GRANITEVILLE, S.C. (March 19, 2025) – After the first round of play in the Junior Invitational at Sage Valley Golf Club, Joshua Bai once again leads the Boys Division, while Pimpisa Rubrong and Aphrodite Deng share the lead in the Girls Division.
Bai of New Zealand shot a 5-under-par 67 to take the lead after the first of four rounds. The Kiwi is followed closely by American Mason Howell, who fired a 68, and three players – Luke Colton and Miles Russell from the U.S. and Hugo Le Goff of France – who carded 69s.
The top of the leaderboard at Sage Valley is a familiar spot for Bai, who led the 2024 Junior Invitational after the first round before going on to finish third. With the tournament expanded this year from 54 to 72 holes, Bai feels comfortable in his quest to stay in the lead.
“I got into a similar groove today as last year, just stayed patient the whole day and let it happen,” Bai said. “I felt like I really wanted to play another round last year, so I was excited when they announced they were going to four rounds this year.”
In the Girls Division, Rubrong of Thailand and Deng of Canada share the lead after first rounds of 2-under 70, followed by Soomin Oh of South Korea (71) and Yujie Liu of China (71) and Alice Kong of France (72) in the top five.
Rubrong made three birdies and a lone bogey to card the low round, matched only after Deng made birdie on the 18th hole. For Rubrong, her goals for the day centered around saving pars, something she was able to do again and again.
“I feel like (par) 72 here is pretty good, and I just have to try my best – today, I made a lot of par saves,” Rubrong said. “Just make pars.”
Likewise, Deng emphasized focusing on keeping her ball in play and not taking too many chances to stay in contention.
“You have to play it safe because there are a lot of places you can miss and get into trouble,” she said. “I think the course is going to play really hard all week. The greens are really slopey, and when they’re fast they are just so hard.”
The second round of play begins at 9:30 a.m. Thursday. Live scoring and pairings can be found at www.juniorinvitational.com.
About the Junior Invitational
The 14th annual Junior Invitational features 24 of the top junior girl players and 36 of the top boy players in the world. Recognized by Golfweek as the No. 1 junior event in golf, the Junior Invitational welcomes the best golfers from around the world to Sage Valley Golf Club in Graniteville, S.C. Founded in 2011, the Junior Invitational has become one of the most desired invitations in the world of competitive junior golf. Past participants have included some of the top names in golf: Scottie Scheffler, Justin Thomas, Colin Morikawa, Viktor Hovland, Cameron Young, Matthew Fitzpatrick, Anna Davis, Megha Ganne and more. For more information and tickets, visit www.juniorinvitational.com.