Staff report

DAVIDSON — Six local golfers begin play today at the 57th North Carolina Amateur, held this year at River Run Country Club.

Recent East Rowan High School graduate Nick Lyerly is the defending champion, as he became the youngest ever to win the prestigious event, last year at Governor’s Club in Chapel Hill.

Lyerly’s four-round score was 8-under par 280, shooting 70-71-68-71.

Lyerly, the 2015 North Carolina Junior Player of the Year, will be a freshman at UNC Greensboro this fall. He tees off today at 1:55 p.m.

Other local players, and tee times, include Eric Edwards, a Salisbury High graduate and an outstanding golfer at George Mason University. Edwards, who finished tied for 32nd in last year’s N.C. Amateur at 299, gets started today at 2:25. He is a rising senior at GMU.

Logan Shuping, another East Rowan graduate who just completed his freshman season at East Carolina University, tees off at 1:25. Shuping also participated in last year’s tournament but didn’t make the weekend cut.

Davis Richards, of China Grove and a rising senior at N.C. State, tees off at 2:35. Richards, a South Rowan graduate, has had a solid first two years for the Wolfpack.

Michael Childress, of Salisbury, is a rising senior at Cannon School in Concord. Childress has been a prominent junior golfer for several years and is being recruited by several NCAA Division I schools.

Childress, along with Lyerly, was in the 2016 U.S. Junior Amateur. Despite his young age, Childress, with partner, Charle Graeber, won the 2014 Crowder-Dorsett Labor Day 4-Ball Tournament at the Country Club of Salisbury. He gets started today at 1:05.

Kevin Lentz, of Rockwell, qualified for the N.C. Amateur this year and tees off at 9:10 a.m. Lentz, a solid local golfer, finished runner-up in last summer’s Horace Billings Rowan Amateur, and has been part of the runner-up team at the Labor Day event.

Golfers had to qualify for the N.C. Amateur, at one of six rounds offered around the state in May and June.

The Club at Irish Creek in Kannapolis hosted one of the qualifying rounds, on May 25.