Junior Championship sends Erlenkeuser to USGA Junior Championship

By Stan Olenik Editor-Publisher. The Golf Club

At 6-foot-7, Erik Erlenkeuser usually stands head and shoulders above the rest of the field.. Erlenkeuser won the South Carolina Junior Champioship

This week at The Country Club of Spartanburg, the recent T.L. Hanna graduate did the same thing on the leaderboard.

Erlenkeuser eagled his first hole and closed with a final-round 6-under-par 65 to win the South Carolina Junior Championship by seven shots, adding another title to a resume that already includes multiple state championships, a Jay Haas Junior Player of the Year award and a scholarship to Georgia Southern.

The victory also earned Erlenkeuser a spot in the U.S. Junior Championship next month at Saucon Valley Country Club in Pennsylvania, one more opportunity before beginning his college career.

Some golf observers still look at high school championships with a skeptical eye, pointing to smaller fields or or shorter courses as reasons those results should be discounted.

Erlenkeuser’s career suggests otherwise.

For most of the last four years, his first challenge wasn’t becoming the best junior golfer in South Carolina.

It was becoming the best player on his own team.

T.L. Hanna teammate Bennett Scaletta owns two Jay Haas Junior Player of the Year awards, a Southern Cross championship and a collection of victories that rarely see him finish outside the top of the leaderboard. Day after day, practice after practice and tournament after tournament, the two future Division I golfers pushed each other to another level.

Erlenkeuser believes that relationship is one of the biggest reasons both players have enjoyed so much success.

“I think the competition between me and Bennett, that we set aside and that we play each other every day, I think that makes us better,” Erlenkeuser said. “I’ve been playing with him since we were like 11 years old, and I wouldn’t be as good as I am today if I didn’t play with him. And he would say the same thing about me.”

Then he explained the partnership in a way every golfer can understand.

“We’re here, then I’m here, then we kind of just level each other up more and more and more.”

The formula worked.

The Yellow Jackets collected three state championships, Erlenkeuser claimed two individual titles and Scaletta won one as an eighth grader. Along the way, the pair established themselves as two of the best junior golfers in South Carolina.

This week Erlenkeuser once again finished ahead of Scaletta and many of the state’s highest-ranked juniors, reinforcing the idea that the names dominating high school golf are often the same ones filling the top of elite junior leaderboards.

His winning round also offered an interesting point of comparison.

Only a week earlier, Korn Ferry Tour professionals competed on the same Country Club of Spartanburg layout during the BMW Charity Pro-Am. While the course played differently as a shorter par 71 instead of the tournament’s par 70 setup, Erlenkeuser’s closing 65 stands comfortably alongside the best golf played there all month.

Just as important as the score was the familiar face carrying his bag.

Former T.L. Hanna teammate Caden Olsommer, now playing at Anderson University, served as Erlenkeuser’s caddie throughout the championship.

“My best friend Caden caddied for me,” Erlenkeuser said after the victory. “He’s going to be my caddie on Tour.”

It sounds like a dream shared between lifelong friends.

Those who have watched Erlenkeuser’s career know it is really a plan.

After winning the Orange Jacket Championship several years ago, he set his sights on winning as a junior, playing Division I golf and eventually making a career on the PGA Tour.

So far, he has quietly checked off every box.

Standing 6-foot-7, Erik Erlenkeuser has always been easy to spot in a crowd.

After another dominant performance at the South Carolina Junior Championship, his game stands just as tall.

Scores from the South Carolina Golf Association Scores https://scjga.bluegolf.com/bluegolf/scjga26/event/scjga2617/contest/1/leaderboard.htm

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