By bringing the world’s best junior boys to Sedgefield Country Club, home (again) to the PGA TOUR’s Wyndham Championship, the FootJoy Invitational, for the seventh time, will showcase all that is great about the future of amateur, collegiate and professional golf. The event will also provide a glimpse of what the big boys can expect at Sedgefield when they arrive in Greensboro mid-August.

Houston native Cory Whitsett, at only 16 years old, is arguably the top player in the field. A closer look at his credentials supports this sentiment. A rising junior at Memorial High School being courted by the top golf schools in the country post-high school graduation, Whitsett’s most heralded accomplishment came when he won the U.S. Junior Amateur last summer. Prior, he had a bevy of AJGA top 10s and three wins. Since, he’s continued his strong play and ascended to the No. 2 spot in the Polo Golf Rankings. At last year’s FootJoy Invitational, the tall, lanky lefty tied for third at Forest Oaks Country Club with a 72-68-71-70–281 tournament total.

University of Florida commitment Mu Hu of Shen Zhen, China, should feel quite comfortable at the FootJoy Invitational. This will be his fifth and final appearance in the event before heading to Gainesville, Fla., in the fall. He has only finished out of the top 10 once in his history at the event, with last year’s tie for sixth being his best to date. In his AJGA career, the four-time Rolex Junior All-American owns five AJGA titles, including the 2007 HP Boys Junior Championship, another AJGA boys-only invitational, played at Arnold Palmer’s Bay Hill Club & Lodge. Trumpeted as the future of Chinese golf, Hu recently tied for 35th at the European Tour’s BMW Asian Open, 12 shots back of tournament champion Darren Clarke.

Luke Guthrie of Quincy, Ill., comes into the FootJoy Invitational ranked No. 11 in the Polo Golf Rankings. The 2007 first-team Rolex Junior All-American will be participating in his first FootJoy Invitational after completing his first year of national junior golf last season. He shot toward the top of the rankings on the strength of a win at the Rand Graphics-Wildcat Golf Wichita Junior Championship and a third-place finish at the Rolex Tournament of Champions. Guthrie, who signed a National Letter of Intent with the University of Illinois, also advanced to the match play portions of the U.S. Junior Amateur and Polo Golf Junior Classic.

Ranked No. 12, Jordan Spieth of Dallas has probably made the biggest jump in ranking than anyone in the field the past year (he was ranked T-698 at this time in 2007). He went from playing in AJGA Junior All-Star events, designed for 12-15-year-olds, at the beginning of the 2007 season, to finishing tied for fifth at the recent Thunderbird International Junior, one of the strongest AJGA fields of the year. In just over one calendar year, the 14-year-old has won twice and placed in the top 10 six times in 10 AJGA starts.

Chan Kim of Chandler, Ariz., is another player capable of going low at Sedgefield Country Club. Sitting in the No. 16 spot in the Polo Golf Rankings, Kim got there by consistently posting top finishes, totaling nine top 10s. Included in this number is a win at the 2007 TomatoBank Southern California Classic and three top 10s at AJGA Invitationals (2nd, 2007 PING Invitational; T-7, 2008 Houston Boys Invitational at Redstone presented by HP and Administaff; T-2, 2008 Thunderbird International Junior).This 2007 honorable mention Rolex Junior All-American has posted three 65s in AJGA competition.

Another top-20 player is Anthony Paolucci, also of Dallas. He distinguished himself last summer when he advanced to the finals of the U.S. Junior Amateur as a 15-year-old. This accomplishment and a handful of top-10 finishes earned him second-team Rolex Junior All-America honors in 2007. Since his run at the U.S. Junior, Paolucci has finished in the top 15 at AJGA Invitationals three times in five starts.

Returning from last year’s top-10, including Whitsett and Hu, are David Sanders of Mt. Laurel, New Jersey, and Tommy Chung Hao Mou of Taipei, Taiwan. Sanders’ runner-up performance at Forest Oaks and his win at the Aldila Junior Classic helped earn him second-team Rolex Junior All-American accolades. Mou finished tied for ninth in 2007 and tied for 10th in 2006. The rising senior has played in 34 AJGA events dating back to 2004, 14 of those ending in top-10 finishes.

Sixteen Rolex Junior All-Americans. Forty-six of the top 100 players in the Polo Golf Rankings. Four players returning from last year’s top-10. All this adds up to a lot of talent in one of the deepest boys’ fields in junior golf.