By Jed Blackwell, Associate Editor-Publisher

The celebratory clubhouse dessert waiting for the champions of Monday’s T.L. Hanna Yellow Jacket Invitational at Cobb’s Glenn was enjoyed by the host team.

The win certainly wasn’t a piece of cake.

The Yellow Jackets outlasted Greenville in a one-hole playoff for the title after each team recorded scores of 301 to force the match to an extra hole. The Jackets got three pars and a bogey on the par-4 ninth  to put it away.

“It’s a great chance for us, first off, to get all our kids an opportunity to play,” T.L. Hanna coach Eric Bona said. “More importantly than that, it’s a chance for us at a course that we play on to kind of see where we stand with everybody else.”

Hanna, the defending AAAAA Champion and currently ranked on top of the first AAAAA poll welcomed a loaded field. to their event,

AAAAA Dorman already had a win at the season opening Rebel Invitational while Boiling Springs and Mauldin are never very far down a leader board.

AAAA power Greenville and Greenwood the winner of the Tee -Off Classic represented the top-10 teams in the AAAA Classification..

Wren the top ranked AAA team in South Carolina recently won the Anderson County Championship and followed it up with a win at the Aynor Blue Jacket Invitational.

And just to put a little more icing on the championship cake, the top ranked Class A team with the number one junior player in the country, William Jennings and the Christ Church team added to an almost “Southern Cross” type field at the course in Anderson,

With the strength of the field and so many teams and players capable of taking over the championship and running away with a win made the Hanna comeback to force a playoff even more satisfying.

“For us to come back and kind of battle and put it together there in the playoff and play as solid as they did is a testament to their character and their nature,” Bona said.

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Bennett Scaletta led the Yellow Jackets with a one-under 71, tying Gray Collegiate’s Teddy Dunn and Wren’s Dylan Park for medalist honors.

The entire Hanna team showed the Yellow Jackets are much more than just four guys playing with last year’s South Carolina Golf Association Player of th year in Scaletta.

Erik Erlenkeuser fired a 73 to join the All-Tournament team, with Caden Olsommer’s 74 and Cal Harbin’s 83 rounding out the scoring for T.L.Hanna.

Greenville’s Hugh Faulkner led the Red Raiders’ effort, making All-Tournament with a 73. The other four Greenville golfers – Tip Price, Griff Bell, Charlie Warren, and Parker Homesley – all carded 76 to tie for 17th.

Nation Ford shot 302 to finish third just missing a chance to make it a three-way playoff.

Glenn Oxner’s 74 helped Mauldin shoot a 306 total to tie Greenwood for fourth place.

Christ Church’s William Jennings, who played in the prestigious Junior Invitational at Sage Valley this weekend and Nation Ford’s Carter Smith both shot 73 to join the All-Tournament team.

In the compressed high school golf season in South Carolina more than half the field in the YellowJacket tournament were playing this past weekend in the Can-Am Matches or the Georgia-South Carolina Challenge Matches or a regularly scheduled weekend event, making the scores and the level of competition even more amzing.

Team Scores from the Yellow Jacket Invitational

Individual and Team totals from the Yellow Jacket Invitational

Photos from the 2024 Yellow Jacket Invitational

SC GolfClub.com photos from the YellowJacket Invitational are Copywrite © Gwinn Davis Media