Cleveland: Where golf in the Magnolia State is concerned, the future is now

Jordan Spieth
Photo by abcnews.go.com

Mississippi golf just celebrated its 100th year of the State Amateur championship. And here’s what we need to know about that:

Where golf in the Magnolia State is concerned, the future is now. Never, ever, has the state had this many outstanding junior golfers. Let’s put it this way: Texan

has won The Masters and the U.S. Open at the age of 21. Over the next few years, Spieth will face some up and coming competition. There seems little doubt, some of it will be from Mississippi.

Hattiesburg’s Davis Riley has twice finished the national USGA Junior Championship runner-up. He was recently named the top high school golfer in the nation by USA Today. Last week, he played in the U.S. Open at that other-worldly golf course called Chambers Bay. After making triple bogey on the first hole of the championship, he finished the first round in 73, beating somebody named Tiger Woods by seven shots. His 36-hole total of 153 missed the cut, but you may rest assured this won’t be Davis Riley’s last U.S. Open. And he just graduated from Presbyterian Christian.

The kid has serious game. He is the most accomplished junior golfer in history of the state, and here’s what we need to know about that:
He might not be for long.

Over the same four days Spieth was winning the U.S. Open, 16-year-old Jacksonian Wilson Furr was winning the Centennial State Am by a whopping eight shots. Eight! Furr played the 7,000-yard Country Club of Jackson course in 14-under-par 274. That same score would have finished tied for second in last fall’s Sanderson Farms Championship on the PGA Tour. Yeah, the rough was a little higher last fall, but if you don’t hit it in the rough, does it matter?
Listen: When his five-shot lead shriveled to two after 10 holes on Sunday, the sturdy Furr launched a 230-yard 5-iron second shot to the 554-yard, par-5 11th hole, resulting in an easy birdie. Yes, that was 230 yards and 5-iron. The rout was on. He birdied two more holes to finish strong and become the youngest champion in the 100-year history of the event.

I watched Furr play the second round last Friday with two other outstanding Jackson-area juniors, Benjamin Nelson, who made a hole-in-one on Sunday, and Charlie Miller. Furr was six-under par for the day heading into his 17th hole where he faced a 144-yard second shot to the par-4 hole. He took out a pitching wedge, flushed it and watched it fly directly over the pin and beyond the green; just your average 155-yard pitching wedge. He bogeyed the hole and then took it out his frustration on his golf ball on the 18th hole.

There, he launched a 340-yard drive, lobbed a sand wedge up to within inches and tapped in for birdie and 66. Remember, he is 16.

Riley, who has signed with Alabama, and Furr, who has committed to the Crimson Tide, are good friends and the two best Mississippi juniors, but there are many, many more giving the state easily its best junior golf depth ever.

“It’s unbelievable, really,” said USM assistant coach Eddie Brescher III, who finished tied for second in the State Am with Mississippi State assistant Noah Goldman, 18-year-old Braden Thornberry of Olive Branch and 19-year-old Hayden Buckley of Belden, near Tupelo.
“It’s a tribute to the junior programs across the state,” Brescher said. “These kids play so many tournaments it’s almost like playing the Tour in the summer, and they work at it so hard.”

Furr won on Sunday and flew to Oregon on Monday where he will compete in the Rolex Tournament of Champions, an elite event for the nation’s top-ranked juniors.
Later this summer he will try to qualify for the U.S. Junior, where he made the Round of 16 as a15-year-old, and the U.S. Amateur. Believe this: You haven’t heard the last of Furr, Riley and a growing army of Mississippi junior golfers.

Rick Cleveland rcleveland@msfame.com is executive director of the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame.