Essex County Country Club to Host Milestone 100th W.Y. Dear Championship
WEST ORANGE, N.J. – The 100th playing of the W.Y. Dear Junior Championship will take place August 9-11, and 81 junior golfers are set to tee off at the beautiful Essex County Country Club.
The 100th Junior consists of stroke play qualifying on Monday, August 9 which will determine 15 of the 16 players for the match play portion which continues on August 10 and 11. Defending champion Thomas O'Neill of Hackensack is exempt from qualifying, and is the No. 1 seed. The par 71 Essex County Country Club will play at 6,591 yards for the stroke play portion of the championship.
O’Neill, a rising senior at Bergen Catholic High School looks to defend his title and has earned an exemption into the match play portion of the championship. O’Neill is among the juniors in the field with prestigious titles to their name.
Liam Pasternak, two-time W.Y. Dear Boys Championship winner is in this year’s field. Pasternak, 14, is coming off an impressive performance at the 120th Amateur Championship presented by Provident Bank. The Morristown product earned a top-25 finish after compiling rounds of 73-67-71-79 at Essex Fells Country Club.
Also highlighting the 2021 field are U.S. Junior Amateur participants Dean Greyserman, Cole Ekert and Barnes Blake. Greyserman, who is committed to Stanford University seeks his second NJSGA junior title as he won 2019. University of Richmond bound Ekert finished in the top-15 in the 2021 NJSGA Amateur Championship. Blake, 16, recently finished in the top-10 at the Carter Cup at Baltusrol.
Essex County Country Club has an undeniable link to the NJSGA. It was at the club where the first organizational meeting of the NJSGA took place in June 1900. From that meeting sprang the first NJSGA Amateur Championship, played later that summer. The club has a proud legacy of hosting multiple New Jersey State Golf Association championships, 19 in total including nine NJSGA Amateurs (1900, 1910, 1915, 1923, 1935, 1944, 1962, 1982, and 2000) and six State Opens (1951, 1954, 1957, 1976, 1984 and 2014). It has hosted the Junior Championship previously in 1919 and 2006.
Coverage will be available at NJSGA.org, where live scoring, news, and recaps will be featured throughout the week. Fans and players can also follow the organization on its social media outlets at Facebook.com/njsga1900, @NJSGA1900 on Twitter and @njsga1900 on Instagram.
