Junior Golf World Championships : Bonita’s Erb Wins Girls’ 15-17, but No Reunion : Kemp Keeps Brobio From Joining Her for Repeat of 1981’s Winning Picture

The party was crashed.

In 1981 at Presidio Hills, Christy Erb of Bonita won the 10-under girls’ division of the Optimist Junior World Golf Championships. Ramon Brobio of Manila was the boys’ 10-under winner.

It was the second Junior World for both golfers, and they posed together for scrapbook pictures.

Seven years later, Erb, 17, thought it would be nice to meet again in the winner’s circle. So on the last day of this four-day tournament, Erb won the 15-17 division in her final Junior World appearance.

But Kevin Kemp, 16, of Greensboro, N.C., broke up the reunion. He gave Brobio, 17, his exit cue on the 18th hole, winning the 15-17 boys’ division after taking a one-stroke lead into the final round.

“When he chipped and 3-putted on 17, I was thinking playoff,” a quiet Brobio said. Brobio, now of Quezon City, the Philippines, has played in nine Junior Worlds and has won all divisions but the 15-17.

“I was just looking to go into a playoff,” echoed Kemp, who let his lead at Torrey Pines South fizzle away on 17. There, Kemp bogeyed while Brobio made par to even the two leaders at 3 under.

The 485-yard, par-5 18th set up the dramatic final act. Brobio hit the green in two, his ball resting about 40 feet below the hole. Kemp’s second shot stopped about a foot off the green on the upper left.

Kemp chipped to within 3 feet. Brobio hit the eagle putt about 8 feet past, then missed coming back down the hill and tapped in for his par.

Kemp now faced a 3-footer to win.

“It seemed about 20 feet,” Kemp said.

A Miramar jet flew overhead, forcing Kemp to line up his shot again--”I pulled back and redid everything on that last putt,” he said--but he made it for a birdie, a 4-under 284 total and the championship.

“When I get in contention like this,” Kemp explained of the tension that gripped him on the final round, “I have to block everything out, and I get like that (stressed). In a tournament this big, you have to do that. I’m usually not that uptight.”

Kemp said this Junior World title is the biggest victory of his young career. “You always hear about people winning this and then going on to bigger and better things,” he said.

Erb, playing on Torrey Pines North, had shot identical 1-over 75s in the opening rounds but came back on Thursday with a 4-under 70 to put her six shots in front of Christine Drabble of American Samoa and Lisa Kiggens of Bakersfield.

“I didn’t want to get lax,” Erb said of her lead. “I wanted to go out there, the same as all the other rounds, play it hole-by-hole, trying not to get ahead of myself and just do the best I can.”

She had a few queasy moments before the turn with a double-bogey and two bogeys. “I got a little worried, but more mad than anything else,” Erb said.

The back nine, where she was three under par, was her salvation.

“I was pretty happy with the way I came back after the front nine,” she said. “I was hitting my irons real well and making my putts,” she said.

She finished with a four-day total of 294, two under par and still six shots ahead of Kiggens, who matched the 74.

After the seven-year drought, Erb said winning her last Junior World is “real special. It was my last chance to win it. If I had to pick a year to go out with a bang, this was the year to do it.”

Erb’s 294 is third best in 20 years of Junior World golf. Only last year’s winner, Brandie Burton of Rialto with a 293, and the 1978 winner, Sharon Barrett of Spring Valley with a 291, have fared better.