Any competitive golfer will tell you that it takes financial resources to succeed at the highest levels of the amateur game.
One tournament, including entry fees and travel expenses, can run in excess of a couple thousand dollars. Add equipment and instruction into the equation and the numbers only go up. It’s enough to deter a talented player from attaining goals, whether that’s a college scholarship or a successful PGA/LPGA Tour career.
Seeing a dire need in this area, the USGA last year created the U.S. National Development Program and its grant program, offering aspiring juniors who don’t come from wealthy backgrounds the means to get the financial support to achieve their golf goals.
One such individual thriving from a $10,000 grant is Meadow Tian, 16, of Delaware, Ohio. Already one of the top players in her state, the rising junior at Olentangy High School is starting to hit her stride, winning the American Junior Golf Association’s Natural Resources Bluegrass Junior at Bellefonte Country Club in Ashland, Ky., earlier this summer for the second consecutive year.
Three weeks ago, she got into her first USGA championship, the 75th U.S. Girls’ Junior being held this week at El Caballero Country Club in California as the first alternate from the Lansing, Mich., qualifier.
It offered Tian the chance to use that grant money – she also received $7,000 from the AJGA’s Liberty National ACE (Achieving Competitive Excellence) Grant program – to test her skills against the game’s best juniors.
“These grants have allowed us to travel and experience so many different tournaments that I wouldn’t have been able to otherwise,” said Tian, who has finished solo sixth the past two years in the OHSAA Division I high school tournament that included a competition-record, 6-under 66 on Ohio State University’s Gray Course as a freshman in 2022. “Without the grant money, I wouldn’t travel as much and would have to play mainly in local tournaments.”
Tian is one of six USNDP grant recipients in this year’s U.S. Girls’ Junior field. She is joined by Kennedy Swedick, Blayne Brown, Jude Lee, Evyn Cannon and Marley Pedrique. Brown, a Black golfer from Riverside, Calif., appeared in the USGA’s promo for the USDNP that has aired during all of the 2024 championships, including the U.S. Open and U.S. Women’s Open Presented by Ally.
In all, 71 juniors were approved in 2024 for grants, with monetary amounts ranging from $2,500 to the maximum of $10,000. The first year of the program saw more girls than boys receive grants and was heavy on minority representation.
Tian has yet to meet any of her fellow recipients, but the opportunity to travel to bigger and better events has heightened her expectations and excitement. In the past two years, she’s competed in nine AJGA events and a number of Golfweek Junior Series competitions. She’s been her region’s player of the year in 2022, 2023 and 2024. After the U.S. Girls’ Junior, she’ll travel to historic Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Md., to play the Girls Junior PGA Championship. Last year, she played in the AJGA’s Girls Invitational at Streamsong Resort (Black Course) in Florida.
Having first picked up a club at age 7, Tian needed only three years, and one as a serious player, to break 80. She broke 70 for the first time at 12. At this year’s AJGA event in Kentucky, she matched Leigh Anne Hardin’s 54-hole tournament record of 209, first set in 1999, a year after Hardin won the U.S. Girls’ Junior at Merion Golf Club and later competed on the victorious 2002 USA Curtis Cup Team.
Of course, nobody was happier to see this financial assistance than Bing Tian, who first introduced his youngest daughter to the game nine years ago. Parents of talented golfers know firsthand the financial sacrifices that are required to nurture a fledgling talent.
“We’ve spent a lot of money on her golf,” said Bing, who received an email from the USGA regarding the new grant program and immediately applied. The approval came this past May. “She was playing an event every week. Even for two days, there’s gas, hotel and everything. To travel to farther places like California [for the U.S. Girls’ Junior], it costs even more.”
In the past few years, Tian has spent a lot of time watching two-time USGA champion Rose Zhang, specifically her U.S. Girls’ Junior victory in 2021, and would love to emulate her success.Zhang’s career includes a pair of NCAA Division I individual titles, two appearances on victorious USA Curtis Cup Teams and a 2023 Augusta National Women’s Amateur triumph. Working with Dublin, Ohio-based instructor Brad Sparling, Tian is trying to develop more distance and power to go with her precision iron game, which is especially strong from 125 yards and in.
Competing in a field that includes a 2024 USA Curtis Cupper (Jasmine Koo), three USGA champions (Gianna Clemente, Asterisk Talley and Avery Zweig), the last two U.S. Girls’ Junior runners-up (Clemente and Rianne Malixi) and six other members of the USGA’s inaugural U.S. National Junior Team (Ryleigh Knaub, Shyla Brown, Scarlett Schremmer, Chloe Kovelesky, Nikki Oh and Emerie Schartz), Tian is in prime position to see how her improved game stacks up.
“My progress [the last year] has really exponentially grown,” said Tian, who is just starting the recruiting process for college golf. “Mainly because I’ve had all these opportunities to go out and compete.
“I try not to set any expectations other than doing the best that I can. Seeing these big names [in the field] proves how big of a tournament this is.”
The U.S. National Development Program and its grant program is supported by philanthropic giving and secured resources to fulfill the USGA’s commitment to providing pathways to elite levels of the game, regardless of financial considerations. For more information, visit usga.org/give_usndp.
David Shefter is a senior staff writer for the USGA. Email him at dshefter@usga.org.
