WHEN you’ve just turned 12 and you’re giving away as much as four years in age and a dozen strokes in handicap, you’re not supposed to win an 18-hole stroke play tournament played on level terms.
But nobody told that to little Jarvis Miller, who last month shot a sparkling round of 77 to tie with more experienced rivals Amy Hodgkins and Jedd Brady in the Mount Coolum Junior Open Championship.
Then he lined up against Amy, a scratch marker from Royal Queensland, and Jedd, who plays off a handicap of one at Virginia, in a sudden-death playoff, where handicaps don’t count and success is measured by steely resolve and unflinching nerve.
Amy dropped out on the first hole, a bogey not sufficient to match Jedd’s and Jarvis’ pars. And when Jarvis chipped and putted for a par on the second – against Jedd’s bogey five – he’d become the champion in an event he contested last year as a cadet in the nine-hole category for virtual beginners.
It was an outstanding performance by a young man, who appreciated playing on his home circuit almost as much as the support he received from mum Amy, dad Jason and a huge gallery of excited Mount Coolum members.
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