She’s still very young, but at 14 years old Alexa Pano, from Lake Worth, Florida, is well accustomed to being the center of the media spotlight. At just 11, she became the youngest golfer to play in a professional tournament, the Yonex Ladies Open on Japan’s LPGA Tour. By that early age, she had already been seven times world champion in different competitions, with four victories in the U.S. Kids Golf Championship and three consecutive victories in the IMG Academy Junior World, a record only achieved by former world number one Lorena Ochoa.
And then her successes followed. At the age of 12, she became the youngest winner of the American Junior Golf Association (AJGA) Championship and was elected Junior Player of the Year. And at 13 she played, by invitation, her first LPGA Tour tournament in the United States, the Thornberry Creek LPGA Classic. At that age she already had nine world titles and 62 national titles.
Now she is in the news again because she will play an important tournament at Augusta National Golf Club, as she has qualified for the inaugural Augusta National Women’s Amateur Tournament, which will be played in April just before the Masters.
Alexa may be the youngest of all the competitors in the tournament, but she is more than used to the pressure, even at Augusta National, having won the iconic Masters venue twice in the Drive, Chip and Putt competition. The confirmation of her qualification in the Augusta Women’s Amateur comes just days after she claimed her third consecutive victory in the Junior Honda Classic.
The first two rounds will be played at the Champions Retreat, a 27-hole course next to Augusta National, and the top 30 golfers of that event -nobody doubts that Alexa will be one of them- will play the final round at the neighboring Masters venue.
Aside from her golf instructor, there are many who predict that young Alexa could become the future world number one professional golfer… if the Asians allow her to do so, of course.
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