Duke Blue Devils had a three-year lull. That all changed last spring when the Blue Devils won their 17th ACC title and 16th under coach Dan Brooks at Sedgefield Country Club in Greensboro. Brooks wouldn’t say that it was…