This May 7-10, 24 of the top American Junior Golf Association (AJGA) players will compete alongside 120 Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) players in separate fields at the fourth Mizuho Americas Open at Mountain Ridge Country Club in West Caldwell, New Jersey.
Michelle Wie West will mark her return to competitive golf by hosting the open and participating in the LPGA field.
Vidhi Lakhawala, the ninth-ranked golfer in the Rolex AJGA rankings from Kendall Park, will be one of three junior golfers from New Jersey competing. She offered her thoughts on the opportunity to learn from an LPGA icon like Wie-West.
“Michelle Wie-West was a prodigy growing up and someone I looked up to when I watched golf, so for her to be the host and welcoming us juniors to the field is something that is really special and cool, knowing that I’ve always looked up to her and I always found it inspiring the way that she handled all the setbacks in golf and in life.”
The LPGA field at the Mizuho Americas Open will include last year’s champion and the No. 2 golfer in the Rolex LPGA rankings, Jeeno Thitikul. As for the rest of the LPGA field, it will be robust as No. 4 Charley Hull, No. 8 Ruoning Yin, No. 9 Lydia Ko, and Rose Zhang, the winner of the inaugural Mizuho Americas Open in 2023, will also compete.
This tournament’s connection to New Jersey runs deep. In addition to Lakhawala, last year’s winner and 2025 Rolex Junior Player of the Year, Aphrodite Deng, and the reigning New Jersey high school girls’ golf state champion, Rayee Feng, will compete in the junior field.
Deng and Feng both hail from Short Hills.
On the LPGA side, Ami Gianchandani from Watchung and Riley Smyth from Old Tappan will be competing as well.
The AJGA golfers will use the Stableford scoring system, which awards points based on a player’s performance relative to par on each hole, rather than total strokes, with the highest score winning.
Friends Reunite at Mizuho Americas Open
Feng and Deng’s friendship goes back to their early days of playing golf. They played on local tours for U.S. Kids Golf and, in middle school, played on team New Jersey in the PGA Junior League. That team made it all the way to Nationals, and along the way, the two golfers became close friends.
That was when Deng still lived in Short Hills, but since she moved to Florida, they haven’t spent as much time together. However, Feng described how they’ve become close friends again.
“In high school, we kind of drifted apart because she started playing in the tournaments that I really wasn’t able to get into. So, I didn’t really see her very much, but more recently I’ve been connecting with her again, and we’re good friends now. We just roomed together at Sage Valley, so that was really fun.”
Lakhawala and Feng have become good friends through playing AJGA events and high school tournaments together.
“Yeah, I’m good friends with her. She’s super nice. I really like her. She’s a really good person,” Feng said.
Meanwhile, Lakhawala reflected on the stage she and Feng find themselves at in their golf careers.
“We’ve kind of grown up playing golf and we’ve grown up seeing each other improve and grow along the way so I think it’s really special that we’re both in the field in our final year of junior golf and it’s special to be able to go through it with someone who I know really well…and so it’s going to be really exciting for both of us and knowing that we’re kind of representing New Jersey as a whole.”
Deng Looks to Repeat as Mizuho Junior Champ
Aphrodite Deng began playing golf when she was nine and a half years old. Deng, who is ranked second in the world and number one in New Jersey, will be the only golfer in the junior field who has won the Mizuho Americas Open before.
The only caveat is she did it at Liberty National Golf Club—not the one that will host this year’s tournament, Mountain Ridge, which she hasn’t played before. In fact, neither Deng, Feng, nor Lakhawala has played Mountain Ridge before.
Deng won last year’s Mizuho Americas Open by one point over Anna Feng (no relation to Rayee), 140 to 139.
Last year, she also got to play alongside current LPGA No.1 Nelly Korda, which she described as a truly special experience.
“I was really excited to play with her, and playing alongside her, I got to see what it’s like with all the crowds around. We didn’t talk much during the tournament because we were both really focused on our own games, but she told me I was a really good golfer and she said nice things about me.”
The Short Hills native who now lives in Florida described the aspects of her game that she’s worked on since the beginning of the offseason.
“I’ve mostly just been working on my ball-striking and just improving my consistency because that’s something I struggled with last year, but it’s been getting better.”
Last year, Deng won the U.S. Girls’ Junior in July. It would be part of a year where she took home three trophies. Deng defeated Feng in the semifinal before besting Xingtong Chen in the final.
Aside from physique and technique, one of the underrated parts of any athlete’s ‘game’ is their mental toughness. Deng sounded like she has plenty of it when she gave this answer to a question about her takeaways from that U.S. Girls’ Junior victory.
“I just focused on my own game, and I didn’t worry about what the other girl was doing. The match was pretty close, but I had one before that was a lot closer, so it didn’t bother me at all. I learned that my mental game is pretty strong.”
Playing at Mizuho “a Full-Circle Moment”
Vidhi Lakhawala comes into her first tournament of the year ranked ninth in the world and second in New Jersey.
Lakhawala started playing golf when she was 10 years old, after her father took her and her sister to the driving range. She was motivated to outdo her sister at first, but then began to love golf more and more.
