Event: 22nd Dogwood State Junior Boys' Match Play Championship

Host Site: Occano Boat & Golf Club

Playing Dates: July 27-30, 2026

Related: Final Leaderboard | Photos

By Mae O'Neill

MERRY HILL, N.C. (August 1, 2027) – After two years of coming up short on the final day of the Dogwood State Junior Boys Matchplay Championship, Sam Terry of Thomasville, N.C. finally broke through this year, defeating Ryan Hedgecoe of Fayetteville, N.C., 2&1 to win the 22nd Dogwood State Junior Boys Matchplay Championship. Terry entered the event on a hot streak, having finished T2 at the Western Junior Amateur in mid-June and 6th at the N.C. Junior Boys Championship later that month.

The "pod play" style tournament groups all 64 players into pods of four, with each player facing the other three in their pod once over three rounds of play. A win earns 1 point, a tie 0.5 points, and a loss 0 points. After all three rounds, the player with the most points in each pod advances to the Round of 16; if two or more players are tied for the top spot in their group, a sudden-death playoff determines which single player advances. From there, the tournament shifts to a single-elimination match-play bracket.

In group play, Terry won his first match 7&6 over Braden Jones and his third match 1 up against James Hoefling, with a loss coming 4&3 to William Neff in the second round. Those two wins were enough to make him the only player in his pod to earn a full two points, as Hoefling and Neff each finished with 1.5 points and Jones rounded out pod play with 1.

Terry, the No. 2 seed, faced No. 15 seed PJ Lefebvre in the Round of 16. With the group starting on hole 10, the two matched each other hole for hole through their first nine, both carding 4's over their first seven holes before tying their eighth and ninth to remain all square. Terry took the lead with a birdie on their 10th hole (the course's par-5 1st), and neither player gained ground again until their 17th hole (the course's 8th, a 550-yard par 5), where Terry made birdie and Lefebvre made bogey to close out the match 2&1. Terry advanced to face James Doyle in the quarterfinals, winning that match 2&1 as well.

The final day of this tournament is a familiar stage for Terry. In 2024, he made it to the semifinal round (played in the morning on the last day of play), where he lost 3&2 to eventual champion CJ Peterson. Last year, in the 2025 Dogwood State Junior Boys Matchplays, Terry finished runner-up after another 3&2 loss, this time to Grayson Baucom — the pair would go on to play together in the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball in Scottsdale, Ariz., this past May.

"This tournament, it's crazy," Terry said. "I lost in the semifinals two years ago, and then the finals last year, and the first two days this year it looked like I wasn't going to get through my pod. It can all just change so fast in match play, and in this format. I was just trying to take it one match at a time and try to survive and advance, and thankfully I kept winning."

This year, Terry won his semifinal match 3&2 over Seton Hall commit Will Burgwyn, setting up a championship match against Ryan Hedgecoe. The two are not unfamiliar opponents — in the 2025 Dogwood State Junior Matchplays, they met in the Round of 16, where Terry won 1 up.

"Ryan's one of my good friends," Terry said. "He's one of the best guys out here, and we love playing each other. It was a lot of fun to get to play."

Heading into this year's final, the numbers were close: both players had made exactly 50 pars over their previous rounds that week, while Hedgecoe held a slight edge with 19 birdies and an eagle to Terry's 17 birdies.

Terry jumped out early, with birdies on holes 1 and 4 to go 2 up, but Hedgecoe answered almost immediately, winning holes 5 and 6 to tie the match. Holes 7 through 11 were all tied before Terry chipped in on hole 12 to retake the lead and won hole 13 to push his advantage back to 2 up. Holes 14 and 15 stayed tied, and though Hedgecoe cut the deficit to 1 up with a clutch birdie on hole 16, Terry closed it out with a par on the par-3 17th, winning the match 2&1.

"I was just glad I made it," Terry said of his winning putt. "I kind of blacked out and couldn't really tell what the putt was doing, so I just tried to step up, hit it and commit to it. I was super excited that it went in."

Terry will attend Gardner-Webb in the fall to play golf. The Dogwood Matchplays was his last regular junior tournament before he heads to school — he'll represent Team Carolinas this weekend in the Carolinas-Virginias Junior Boys Team Matches, his final CGA event before starting college.

The Carolinas Golf Association thanks the staff of Occano Boat & Golf Club for their outstanding hospitality and support throughout the championship.