{"id":39411,"date":"2023-10-10T15:51:12","date_gmt":"2023-10-10T18:51:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelaker.ca\/?p=39411"},"modified":"2023-10-10T15:51:12","modified_gmt":"2023-10-10T18:51:12","slug":"macdonald-coaches-team-canada-to-first-ever-world-junior-girls-golf-championship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/?p=39411","title":{"rendered":"MacDonald coaches Team Canada to first-ever World Junior Girls golf championship"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>[adrotate banner=&#8221;111&#8243;]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[adrotate banner=&#8221;84&#8243;]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>BRAMPTON, ONT.\/FALL RIVER:<\/strong> A Fall River golf coach was part of another piece of Canadian golf history on Oct. 7 when Team Canada captured its first-ever team title at the&nbsp;World&nbsp;Junior&nbsp;Girls&nbsp;Golf&nbsp;Championship, presented by Sargent Farms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jeff MacDonald, who now calls Fall River home, &nbsp;was the head coach of the winning Canadian squad at the championship. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MacDonald has been an assistant coach to Team Canada&#8217;s NextGen Golf team with Golf Canada and the Director of Instruction at Ashburn Golf Club for many years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The best a Canadian squad had placed before was third &#8211; this year they won it all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>ADVERTISEMENT:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[adrotate banner=&#8221;190&#8243;]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[adrotate banner=&#8221;115&#8243;]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Canada 1&nbsp;Team&nbsp;comprised&nbsp;14-year-old&nbsp;Anna Huang of Vancouver&nbsp;(71-69-70-70\u2014280),&nbsp;17-year-old&nbsp;Vanessa Borovilos of Toronto&nbsp;(70-73-73-75\u2014291),&nbsp;and&nbsp;17-year-old&nbsp;Vanessa Zhang of Vancouver&nbsp;(72-75-80-68\u2014295)&nbsp;shot a team-total&nbsp;138 under cool and blustery conditions at&nbsp;Brampton&nbsp;Golf&nbsp;Club in Brampton, Ont.&nbsp;to finish at 4-under 564 for the championship, a single shot clear of the Republic of Korea.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Canada&nbsp;1, who&nbsp;began the day with a share of the&nbsp;third-round&nbsp;lead alongside Korea and the United States, needed a late-round charge to overtake&nbsp;Korea, who held a one-shot team lead through 16 holes.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The tournament shifted on the&nbsp;par-5&nbsp;17<sup>th<\/sup>&nbsp;hole&nbsp;when Huang made a birdie for Canada and Korea\u2019s Soomin Oh made a bogey. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Zhang then stepped up with a birdie on the par-418<sup>th<\/sup>, followed by Huang rolling in a par-putt to&nbsp;secure&nbsp;Canada\u2019s first-ever team&nbsp;gold medal&nbsp;at the prestigious international&nbsp;junior&nbsp;championship.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>ADVERTISEMENT:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[adrotate banner=&#8221;169&#8243;]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[adrotate banner=&#8221;103&#8243;]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MacDonald, who&#8217;s hometown is Chester, was&nbsp;proud of how his team battled all week, going&nbsp;head-to-head&nbsp;with powerhouse challengers from Korea and the United States to earn the prestigious title \u2013 of world champions.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt feels really amazing, the girls have worked so hard, they all contributed so much today, it was really close all day and they dealt with the stress really, really well,\u201d said MacDonald, who was especially proud of the team\u2019s resolve and self-belief that they could win.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p> \u201cAnna made&nbsp;a&nbsp;huge&nbsp;birdie on 17 while Vanessa was&nbsp;rolling in an incredible 30-footer on 18. We always knew it was a good company to be in, they (Korea and the USA) weren\u2019t going to back down. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;The Koreans made a lot of putts today, they were exceptional, and our Canadians really stepped up&nbsp;to&nbsp;the occasion. They never felt like they couldn\u2019t win this golf tournament. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;The whole time they knew they belonged, and they knew they could compete with those countries. They were competing, they wanted to win, and they knew they could win the whole time.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>ADVERTISEMENT;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[adrotate banner=&#8221;192&#8243;]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[adrotate banner=&#8221;127&#8243;]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI think&nbsp;me,&nbsp;and Vanessa (Zhang) did a great job on the last four holes, we both made two birdies, so that was a really great comeback for us, I\u2019m just really proud of how we all did as a team, its not just individual scores, its all about the team effort,\u201d&nbsp;said&nbsp;Huang in a Golf Canada release.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Canada\u2019s previous best team finish at the World Junior Girls&nbsp;Golf&nbsp;Championship was&nbsp;a&nbsp;bronze medal in 2014.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t think we all had super high expectations going into this event, we just set out to do our best every single day and it was nice that we saw ourselves on the leaderboard, it more just came down to keeping our practice routines the same and trying our best each and every shot,\u201d said Zhang.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s such a cool experience, I said this earlier this week, you\u2019re playing for something bigger than yourself, you\u2019re playing for a team, and to do this together, feels pretty cool,\u201d added Borovilos.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>ADVERTISEMENT:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[adrotate banner=&#8221;102&#8243;]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[adrotate banner=&#8221;78&#8243;]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The two-time past winners from&nbsp;Korea would finish with the silver medal, shooting a team-total 3-under 565 followed by Czech Republic earning bronze at 4-over 572. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Rounding out the top-five were Sweden (5-over 573) and Mexico (8-over 576).&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Team Canada 2 squad of 14-year-old Miranda Lu of Vancouver, 16-year-old Luna Lu of Burnaby, B.C. and 14-year-old Eileen Park of Red Deer, Alta. finished 18<sup>th<\/sup>.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><em>&#8211; With information from Golf Canada press release.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[adrotate group=&#8221;8&#8243;]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[adrotate banner=&#8221;188&#8243;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[adrotate banner=&#8221;111&#8243;] [adrotate banner=&#8221;84&#8243;] BRAMPTON, ONT.\/FALL RIVER: A Fall River golf coach was part of another piece of Canadian golf history on Oct. 7 when Team Canada captured its first-ever team title at the&nbsp;World&nbsp;Junior&nbsp;Girls&nbsp;Golf&nbsp;Championship, presented by Sargent Farms. Jeff MacDonald, who now calls Fall River home, &nbsp;was the head coach of the winning Canadian squad [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39413,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,21],"tags":[3454,2,5582,121,5583,545],"class_list":["post-39411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-sports","tag-ashburn-golf-course","tag-fall-river","tag-golf-canada","tag-hrm","tag-next-gen-golf","tag-team-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39411\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/39413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}