A veteran player on South Florida’s golf courses and winner of an impressive array of trophies and honors, including Gold Coast Golf Association’s 2020 Player of the Year award, Elijah Ritchie says the game still has a lot to teach him.
And at just 11 years old, the Coral Springs sixth-grader already has the skills, focus, and work ethic to meet the challenges.
Among his most recent tests? On a recent weekend outing at Crandon Golf Course, competing in a U.S. Kids Golf tournament in what was only his fourth time playing a full 18 holes, Ritchie had to come to grips with what to do about lunch.
“I was hungry, but mostly I was thirsty,” Ritchie said after that Saturday’s brutally hot and humid round in Key Biscayne, where hesat in fifth place after Round 1.
His dad, Jeremiah Ritchie, said he keeps Pedialyte handy for Elijah during tournament play. Over a 9-hole round, that’s enough to keep his son hydrated and strong both physically and mentally.
Ritchie started playing golf at four years old. His dad, a veteran coach who has worked with many area youth teams, said he got Elijah some lessons “so we could have something to do as a family, something to do when I get older.”
Elijah, it turned out, had something of a knack for golf.
“He’s so resilient and very focused,” Jeremiah Ritchie said.
Ritchie enrolled Elijah in a local youth golf program in Lauderhill, Fore Life, founded and run by Paula Pearson-Tucker, the city’s lead golf pro and an LPGA Teaching and Club Professional.
“I think I learned as much about the game from Coach Tucker as Elijah did,” Jeremiah Ritchie said.
Youth golf in South Florida can be a dizzying sprint across three counties as kids play as part of numerous leagues and loosely affiliated teams. Elijah currently is among the 18 11-year-olds playing for a Boca Raton Local Tour team that also features Charlie Woods, Tiger Woods’ son.
Boca Local, affiliated with U.S. Kids Golf, plays a six-tournament schedule from Sept. 19 through Oct. 25. Elijah also plays Junior Golf Association of Broward County tournaments, competing against kids as old as 14. He captured his first JGA tourney win at age 10 and since then has finished in the top three six times, with two victories — one of them in the three-day JGA Championship. He finished the JGA’s most recent season, from June 22 through July 27, atop the Boys B division, making him eligible to move up to Division A next season.
Of Gold Coast Golf Association’s nine- tournament schedule, which opens in September and runs through the next August, Elijah came away with three wins, four runner-up finishes, and one third-place finish in the Boys 9-10 division.
“It was a long season,” Elijah told the Sun Sentinel’s Gary Curreri after winning Player of the Year. The honor, he said, “didn’t really surprise me because I trained for it. I had it in my head when I was practicing.”
Elijah practices at least two hours a day, whether at Coral Springs Country Club’s course, Osprey Point Golf Course in Boca, or at home, in the backyard.
“He’s surprisingly disciplined, and already has a good work ethic,” his dad says, explaining Elijah gets in strength training in the morning before school, then is ready to hit the links after his classwork is done in the afternoon.
What Elijah loves most about the game is shaping his shots, and drawing and fading his shots. But after the rainout in Key Biscayne, he was perfectly zeroed in and content to get right with putting, getting to Coral Springs CC’s practice green in the afternoon that Sunday and playing the greens on the first few holes until the skies began to purple and the groundskeeper rousted everyone still on the course out.
“We don’t know how far he’ll go (with golf),” his dad said. “But for right now, he loves the game. He’s pretty good, and is still hungry to learn more.”