Fellow golfers,
Your NVGA volunteers are hard at work organizing the 2025 season.
In past years we have tried to schedule separate Regular Amateur and Senior Amateur events for the Northern VA Amateur, Northern VA 4-ball, Northern VA Senior Amateur and Northern VA Senior 4-4ball tournaments. That required us to secure 4 different venues and suitable dates, sometimes with small or an unknown number of Regular Amateur players. We have also seen a gradual decline in the number of our entries for the Senior events from about 80 players to about 60 players. The covid period increased play at our clubs making it more difficult to find venues willing to host outside events due to pressures of their membership and Boards.
To address these issues, our Board has decided to conduct combined Regular Amateur and Senior Amateur events beginning this year. That way we hope to attract a field of about 100 players combined and with a larger field make it more lucrative for the clubs to host our events. This will also allow us to secure fewer venues and suitable dates to simplify the planning process.
Here is what we have planned to date:
Dates Tournament Venue
June 2-3 NVGA Match Play The Piedmont Club
July 7-8 Northern VA Amateur and Senior Amateur Evergreen Country Club
TBD Northern VA 4-ball and Senior 4-ball TBD
The NVGA Match Play tournament on 2-3 June is a repeat of last year’s inaugural event. This is a limited field event to up to 64 players: 32 Regular Amateurs divided into two flights of 16, and 32 Senior Amateurs divided into one flight of 16 Seniors (age 55+) and one flight of 16 Super-Seniors (age 65+). The event will be held at The Piedmont Club in Haymarket, VA (same site as last year). Monday 2 June will consist of two 18-hole matches for all players. Those 16 players winning both matches on day 1 (4 players in each of the 4 divisions) will advance to the semifinals and finals on day 2 (Tuesday 3 June). Players losing one or more matches on day 1 are eliminated and do not play on day 2. Entries will open in March or April and close once all four brackets are filled with 16 players each, or no later than Wednesday 28 May. Entries will be accepted in the order they are received until each of the four brackets are filled; a small wait list will be available for the 32 spots in the Regular Amateur flights and the 16 spots in each of the Senior and Super-Senior flights in the event of withdrawals. Entry fees for players on the wait list that do not make it into the field will be refunded. Since we don’t have time for a stroke play round to do seeding, the tournament committee will seed each bracket based upon the players’ national and/or state rankings and handicap indexes.
The combined Northern VA Amateur and Senior Amateur Championships will be a 2-day 36-hole stroke play event. The Open Division for Regular Amateurs will compete for the Henry Kerfoot Trophy (established in 1974) and we expect this event will remain a Tier 3 VA state ranking points event. The Senior Division remains a Tier S3 VA state ranking points event, and we have requested that the Super-Senior Division also be eligible for VA state ranking points (not yet approved by the VSGA). We hope to have tournament information sheets for these events available by March which will be posted to the website and emailed to our contact list.
We are working to secure a venue and date for the combine 4-ball / Senior 4-ball tournament, which will be a 1-day 18-hole event. When we have that event scheduled, we will inform you.
We are looking forward to the 2025 season and hope to see you in the events listed above!
Regards,
Jon Zampedro (Amateur Championships tournament director) contact at jonz@novagolf.org
Richard Lion (Amateur Championships assistant tournament director) contact at richardl@novagolf.org
Mark Boedicker (Senior Championships tournament director) contact at markb@novagolf.org
Lynn Wessman (Senior Championships assistant tournament director) contact at lynnw@novagolf.org