Aphrodite Deng, the 16-year-old Short Hills, New Jersey native who won last year's Mizuho Americas Open junior title, sat tied for third in the 24-player junior field after Thursday's opening round at Mountain Ridge Country Club, three points behind leader Amelie Zalsman.
The Mizuho Americas Open is unique on the LPGA calendar for running a 24-player junior tournament alongside the senior LPGA Tour event, under a points-based format that scores stableford-style across the week and lets the junior winner walk into the experience of a Tour event. Deng, the reigning junior champion, returns to a course she knows well — Mountain Ridge sits inside a half-hour drive from her family home — and is currently No. 2 in the Rolex AJGA Rankings.
She finished the opening round on 36 points, level with Lily Peng for third place. Zalsman led the field on 39, with the same total taken in by the cut line of the front group at the day's end.
Deng's card was a study in mid-round acceleration. She made birdies on the third and the par-three eighth, added an eagle on the par-five eighth — the closing hole of the front nine, where the green sits within reach in two for the longer hitters in the junior bracket — and rolled off seven other pars to make the turn at level fives in points. The bogeys came on the way home, at the 10th, the 15th, and the 18th, all par-fours that played stiffer than the front nine in the wind that picked up midday.
"I think the greens are super slopey, and they rolled it really fast," Deng said. "Also, it's windy, so it's pretty hard to putt on the greens."
The Mountain Ridge greens are A.W. Tillinghast originals — the same architect behind Bethpage Black and San Francisco Golf Club — and were re-conditioned in advance of the 2026 hosting. They are notoriously fast under tournament pace, and the persistent breeze off the eastern New Jersey hills can make distance control on the short irons unforgiving.
The junior field includes 23 other players from across North America. Among them is Yana Wilson, the 2023 Mizuho junior champion, who is one of two former winners in the field with Deng. Defending the championship places Deng in a small group of multi-year junior winners on the LPGA-aligned calendar, and the result will count toward her Rolex AJGA standing as she continues to build a player profile that has already drawn college recruitment interest.
The senior LPGA leaderboard, in which Andrea Lee leads at six-under after a Round 1 of 66, runs in parallel with the junior tournament. The two competitions share a TV window and tee from the same course on Friday and Saturday before separating for Sunday's final round, with the LPGA pros playing the back nine first while the junior champion is determined on the front.
Round 2 of the junior event begins Friday morning. Deng was due in early in the order.