RDGA Junior Championships Visit Blue Heron Hills for the First Time in 2019
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FOLLOW RESULTS FROM THE 2019 RDGA JUNIOR CHAMPIONSHIPS:
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Originally developed by local Home Leasing entrepreneurs Norman and Nelson Leenhouts - and designed by noted local golf course architect Pete Craig and former Oak Hill superintendent Dick Bator - Blue Heron Hills opened during the spring of 1987. The Macedon, Wayne County, course was being billed as one of the area’s top soon-to-go-private country clubs, but to help give the course a little early gravitas, one of the first official events hosted by the club was a sold-out exhibition round played by Hall-of-Famer Jack Nicklaus and his son, Jack Jr.
Soon thereafter, Blue Heron Hills began hosting the local Tournament of Champions – honoring current and past local club champions – which became one of the top amateur championships around the Rochester area, a tradition that continues to this day.
 The view from the 10th tee at Blue Heron Hills.
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“The goal has been to bring the course back to its original luster,” notes Edmister, “and Mark is the key to the whole thing.”
“Mark” is Mark Montebella, a seasoned head greens superintendent with several years of experience at a number of Rochester-area golf courses and a award-winning member of the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America. Montebella has assembled an all-star grounds crew with the intention of bringing the golf course up to the expectations of those golfers who have played there in the past.
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Now more than four years into the revitalization efforts of Montebella, Edmister and the new ownership group, Blue Heron Hills' 6,731-yard, par-71 championship golf course is beginning to look like the course that hosted so many of golf's greatest names through the years.
This month's RDGA Junior Championships will provide a solid test of those efforts - both of the conditions of the course, as well as for the players themselves - although the competition itself will be new to Blue Heron Hills, which has never hosted the District Junior Championships before. The competition itself features a mix of match play and stroke play, with Junior Girls (ages 15 to 18), Sub Junior Girls (12 to 14) and Pee Wees (7 to 11) competing in stroke play format and Boys Junior and Sub Juniors playing in match play competition.
"This course lends itself to match play very well," suggests Edmister. "Especially the closing holes. I'm sure many of the matches will come down to holes 16, 17 and 18 - and a player could easily be 2-down on 16 and get back to even by 18. It will be fun to watch."
A HISTORY OF LOCAL JUNIOR GOLF
Like many RDGA tournaments, the Junior Championship has evolved through time. Initially conducted as a match play championship for all junior boys, ages 18 and under, the RDGA Junior Championship included two flights: Juniors (for boys ages 15 to 18) and Sub-Juniors (for boys ages 14 and under). In 1976, a third flight was added – Pee Wees – for boys ages 11 and under.
The RDGA Junior Championships continued with that same format of three flights – Juniors (ages 15 to 18), Sub-Juniors (ages 12 to 14) and Pee Wees (ages 7 to 11) – for the next 25 years, until 2000, when girls divisions were added for each of the age flights of the Championship, becoming the first RDGA competition to include female competitors.
Since 2000, the RDGA Junior Championships have been conducted using this same format – as match play, with boys and girls divisions in three age flights – although beginning in 2016, the format of the Girls Junior and Girls Sub Junior Championships were changed to stroke play. The Pee Wee Championships - for both Boys and Girls - have always been conducted as two 9-hole stroke play rounds.
 The ninth green at Blue Heron Hills overlooks the lake that separates the front and back nine.
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