“The reason I started to play competitive golf is because of my younger sister. She started before me, so…I would always critique her because I thought that the game looked easy and that I could do much better. My parents challenged me to see if I really could play better, so they signed me up for my first tournament and once I started competing, I realized how difficult the game is, but it also helped me realize how much I love to compete and motivated me to work hard because I loved how golf was an individual sport and how I could control the outcome rather than a team sport.”
Last season, Lakhawala won the Women’s Western Junior, where she defeated Kara An in the final. She described what she took away from that victory.
“It just helped me learn to continue fighting and to believe in myself, especially when a couple of those matches got really close, and it just helped ensure and made me realize that I am a really good golfer.”
Vidhi attended the inaugural Mizuho Americas Open in 2023 at Liberty National Golf Club in Jersey City, where she followed Rose Zhang’s group for one day.
Since then, she has gone from a freshman to a senior in high school, and she feels ready to show the world how far her game has progressed.
“It’s actually a full-circle moment for me because I attended the first Mizuho Americas Open in 2023…I remember vividly my dad telling me that I should be competing in this event in a couple of years, and it was so cool and motivating and inspiring to see these juniors compete at that level. I was really motivated and driven to be able to compete at this tournament one day, and so it feels really cool to be able to compete inside the ropes at this event, and it’s been one of my goals to play at this event for a long time.”
Feng Ready for Second Taste of LPGA Fanfare
Following a ninth-place finish in the Junior Invitational at Sage Valley on March 12, where she roomed with Aphrodite Deng, who finished tied for fourth, Feng recently announced she will attend Harvard next year and play for their golf team.
Over her career, the high school senior at The Pingry School, who is ranked 15th in the world and third in New Jersey, has played at many golf courses in her home state, including her favorite, Liberty National Golf Club, but this will be her first time playing Mountain Ridge.
Feng discussed what she’s heard about the course and how that might fit into her strategy.
“From what I’ve seen and what I’ve heard, the greens will be pretty difficult—I like when the greens are fast and slopey, and I practice long putts quite a bit, so I think that’s definitely a strength that I can utilize for this event.”
One thing all of the junior golfers in the field will have to get accustomed to at the Mizuho Americas Open is an increased level of press coverage and fans.
Feng gained valuable experience playing in front of crowds at last year’s U.S. Women’s Open, and she described one especially nerve-wracking, but humorous memory of playing at Erin Hills Golf Course.
“I would say that I’m not a very nervous person, like I usually don’t get nervous before tournaments, but I do remember pretty vividly on the first hole of the U.S. Open, third round, there was a crowd of people against the right rope, and then on the left, there was this water hazard. So, when I got up there, and I looked at the fairway and then the crowd and the water, I was pretty nervous, and I was thinking to myself, ‘please don’t hit it into the left and lose a ball on a par five’ and ‘don’t hit someone in the crowd.’”
What this Tournament Means to the Golfers
New Jersey is a unique place to live. There’s South and North, Taylor Ham and Pork Roll, the Pine Barrens, the Shore, and ‘the city,’ which in the South refers to Philadelphia and up north refers to New York City.
However, one thing we can’t argue over is that there is a very vibrant sports scene. While golf is only a small part of a sports scene that includes American Football, Basketball, Baseball, and Soccer, among others, in some circles, golf is king. There are many great golf courses in New Jersey, such as Pine Valley Golf Club, which topped the list of the 25 best courses in New Jersey in Golf Digest last year, and Baltusrol Golf Club, an A.W. Tillinghast masterpiece rich in history and championship pedigree.
Lakhawala’s favorite course is Forsgate Country Club in Monroe Township. It has two 18-hole championship golf courses: the Banks and the Palmer. The Palmer has holes that were designed by the late great professional golfer and World Golf Hall of Famer Arnold Palmer.
She described what she likes about her favorite New Jersey golf course and how she has used it to advance her career.
“It’s a great golf course with two different courses, the Banks and the Palmer, and they’re very different and challenge different aspects of my game. I love to go practice on the golf course and play different shots, try different things, and just keep experimenting with my game.”
Meanwhile, Feng pointed out her favorite New Jersey golf course was Liberty National because it’s “a really fun and challenging course.”
For Lakhawala and Feng, the Mizuho Americas Open marks the beginning of the end of their junior golf careers. Each will have plenty of family and friends coming out to Mountain Ridge over the course of the four days to watch it unfold, but Feng offered an insightful quote about what playing well at the Mizuho would mean to her.
“I’ve been wanting to play this tournament since the first year it started, because I watched Rose Zhang win [that year] and I was thinking ‘wow, I really hope I can play this one day.’ So, I get the opportunity as a senior, and I’m super excited for that. Also, because it’s in my home state, it’s only 15 minutes from my house, and a lot of my friends are going to be coming out, so if I do well, it would really mean a lot just to have everyone’s support around me and just playing good golf.”
Aphrodite Deng gets the last word, imparting to us some golf wisdom she acquired over the last seven years.
“Train like you’ve never won and play like you’ve never lost.”
