Charlie Woods in field for prestigious junior event near Augusta

Tiger Woods has won five Masters.

His son, Charlie, is set to play in an elite tournament that is widely considered as junior golf’s equivalent of the year’s first major, the Junior Invitational at Sage Valley.

According to the event’s list of participants, which is available to players via a Golf Genius link and was obtained by GolfChannel.com, Charlie Woods’ name appears as the 37th and final participant for the March 19-22 tournament at Sage Valley Golf Club in Graniteville, South Carolina, which is not far from Augusta National. That field-size number is surprising considering the tournament usually boasts a 36-player, invitation-only field consisting of the top junior players in the world.

The field also includes each of the top six players in Junior Golf Scoreboard’s rankings: No. 1 Luke Colton, No. 2 Louis Klein, No. 3 Miles Russell, No. 4 Michael Riebe, No. 5 Tyler Watts and No. 6 Logan Reilly. Several international players in the top 150 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking are entered as well: No. 46 Nguyen Anh Minh, No. 105 Lev Grinberg, No. 126 Haoyi Wang and No. 142 Hugo Le Goff.

Woods, 16, is ranked No. 713 on JGS. He qualified for his first U.S. Junior Amateur last summer before missing match play by 18 shots. His most notable win came last July at the South Florida PGA Junior Cup, which is ranked by WAGR. He also helped the Benjamin School to a state team title in 2023, a few months after winning a Hurricane Junior Tour event.

There is also a 24-player women’s division at Sage Valley, which is set to include nine of the top 10 players in JGS, including defending champ and No. 1 Asterisk Talley, as well as Kai Trump, the granddaughter of Presidents Donald Trump. Trump, 17, is ranked No. 2,342 in JGS and recently gave her verbal commitment to the University of Miami. She also has over 1 million YouTube subscribers and was announced over the weekend as having signed an endorsement deal with TaylorMade, which is a partner of the Junior Invitational and also counts Tiger Woods as an ambassador.

Several past winners at Sage Valley, which held its first boys tournament in 2011, have gone on to play on the PGA Tour:
Scottie Scheffler (2014), Joaquin Niemann (2017), Akshay Bhatia (2018), Austin Eckroat (2016), Carson Young (2012) and Aldrich Potgieter (2023). The girls event debuted in 2022 with Amalie Leth-Nissen and Anna Davis winning prior to Talley.

Full field

BOYS
Tyler Mawhinney
Ronin Banerjee
Will Hartman
Hamilton Coleman
Tyler Watts
Henry Guan
Joshua Bai
Luke Colton
Lev Grinberg
Mason Howell
Carson Bertagnole
Kartik Singh
Louis Klein
Viggo Olsson Mork
Trevor Gutschewski
Jackson Byrd
Miles Russell
Michael Riebe
Le Khanh Hung
Joshua Kim
Hugo Le Goff
Logan Reilly
Robby Turnbull
Oscar Couilleau
Thanawin Lee
Giovanni Binaghi
Dan Hayes
Nguyen Ang Minh
Pennson Badgett
Evan Pena
Bowen Mauss
Aidan Lawson
Ben Bolton
Rayhan Latief
John Daniel Culbreth
Haoyi Wang
Charlie Woods

GIRLS
Amelie Zalsman
Scarlett Schremmer
Natalie Yen
Jude Lee
Elizabeth Rudisill
Aphrodite Deng
Mia Clausen
Louise Uma Landgraf
Havanna Torstensson
Gianna Clemente
Luana Valero Moyano
Avery McCrery
Nikki Oh
Asterisk Talley
Sara Brentchenoff
Pimpisa Rubrong
Achiraya Sriwong
Sarah Hammett
Alice Kong
Soomin Oh
Sofia Cherif Essakali
Yujie Liu
Yijia Ren
Kai Trump