Riley Nygard, 13, is participating in the national Drive, Chip and Putt competition that ends with the national finals at the Augusta National Golf Club the first Sunday of April, exactly one week before the final round of the annual Masters PGA major tournament is held there.

Having already placed highly at two earlier events, Nygard will be joined by his family when he travels to another famous golf venue, Whistling Straits Golf Course near Sheboygan, Wisconsin, for one of the event’s 10 regional finals on Sept. 7.

A win there sends him to Augusta next spring.

After coming up victorious at a local qualifier and placing second in a subregional, Nygard joins 13 other subregional qualifiers at the Wisconsin course that has hosted the PGA Championship several times, the U.S. Senior Open and the Ryder Cup international competition, too.

Riley Nygard, 13, takes a second while carrying his golf bag for this photo at the SentryWorld Golf Course in Stevens Point, Wis., on Monday. (Photo courtesy Dan Nygard)

He’ll take part in a regional with a quite similar format as the local event — well, if you can call Merrill, Wisconsin, located just north of Wausau, a “local” spot — and the subregional that he advanced to held in Stevens Point, Wisconsin.

Though the Drive Chip and Putt home page boasts of 357 local qualifiers held nationwide, none were located at an Upper Peninsula course.

“That was about the closest event for us,” said Riley’s father, Marquette Golf Club member Dan Nygard, about Merrill. “It also worked well for our schedule, the series of tournaments and when they took place.”

A map on the DCP website showed a dozen local qualifiers in Wisconsin and another 12 in the Lower Peninsula.

So the young Nygard, who will be in eighth grade this fall at Bothwell Middle School, and his family trekked to Merrill Public Golf Club in the town of the same name on July 14 for the opening round.

“My dad had brought it up first; I’d tried (Drive, Chip and Putt) one time, I think it was three years ago,” Riley said.

He was up against at least 11 other golfers in his age group, some apparently wondering why someone from Michigan had come to almost the center of their state to compete. A geography lesson probably ensued.

Nygard is in the boys’ 14-15-year-old division as ages are set when the national finals are held in the spring. He’ll turn 14 in October, according to his dad.

At the Merrill event, he not only did quite well, he swept to the highest score in all three disciplines, totaling 142 points over nine attempts with second place only amounting to 101.

That easily qualified him to advance as the top three scorers (third place was 99 points) went on to the subregional.

Each competitor makes three drives, three chips and three putts, with a maximum score of 25 available on each shot, meaning Nygard earned 63% of the possible points while none of the local competition was really that close to 50%.

In driving, the scoring includes the full 25 points for a whack of more than 300 yards that has to come to rest inside a 40-yard-wide grid. A single point comes off for each 10 yards shy of 300, back to a 100- to 110-yarder worth just five. And any shot that finishes outside the grid gets a big fat zero.

Chipping had mostly five-point increments, with the max 25 for holing out. Though the distance from the hole wasn’t given, the scoring gives 20 points for a ball within two feet of the hole, down to just one point for coming up more than 10 feet away.

Three attempts from six, 15 and 30 feet make up the putting portion, with a hole-out worth the full 25. Within a foot is 20 points back to more than five feet away is just one point.

He totaled 42 in driving, 40 in chipping and 60 in putting at Merrill.

“Yeah, I was kind of nervous,” Riley said, adding that competitors can take some practice shots, too.

Good finishers from other local competitions created the field of 18 at SentryWorld Golf Course in Stevens Point for the subregional on Monday.

Nygard’s score was nearly as good there — 138 compared to 142 in Merrill — but it left him as runner-up.

Luckily, though, two competitors in each division advance to the regional final, with two more listed as alternates.

One distinction Nygard did accomplish, though, was being the only golfer to win two special awards for finishing in the top-three in each discipline at the subregional.

His 52 total in driving tied for third and 55 in putting was tied for second, while his 31 in chipping was no better than a tie for seventh.

The subregional winner was Landon Trainor, who was listed as being from Bloomer, Wisconsin, a small town just north of Eau Claire, and was a double-winner and five-time top-10 finisher in Wisconsin PGA Junior Foundation golf tournaments this summer.

Trainor totaled 154 points at DCP, winning the driving with 69 out of a possible 75.

The two boys who became alternates just behind Nygard in the standings were Nicholas Cichy two points back with 136 and Ethan Berger nine back with 139.

Cichy is even more prominent than Trainor in the WPJF standings, the Plainfield, Wisconsin, boy collecting five victories and finishing in the top 10 in all but two of the 21 tournaments he entered this summer, though he was apparently in a different group than Trainor.

Berger also had five top-12 finishes on the WPJF this summer and is apparently a grade ahead of Nygard and the other two high finishers at Stevens Point.

Nygard himself took part in several U.P. Junior Golf Tour events this summer, but had to miss the championship held Monday in Gladstone because he was in Wisconsin for the DCP subregional.

The regional finals bring in Nygard and Trainor to compete against the top two finishers from six other subregionals. And only one of the 14 gets to advance to the nationals next spring.

“He’ll need to have a good day,” father Dan Nygard said.

Journal Sports Editor Steve Brownlee’s email address is sbrownlee@miningjournal.net.