As high school golf in the Garden State prepares for Tuesday’s NJSIAA Group and Individual Championships at Raritan Valley Country Club in Bridgewater, one Short Hills native is playing with her mentors this week. For the second consecutive year, 15-year-old Aphrodite Deng is participating in the AJGA portion of the LPGA’s Mizuho Americas Open at Liberty National Golf Club in Jersey City. Deng, currently No. 7 in the country in the latest Rolex AJGA Rankings and No. 50 in the World Amateur Golf Rankings (WAGR), teed off in the first round Thursday at 9:05 a.m. with Nikki Oh and Jude Lee as 24 of the nation’s top-ranked junior girls have been invited to play alongside LPGA players. She is currently in a two-way tie for 13th place with Walnut (CA) native Jude Lee (one of her playing partners) with 32 points, an improvement of two points from her first round here a year ago. The AJGA tournament uses a modified Stableford scoring format where points will be awarded based on score for each individual hole - Double Eagle: 8 points; Eagle: 5 points; Birdie: 3 points; Par: 2 points; Bogey: 1 point; Double Bogey or worse: 0 points. Last year, Deng finished in a two-way tie for 13th (30-26-32-35--133). “I made a couple mistakes I shouldn’t have. Some course management mistakes put me in tough positions which were hard to get up and down. Overall, it wasn’t my best, but there’s still three more days left for improvement,” said Deng after her round, who now has five rounds under her belt at Liberty National dating back to last year. “It’s important to be straight off the tee on this course. Learning from my mistakes from last year and knowing where to miss on certain holes have definitely helped.” Pending weather conditions, the same threesome will tee off at 2:16 p.m., Friday from hole 10 in one of the last groups of the day. “My expectations for the rest of the week are just to play up to my own standards, and just play it shot by shot,” said Deng, who is currently doing school online. In her last AJGA start, Deng won by a six-stroke margin to win medalist honors at the Junior Invitational at Sage Valley Golf Club in Graniteville, South Carolina back in mid-March. For more information on the event and for tickets, please visit Mizuho Americas Open. The N.J. High School Sports newsletter is now appearing in mailboxes 5 days a week. Sign up now! Follow us on social: Facebook | Instagram | X (formerly Twitter) Lou Monaco can be reached at lmonaco@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on X: @loumonaco.