SC junior golf ‘the real winner every year’ at annual Golf Ball event

Hear the term “golf ball” and thoughts naturally turn to, well, a golf ball. Titleist or Callaway or TaylorMade or ... The list is enormous, and each brand offers a myriad of models with different characteristics.

The South Carolina Junior Golf Foundation offers a different and far less complex definition. The organization’s annual “Golf Ball” comes with capital letters and two specific purposes: a casual evening to celebrate the game and raise funds for junior golf.

Started at the turn of the century to raise a few bucks for the fledgling South Carolina Junior Golf Association, the event unfolds for the 25th time on April 9.

“Getting better each year is always the goal,” said Biff Lathrop, the South Carolina Golf Association’s executive director.

To outdo the 2025 edition will be a challenge. Attendance climbed into the 350 to 400 range, and the organization raised about $120,000 in one evening.

The event began in 2000 with a jawbreaker of a name, Golf Ball and Masters Viewing Party, on Thursday of Masters week at the State Fairgrounds. With the same date and shorter name, the gathering moved to its current location, USC’s Alumni Center, in 2019.

“The SCGA had started the Junior Golf Foundation in 1995 and realized we needed to secure more revenue to do what we wanted to accomplish with the foundation,” Lathrop said.

The premise remains the same: both live and silent auctions, raffles for a table of related golf items, heavy hors d’oeuvres catered by Southern Way and an open bar. Technology has allowed online bidding for the silent auctions.

“We have great golf trips to places in South Carolina and the Southeast and Northeast for the auctions,” Lathrop said. “The puppies are always popular; we have one in the raffle and one in the live auction.

“We have a lot of rounds for golf available, memorabilia, art work. It’s not all golf-oriented; there’s something for everyone in the auctions.”

Playing opportunities on some top courses will be available in the auctions. The list includes Palmetto, Country Club of Charleston, Philadelphia Cricket Club, Solina, Quixote and May River at Palmetto Bluff.

An event of this scale does not happen overnight. Committees, both staffers and volunteers, will meet soon afterward to discuss what worked, what didn’t and what could be better and begin making preparations for the following year.

“Planning really ramps up in November and December,” Lathrop said.

An outing at Quail Hollow, site of the 2025 PGA Championship, drew the top bid a year ago, but, Lathrop said, “the real winner every year is junior golf.”

The Foundation will distribute more than $300,000 this year in scholarships and grants.

This year’s Ball is again at USC’s Alumni Center on April 9, beginning at 6:30 p.m. Details on tickets, bidding and sponsorship opportunities are available online at www.scjgf.org.

Chip shots. USC’s women won two of three matches and placed fifth in the Old Barnwell Derby Match-Play in Aiken. Ranked 21st nationally, the Gamecocks dropped a 3-2 decision to Wake Forest, then defeated Florida State 3-2 and Ole Miss 4.5-.5. Junior Maylis Lamoure won her three matches to lead Carolina, which next plays in the SEC Championship in mid-April. ... In the rain-shortened Briar’s Creek Invitational on Johns Island, Clemson’s women finished sixth. Aitana Tuesta (eighth) and Sydney Roberts (T-11) led the Tigers. ... Brian Allen (Columbia) and David Seawell (Aiken) captured the SCGA’s Forty Plus Series title at Aiken Golf Club with a 3-under-par 67. They earned the win in a scorecard playoff over the teams of Hartsville’s Matthew Frye and Josh Frye and Aiken’s Scott Robbins and Bo McCullough.