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Kinney cruises to title match photo by Drew Fleming By Don Hunt GRANTS PASS � Tai Kinney and Johnna Nealy are two of the best junior golfers in the Pacific Northwest. Need proof? As the pair met in the semifinals of the State Junior Golf Match Play Championships Thursday at Grants Pass Golf Course, college coaches from Florida, Tennessee, Ohio State and New Mexico State studied their swings, surveyed their chips and critiqued their putts. They left impressed. Kinney, a senior-to-be at North Medford High, made 14 pars, two bogeys and one birdie through 17 holes to register a 2-and-1 victory over Nealy. Kinney advanced to today�s 18-hole junior division (15-17) final against Jill Ferrante of Battle Ground, Wash., who posted a 3-and-2 win over Kirsten Svicarovich. Kinney, the Class 4A high school runner-up who already has two titles under her belt this summer, didn�t leave herself many short birdie putts due to a slightly imprecise iron game, but she still cranked out one par after another. "She�s a machine, " Nealy said of her Southern Oregon rival. "With just about anyone else, you can get away with a bogey here and there, but with Tai, it�s a sure way to get beat. "I�ve played her enough to know that she would come here today with her �A� game. I was prepared for it, but a couple of bad shots did me in." The pair were tied after nine holes, but poor approach shots by Nealy on 10 and 11 produced back-to-back bogeys and a quick two-hole deficit. "I had an uphill lie on 10 and chunked it, and on 11 I just hit a bad 6-iron," said Nealy, a senior-to-be at Grants Pass High. "You make a mistake and Tai will jump all over it." Nealy stopped the bleeding with four straight pars and cut her deficit to just one hole when Kinney uncharacteristically hit a poor drive and wound up bogeying the 15th hole. But whatever momentum Nealy could muster vanished quickly when she shanked a chip shot out of bounds and into some brush on the 16th hole. That left her two down with two to play, and the match ended on the 17th when both players made par. "I wasn�t comfortable with that shot and should have stepped back and gathered myself," Nealy said of her wayward chip. "That was the match right there." Ferrante, meanwhile, moved into today�s finals and a matchup with Kinney by shooting 3-over-par golf through 16 holes. At 15, Ferrante is one of the youngest players in the junior division. "I hit my irons really well and only missed a couple of greens," said Ferrante, who will be a sophomore in Battle Ground this fall. "But I know I�ll have to play even better to beat Tai." In other matches involving local golfers, Adam Huycke lost to Craig Paulsen on the 19th hole of a boys junior division match; Nick Daggitt defeated Kyle Luttrell 5-and-3 in a third-flight match in the boys intermediate division (14-15); Abby Fowler defeated Amy Mombert 5-and-4 in the first flight of the girls division; Kacey Kinney rolled to a 6-and-4 victory over Breanne Smith in the first flight of the girls intermediate division (14-15); and Stephanie Johns lost to Jessica Black 2-and-1 in the same division 5-and-4. Obituaries | Sports | Business | Classifieds | Tempo | Prime Times | So Oregon Sites | Outdoor Journal | Subscribe | Contact | Movies | Advertise | Real Estate Showcase | Archive | Editorials | Letters to the editor | Religion | Wake-up Call | NIE | Cyber Chef | Job Network | So Oregon Weather | WSJ Northwest | Forums | AP Wire | AP Money | F.A.Q. | Awards Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. The Community Newspaper Subsidiary of Dow Jones & Co, Inc Copyright �The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA