Evergreen’s Tyler Long, an incoming CU golfer and a member of Team Colorado, wins prestigious RLX Ralph Lauren Junior Classic at site of 2025 Ryder Cup Matches
By Gary Baines – 6/27/2025
Tyler Long traveled to the site of the 2025 Ryder Cup Matches and will return home the champion of a big-time junior golf event.
The Evergreen resident, who will start his college golf career at the University of Colorado in the fall, on Friday won the boys title in the AJGA’s RLX Ralph Lauren Junior Classic at Bethpage Black in Farmingdale, N.Y.
Long, a member of the Team Colorado elite junior squad, completed his run to the title in the match play event by defeating Giuseppe Puebla of Royal Palm Beach, Fla., 4 and 2 in the championship final.
The Colorado 3A state high school champion in 2024, Long never trailed on Friday at the challenging Bethpage Black layout. He was 1 up after 11 holes, then won No. 12 with a par and 15 with a birdie, then closed out the match with a winning par on No. 16.
Long finished 1 over par for the 16 holes of the final and didn’t make a bogey on the back nine Friday.
Long, coming off a fifth-place finish this month in the prestigious Western Junior, won five of his six matches at the Lauren, going 2-1 in pod play and 3-0 in the knockout phase.
With Friday’s victory, Long and girls champion Yujie Liu were presented two tickets each to the Ryder Cup.
Last year, Long won an AJGA event in Colorado, the Colorado Springs Junior. He’s No. 64 nationally/internationally among boys in the latest Rolex AJGA Rankings. In 2024, he was named a boys Future Famer by the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame.
For all the results from the RLX Ralph Lauren Junior Classic, CLICK HERE.
About the Writer: Gary Baines has covered golf in Colorado continuously since 1983. He was a sports writer at the Daily Camera newspaper in Boulder, then the sports editor there, and has written regularly for ColoradoGolf.org since 2009. The University of Colorado Evans Scholar alum was inducted into the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame in 2022. He owns and operates ColoradoGolfJournal.com