CHARLEY HULL LYING SECOND IN SOUTH ATLANTIC AMATEUR

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FROM THE GOLFWEEK WEBSITE
By JULIE WILLIAMS
ORMOND BEACH, Florida – Jaye Marie Green was calculating so hard as she exited the scorer’s room Friday evening that she nearly missed a set of stairs leading into the pro shop at Oceanside Country Club.
For Green, who leads the South Atlantic Amateur by two shots in her debut at the event, it was a day of number crunching as she fought to keep her game together.
“I just wasn’t making putts. I didn’t make a birdie on my front side, so I was 2 over, and then I go bogey, double,” Green said of Nos. 11 and 12. “I’m, like, No, I’m not going to let this happen.”
Jaye Marie Green after winning the Polo Junior Golf Classic.
So Green fought back, birdieing Nos. 13, 16 and 18 for a third-round 74 to keep a hard-charging, 14-year-old English challenger Charley Hull (69), pictured left by Cal Carson Golf Agency, behind her and maintain her lead entering Saturday’s final round.
It’s a new kind of behavior for the 16-year-old, whose confidence is growing rapidly as she finishes out her junior career and looks forward to becoming a Florida Gator in the fall of 2012.
Green’s big breakthrough came in November, when she won the Polo Golf Junior Classic. It was her first AJGA invitational title.
“I’ve been working really hard, and just to win that, it definitely gave me a lot of confidence,” Green said.
A T-5 at the Dixie Amateur at the beginning of the year helped that mindset, and now Green is hoping to close out the four-day event for what would be her first major amateur victory. She stands at even-par 216, two shots ahead of Hull and five shots ahead of Ginger Howard (75). US Junior Ryder Cup player Howard, a fellow member of the class of 2012 who shared a golf cart with Green on Friday, also is looking for her first victory on the Orange Blossom Circuit.
After finishing T-2 at the Dixie and 10th at Harder Hall, Howard is due for an amateur crown of her own. But for a 30-footer for birdie at the par-5 12th, Howard’s third round was unspectacular.
“My putting was lacking because I was sticking it pretty close, and then I wasn’t really making any putts,” she said.
Like her classmate, Howard began 2011 with a better mental game, and it looks to pay big dividends.
“I’ve been doing lots of talking with my golf coach over at IMG Academies and my parents, mainly,” she said. “It’s the mental side of the whole golf game. I would just get so worked up over tournaments and just stress over scores and how I’m playing, so I’ve just tried to clam down basically and lose all the pressure.”
For a task easier said than done, it seems to be working.
Woburn Golf Club junior member Charley Hull, from Kettering, Northamptonshire, is only 14 years of age but she is playing like a veteran on the Orange Blossom Tour. After a good finish in the Harder Hall, the Northamptonshire player yesterday shot a three-under-par 69 after opening rounds of 75 and 75 - and Charley is breathing down the leader's neck in The Sally.
Charley strung together four birdies in an outstanding outward half of 32, birdieing the fifth, long sixth, seventh and eighth. She couldn't quite keep it up after the turn but eight pars and a single bogey at the 15th for 37 home was an inward half to be happy with
English Curtis Cup player Holly Clyburn (Woodhall Spa) felt right at home Friday at Oceanside Golf Club amid the wind and cold. In fact, it was a question she was asked several times.
“It’s nice because it’s a typical English course, what we’d get at home,” Clyburn said of the tight layout made difficult by a strong, cold seabreeze. “It’s nice, and I really enjoy it. I just can’t get my golf game to scratch around it.”

Clyburn, a 2010 GB and I Curtis Cupper who hails from Cleethorpes, England, shot a third-round 77 at Oceanside as she struggled to keep Lady Luck on her side.

“I don’t feel like I’m playing badly. I’m just getting unlucky breaks, and on the front nine I got all of the bad you could ever ask for,” Clyburn said.

As the only Curtis Cupper in the field this week from across the pond (Irish twins Lisa and Leona Maguire went home after the Harder Hall because of a death in the family), Clyburn is tagging along with a group of players from Stirling University out of Scotland.
Stirling players make the trek to Florida for the Orange Blossom Circuit each year, while Clyburn usually only stays through the Harder Hall. She has tied for second at the Dixie each of the last two years.
Now a full-time amateur, Clyburn is concentrating on golf and fitness as she prepares to turn professional next year. She hopes to put one more Curtis Cup under her belt – especially since the 2012 instalment will be played in Britain (at Nairn Golf Club).

“I’d probably do Ladies European Tour for a couple of years and then come over here and see how it is,” Clyburn said of a budding pro career. “It’s so hard because I’d love to do Futures Tour, but since I’m based back in England and my family is back there, it would be hard to leave and be based in Florida all on my own.”
Scottish champion Kelsey MacDonald from Stirling University and Nairn Dunbar GC had a third-round 82 after another bad start. On Thursday, she set off with a pair of double bogey 6s. On Friday, Kelsey bogeyed the first and third and then had a horrendous triple bogey 6 at the short fourth.
A birdie at the long sixth was to prove her only sub-par figure of the day. She bogeyed seven-eight-ninth to be out in seven-over-par 43, probably her worst outward half since she became a +3 international player.
The trials and tribulations were not over yet, though. The Scot had a double bogey 7 at the long 12th and a bogey 4 at the short 14th to come home in 39.