Sawyer Brockstedt won his first American Junior Golf Association tournament on April 17 at the TaylorMade TP5 Junior All-Star event at Longleaf Golf & Family Club in Southern Pines, NC.
The ninth-year Sussex Academy student shot four under par in the 54-hole competition for girls aged 12-15. Highlights included a 67 in the second round and birdies every day on the par-5 fifth hole.
Quoted on the AJGA website, Brockstedt explained her normal score in the final round: “I went out there today trying to be patient and not be aggressive at all.”
Sussex Academy golf coach Doug Grove said: “I’m really happy for her. She worked hard and I’m thrilled that her efforts paid off in winning a big event.
Longleaf is the same course where Brockstedt won the US Kids World Teen Championship in 2020. She has played well many times in the Pinehurst area, including the regional playoffs where she qualified for the National Drive, Chip and Putt Championship at Augusta National in 2018.
Something about the Pinehurst area of North Carolina has to agree with her.
Sawyer’s spring break continued at the seventh U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball Championship, which began April 20 and runs through Sunday, April 24 at the Grand Reserve Golf Club in Puerto Rico. Brockstedt and partner Ellison Lundquist of Furlong, Pennsylvania, join a group of 128 golfers (64 sides) in Puerto Rico for a chance to win one of golf’s most prestigious honors, a USGA title.
It is also the first-ever USGA championship to be held outside of the continental United States. Brockstedt and Lundquist compete in their first USGA Championship. Last June, the two co-founded a charity junior golf tournament called Ace Cup with a group of friends, raising more than $70,000 in its first year to benefit the Alzheimer’s Association.
Sell clothes with a cleaner conscience
Scott Morrison, co-founder of Radmor Golf in Washington State, has had a career spanning over 20 years in the denim industry. The former University of Washington varsity golfer quit the apparel business in part because of its troubling environmental impacts. As he noted, the creation of denim produces pollution from indigo waste and other problematic elements.
He and co-founder Bob Conrad, another UW golfer and former tourism pro, decided to go a different route — still cotton-based, but with a better environmental impact. This led to the creation of Radmor Golf in January 2020.
The company’s garments primarily use Pima cotton sourced from Peru. “We use natural fibers whenever possible. It makes a huge difference in terms of waste,” he said. Thompson noted that natural fibers biodegrade in landfills within months, while engineered fabric can take decades or more to break down.
Thompson said the company doesn’t use “virgin polyester.” Their polyester spandex is often only 4-5% of the total of any garment and adds a bit of stretch. “Our customers are really happy with the product, and we’ve had great success in the direct-to-consumer market,” he said.
The company is not completely serious, fortunately.
The Radmor logo is a cartoon-style golf ball with eyes, depicted just beginning to drop into a golf hole.
The dress etiquette of each item also promotes environmentalism with a bit of whimsy. Recycled paper is cut so that when folded it becomes a handy cup – a form of double recycling, in fact.
Radmor’s lines can currently be found at Green Grass stores on the West Coast and at Nordstrom and Saks department stores. Thompson hopes to expand the line’s presence in more green grass stores across the United States.
Wide range of Garmin GPS devices at the PGA Show
Garmin is a popular GPS navigation technology company. Its products are aimed at the outdoor and fitness markets as well as the automotive, marine and aviation sectors. In the Cape Town area, Garmin devices are often found on local sport fishing boats, bicycles and golf courses.
At demo day at the 2022 PGA Merchandise Show in January, I met Mike Paoli, district sales manager for Garmin and a 2001 graduate of Salesianum High School in Wilmington. We spent some time making the usual Delawares connections, then we reviewed a selection of Garmin golf products.
I was very impressed with the range of attractive GPS options for golfers in several price ranges.
We started with the entry-level Approach S12, a black-dial GPS watch that keeps things simple. A sun-shielding face provides front, middle and back-to-green distances for over 42,000 preloaded golf courses, with 30-hour battery life in GPS mode. Normally sold for $199.99, it recently went on sale on Garmin’s website for $149.99.
The $299 SRP Approach S42 adds to the base S12 with a color touchscreen, interchangeable watch strap options, and a view of every green. The Approach 62, at SRP $549.99, uses a larger display, shot tracking options paired with Garmin’s CT10 sensors, virtual caddy information, and, as Paoli described it, ” health and wellness options, including heart rate and pulse oximeter.
If you want GPS data but don’t like wearing watches, Garmin offers the Approach G10 at SRP$129.99. This device can clip to your belt or rest in a pocket until you need to check its basic data, much like the Approach S12. He will also keep score.
The Marq model was the top of the line of Garmin watches I saw, at $1,850. This luxury smartwatch included the bells and whistles of low-cost options and more. It can be associated with the Garmin Golf application for the analysis of strokes won. It will track your hydration level during a round and other handy features for skiing and hiking. It can also access other global navigation system data when GPS is hard to find.
Paoli also showed me two handheld GPS options, the Approach G30 ($249.99) and the Approach G80 ($499.99). The G30’s 2.3-inch color screen is easily readable and comes with Touch Targeting which provides precise distances to anything you point at on screen. If you need to stay in touch with what’s going on, the device shows smart notifications for emails, texts and phone calls.
The G80 upgrades to a 3.5-inch touchscreen and includes an integrated launch monitor that displays club head speed, ball speed, tempo, estimated distance and smash factor. With up to 15 hours of battery life in GPS mode, the device should handle 18 holes, a virtual round against your buddies, and a few practice sessions.
We also reviewed the Approach R10 ($599.99), Garmin’s entry into the small-scale launch monitor market. The fully transportable tripod mounted radar device will last up to 10 hours on a single charge. Located 6 to 8 feet behind the golfer, it uploads data to a smartphone attached to a golf bag with a mounting clip for quick viewing of results.
The data includes over 10 metrics – not as many as a full-scale Trackman, say, but enough to track trends.