After magical amateur summer, Noh eyes pro career over UCLA

ALAMEDA, Calif. (Sept. 20, 2018) – There wasn’t an amateur golfer hotter than Yealimi Noh in July. She logged victories in consecutive weeks at the Girls’ Junior PGA Championship (where she was 24 under for 72 holes), the U.S. Girls’ Junior (where she had to play 49 holes on the final day when NorCal fog chopped up the early-week championship schedule) and the Canadian Women’s Amateur (where some of the nation’s top college players were at her heels).

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The 17-year-old high school senior from Concord, Calif., also won the California Girls Junior at the end of June for a second time. She was a wire-to-wire winner at the Joanne Winter Silver Belle in December. Clearly, Noh found something in her game over the past few months that clicked.

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“So Junior PGA, I was at the peak of my game, I was playing really well and I was really confident in my game,” Noh said. “I was hitting it well, I think the main thing was I was putting it really well, making everything inside 15 feet, and same thing with the U.S. Junior.”

Chalk some of that up to longtime swing coach Erik Stone, who teaches out of Corica Park Golf Course in Alameda, Calif. Noh and Stone have worked together for the past nine years.

“He’s a great coach and it’s a process, it’s not a thing that happens over a year or a couple months,” she said. “You have to stay patient and really work with it.”

Noh would be a program-changing get for any college team in the country, but that’s not the path she is charting. Noh, who had originally committed to play for UCLA, has decided to turn professional soon instead of joining the Bruin roster. She originally committed as a 15-year-old in August 2017, and would have joined the program next fall.

Between now and a run at the LPGA, Noh is slated to represent the U.S. at the Junior Ryder Cup in Paris. That begins Monday.

AmateurGolf.com caught up with Noh this week to hear what she had to say about a magical summer amateur run and how that sets her up for an upcoming pro career.