Powerful 2020 Palmetto High School Championship Field Now Set
With the Dustin Johnson World Junior Golf Championship at TPC Myrtle Beach emerging as one of junior golf’s leading individual competitions, it has also become a seasonal precursor to an elite high school team competition that also calls the Grand Strand home. And with the popularity and prestige of the Palmetto High School Golf Championship growing as well, the 2020 edition of this event has already sold out several weeks ahead of time.
Contested for the fifth consecutive year at renowned Mike Strantz designs Caledonia Golf & Fish Club and True Blue Golf Club, the 2020 Palmetto takes place April 9-11 in a 54-hole, collegiate-style tournament that features 32 teams from four states including North Carolina, South Carolina, Louisiana and Texas. The capacity field is a 14 percent increase over last year’s 28-team competition, with several schools returning that have made a prominent mark in their past team and individual performances.
Boiling Springs (S.C.) won the 2018 Palmetto paced by the efforts of current University of Georgia standout Trent Phillips (pictured), who also claimed the Dustin Johnson World Junior boys’ championship the year prior. Waccamaw (S.C.) looks to recapture the team glory it earned by winning the 2017 Palmetto, and Durham Academy (N.C.) sends two teams this year in its quest to return to the winners’ circle for the first time since 2015.
The top returning team from 2019, Charlotte Catholic (N.C.) looks to build on last year’s second-place finish. Charlotte Catholic is led in 2020 by Jack Heath, who won the 2019 Boys Junior PGA Championship with a blistering 21-under performance – finishing seven strokes clear of the tournament record set in 2017 by the player who would became the world’s top-ranked junior in 2019, Akshay Bhatia (who, like Phillips, is also a Dustin Johnson World Junior boys’ champion).
Among the event’s most distinguished individual alums are PGA TOUR stars Rickie Fowler, who won this event in 2006, and Harris English; Austin Eckroat (Edmond North, Okla.), who competed in the 2019 U.S. Open and is currently ranked 18th in the World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR); and Henry Shimp (Myers Park of Charlotte, N.C.), who delivered the clinching point for Stanford University in helping the Cardinal capture the team title in the 2019 NCAA Men’s Division I Golf Championship.
To learn more about this year’s event, visit the Palmetto Championship website.
