Matthew Mar­quez will tee off this morn­ing at the Duke of York Young Cham­pi­ons Tro­phy at the Roy­al Troon Golf Club in Scot­land. Fol­low­ing his vic­to­ry at the Caribbean Am­a­teur Ju­nior Golf Cham­pi­onships in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic this past Ju­ly, Mar­quez was in­vit­ed to par­tic­i­pate in the event host­ed by HRH The Duke of York. Mar­quez will tee off at 8 am Scot­tish time on a true links-style course along­side Elise Boehmer from the Ned­er­lands and Je­re­my Abel from Lux­em­bourg.This year's event fea­tures 58 cham­pi­ons from 33 coun­tries with an av­er­age hand­i­cap of +2. First played in 2001, the Duke of York Young Cham­pi­ons Tro­phy is a unique, in­ter­na­tion­al 54 hole stroke play golf tour­na­ment for boys and girls who are ei­ther the cur­rent hold­ers of their Un­der-18 Na­tion­al Cham­pi­onship or have won some oth­er ma­jor golf­ing event in the pre­ced­ing year.

This high­ly rat­ed in­vi­ta­tion­al event, cre­at­ed by HRH The Duke of York and John Simp­son, aims to pro­mote the de­vel­op­ment of ju­nior golf, en­cour­age com­pet­i­tive­ness and friend­ship be­tween in­di­vid­ual cham­pi­ons whilst pro­vid­ing them with an op­por­tu­ni­ty to play on Open venue cours­es against their peers.

The event counts to­wards the World Am­a­teur Golf Rank­ings and the Amer­i­can Ju­nior Golf As­so­ci­a­tion's per­for­mance based en­try sys­tem. It is al­so or­gan­ised, in many ways, like a pro­fes­sion­al tour­na­ment so as to give the po­ten­tial golf­ing stars of the fu­ture a chance to ex­pe­ri­ence what life as a pro­fes­sion­al might in­volve; hence the in­volve­ment of spon­sors, of­fi­cial func­tions, demon­stra­tion of equip­ment by a ma­jor golf man­u­fac­tur­er and a pro­gramme of ed­u­ca­tion­al events. Now wide­ly re­gard­ed as one of the top events on the world­wide ju­nior cal­en­dar, the tour­na­ment re­turns to Scot­land this year and for the first time is be­ing played at Roy­al Troon, venue for the Open Cham­pi­onship in 2016.