Wyoming Prep Golfer Wins Big in North Carolina

You won’t find Easton Paxton near the top of any junior golf rankings. After all, for 6 months out of the year, he doesn’t touch a golf club.

Part of that has to do with his hometown being in Riverton, Wyoming. But, put more simply, Paxton would rather play basketball in the winter anyway.

It sure isn’t hurting his golf game.

Paxton shot a 6-under-par 208 over three rounds at Pinehurst Resort and Country Club, including a solid 2-over 72 in the final round on famed Pinehurst No. 2, to win the 37^th Junior Boys’ North & South Amateur Championship on Wednesday.

“It’s really special,” said Paxton. “I’ve come close in some big events like this a lot, but I’ve never been able to get it done all the way.

“I played solid all week, but I really started to feel it at the end. I didn’t finish as strong as I’d like to, but I learned a lot about myself. I’m just very blessed to be here.”

Paxton’s ranking has less to do with his golf game and more with the few events he’s played thus far this season. The 16-year-old has turned heads before, though, including former PGA Tour veteran David Ogrin, whom Paxton beat by five shots after a 66 in a U.S. Open local qualifier in 2014.

“I don’t know if I saw the next Tiger Woods,” Ogrin told Golf Digest’s Ron Sirak last summer, “but I think I saw the next Jordan Spieth.”

Paxton was brilliant for much of the North & South, opening the tournament with a pair of 4-under 68s on Pinehurst No. 8 and Pinehurst No. 5, respectively, to build a four-shot lead entering the final round.

For a while, Paxton continued that eye-opening play on Donald Ross’s crown jewel, playing the front 9 of the course that hosted the 2014 U.S. Open and U.S. Women’s Open in 2 under.

But Paxton – admittedly, he would add – began to get tight near the end of the round. Bogeys on 15 and 17 sandwiched a double bogey, and he needed a clean 18^th hole to hold onto the championship.

“I wasn’t nervous on 18; by then I decided to just trust my swing and myself,” Paxton said. “But before that? Yes, I was nervous.”

Paxton won by two shots over Atkinson, North Carolina’s Blake Taylor (70-69-71-210) and by three over Daniel Wetterich (69-70-72-211), of Cincinnati.