One of the offshoots of Hawaii junior golf’s immense success the past decade is finding so many former juniors anywhere but Hawaii.
Alex Ching qualified for PGA Tour China earlier this month. The 2008 Hawaii State High School champ played on the tour’s Latinoamerica series full-time in 2013, after a fifth-place finish in Buenos Aires a year earlier.
Makawao’s Sam Cyr, the 2008 and ’09 NAIA national champion, will play the Asian Tour for the fourth year. He has only conditional status and hopes to start at the Indonesian Masters in April.
"I have decided to play in less events this year to really be geared up and prepared for each event," said Cyr, who has won the Hawaii State, Mid-Pacific and Maui opens. "I am trying to have better balance in my life and golf game. I really am enjoying the time tightening up my game right now.
"I really have enjoyed traveling the world, seeing different places and cultures. I have learned so much about my golf game, about life and how blessed we really are. I really cherish the friendships that I have made with friends all over the world as well."
The 2015 Symetra Tour begins Friday, with Stephanie Kono and Britney Yada teeing off at the Gateway Classic in Mesa, Ariz. The LPGA developmental tour is playing for a record $2.73 million this year. The top 10 on the money list at the end of the season earn LPGA tour cards.
Nicole Sakamoto, who won a record four straight Hawaii women’s stroke play championships before turning pro, is on the Suncoast Ladies Tour in Florida with Ayaka Okamoto, who played the LPGA tour with Kono three years ago.
Suncoast started in 2007 and now has 25 events from January to November. Membership is about $500 and entry fees range from $250-$510. Okamoto tied for 16th in the first tournament of the year and Mari Chun won $700 in her only start last year.
Sakamoto also plans to come home in April to try to qualify for the LPGA Lotte Championship at Ko Olina. She tied for 11th in her past two Suncoast starts of 2014.
"I haven’t been in that situation in a while," she says, "and since I’ve moved here I have had the chance and the feeling is great. It motivates me more to work harder."
She is living with Waianae High graduate Alvin Okada in Florida, where he is playing the Minor League Tour, and hopes to bring a tour stop to Hawaii in April. Sakamoto says she is enjoying the "new atmosphere" and her relationship with Okada, as she sees "both of our golf games evolving to where we want it."
Okada, who turned pro in 2007, has won $2,000 on the Minor League Tour since starting last September, with five top 5s.
The rest of the guys are all over the map.
Jared Sawada and Richard Hattori, the guy Sawada beat in the 2013 Manoa Cup final, are in Japan. Hattori won the Taiheiyo Club Challenge in a playoff last October — just after his 19th birthday — on the JGTO’s developmental tour.
Tadd Fujikawa, Nick Mason, Bradley Shigezawa and Max Bonk have been playing the West Coast Tour of the newly merged eGolf Gateway Tour. The largest developmental tour in the U.S. has approximately 35 events and a guaranteed purse minimum of $100,000.
Mason, the 2013 Hawaii State Open winner, was 17th at last week’s West Coast stop in Arizona, with Bonk 33rd. Two weeks earlier, Shigezawa collected $1,015 for a 37th-place finish.
That will pay about half his membership fee for the year. Weekly entry fees range from $1,060 to $1,175 for members and $1,270 to $1,375 non-members. EGolf’s East Coast Tour starts next weekend.
Two-time Manoa Cup champ David Fink is looking at qualifying in Canada, a tour the PGA took over in 2013. The three qualifying tournaments for Canada, which each have 132-player fields, filled up in a matter of hours, at $2,750 a pop.
Hawaii’s Cory Oride and Spencer Shishido did not make it through qualifying in China, but Ching tied for ninth with a final-round 69 in frigid weather at Mission Hills Golf Club in Haikou, Hainan. He was one of six Americans in the Top 15, which earns fully exempt status for this year’s 13 tournaments.
The top five on the Canadian, Latinoamerica and China tours’ order of merit are exempt on next year’s Web.com tour, now the only way to the PGA Tour. The next five are exempt into the final stage of Web.com qualifying. The current poster boy for success in Canada is British Columbia’s Nick Taylor, who was seventh on the 2013 Order of Merit and earned his card on the Web.com Tour before winning on the PGA Tour last year.
That is Ching’s dream, along with the others. He tied for ninth in December’s eGolf Tour Championship, with Nick Mason 13th. Ching also plans on trying some Web.com qualifiers this year and a few events on the Golden State Tour, and will be home for the Mid-Pacific Open the end of April.
"I am thoroughly enjoying playing professional golf," he says. "It definitely has its ups and downs right now. I changed my swing out of college and it put a major hiccup in my professional career.
"However, Dean Wilson has been helping me with my swing and game for the last year and I couldn’t be more pleased with how it is shaping up. I have turned some corners and I believe my game is even better than it was in college. I am very thankful that Dean has been helping me. He knows so much about the game and I have been picking his brain to gain more information."
