How do you increase your National Ranking?
Regional 2-Day Tournaments count toward your National Ranking, but not as much as you would think. The tournaments that really make a big difference are the National Junior Golf Championship Tournaments.
We have (4) Qualifiers each year that allow junior golfers from Alabama earn an exemption to enter these National Tournaments.
Additionally the USGA has an Alabama Qualifier for the USGA Junior Amateur. There is also a Southern Junior Amateur, and the Bubba Conlee National Junior in Memphis, TN.
A lot of parents make the mistake of playing a 10 to 14 tournament schedule of Regional 2-Day Tournaments – and virtually none of these tournaments, even if you win, will get the player into a National Junior Golf Championship Tournament. So their Junior Golfer never makes it into a National Tournaments and their National Ranking is typically outside the Top-500 in the Nation.
The sequence of events is: you compete in Qualifier Tournaments and during that 3-summer stretch of Age 15, 16 and 17, your Junior Golfer earns an exemption into a National Tournament. And when you get in that National Tournament, you earn a Top-15 placement. A Top-15 will get a player invitations/exemptions into one or two more National Tournaments. By the end of that 2 or 3 tournament “run” the player is typically ranked inside the Top-100 or better. In addition to your own efforts to contact College Coaches and meet with them, the player will also be contact by Coaches who saw them compete in the National Tournaments. At the end of that process, a player will typically have 2 to 3 scholarship offers to consider.