State and PGA Section Junior Golf Tours: The Local On-Ramp

Junior golf has an informal ladder, and most families start at the bottom without realizing there is a whole layer of golf below the national tours. At the top are the four major national tours, AJGA, US Kids Golf, HJGT, and FCWT, compared in detail in our national tours comparison. Below that sits a much larger, much less visible layer: PGA Section junior tours and state or regional golf association junior programs. This is where most junior golfers actually play most of their competitive rounds, especially before age 12 or 13.

The PGA of America is organized into geographic Sections that cover the entire country, and most Sections run their own individual stroke-play junior tour as part of their player development programming. These are not the same thing as PGA Jr. League, which is a team scramble format built primarily for younger players, covered in our PGA Jr. League guide. A Section junior tour is closer in structure to a small-scale AJGA or US Kids Golf event: individual scoring, age divisions, and a schedule of events across the Section's footprint, usually run out of member clubs rather than destination resorts.

Because Section tours are run locally by PGA professionals who know the courses and the families, entry is typically open without a ranking, application, or qualifying score, and travel is minimal since events run within the Section's own geography. Exact schedules, fees, and divisions vary by Section and change from year to year, so the right move is to go directly to your Section's player development page rather than rely on a number that will be out of date by next season.

Running alongside PGA Section tours is a separate layer: state and regional golf associations, the organizations that also run adult amateur golf, handicapping, and course rating in most states. Many of these associations operate their own junior tours or junior championship series, independent of both the PGA Section and the national tours. In some states the golf association's junior program is the dominant local circuit; in others, the PGA Section tour plays that role. Which one is stronger in your area depends entirely on where you live, which is exactly why we built a state-by-state directory rather than generalize.

It is tempting to skip straight to national tour events once a junior golfer is competitive, but local tours still serve a purpose at every level:

• Cost. Entry fees and travel for a Section or state event are a fraction of a national tour stop, covered in our entry fee guide.
• Reps. More competitive rounds against real fields, without the travel cost of a national schedule, is how most juniors build the consistency that eventually shows up in national results.
• Open entry. No ranking or application is required, so it is the easiest way to get a first competitive round on the books. See our guide to getting started in tournaments.
• Local exposure. Some state and Section championships still carry weight with regional college programs, even if they do not carry the national name recognition of an AJGA event.

Use the GolfNexus regional and state tour directories to find what runs in your area: regional junior tours and junior golf by state. When a junior golfer is ready to test national-level competition, our tour comparison guide and schedule-building guide walk through what comes next.