For the third time in the last four summers, Suffolk’s Cedar Point Country Club welcomes a state championship golf tournament this week, hosting the 59th Virginia State Golf Association (VSGA) Junior Stroke Play Championship.

A field of the top 90 boys age 18 and under will play 54 holes, and have to play their best through the likely heat and humidity, with one round each Tuesday-Thursday.

Last year, Blacksburg’s Jake Mondy, 17, won the championship shooting rounds of 69, 65 and 68 (11-under par) at Roanoke Country Club. Mondy will try to repeat as champion before heading to Auburn University in the fall, where he’s accepted a golf scholarship.

Cedar Point hosted the 2008 VSGA Four-Ball Championship and the 2009 VSGA Amateur Championship. Virginia Beach’s Brinson Paolini, then a recent graduate of Cox High School and now a rising junior at Duke, won the Amateur Championship.

Play will start on both nines at 8:30 a.m. each day. There will be an overall champion, along with honors divided by age group, a 14-15 division and a 16-18 division. Spectator admission is free.

King’s Fork’s Adam Peebles, a rising junior for the Bulldogs, is in the field. Peebles advanced through a qualifying event with a round of 74 at Sleepy Hole Golf Course earlier this summer. During the high school season, Peebles carded a 7-under 65 at Bide-A-Wee Golf Course in Portsmouth and a 6-under 66 at Suffolk’s Nansemond River Golf Club.

John David Sanderson, of Suffolk and a Cedar Point member, is in the tournament on his home course having earned his spot through his play in this year’s VSGA Amateur Championship, where he reached the round of 16 in match play.

Richmond’s Adam Ball, now 17, won this event two years ago and is in the field. Ball won the 2011 Junior Match Play Championship and was in the U.S. Junior Amateur Championship this past week in Bremerton, Wash.

All three Virginia High School League state champions made the championship: Kellam’s Alex Lloyd (Group AAA), Mondy at Blacksburg High (Group AA) and Tanner Carbuagh of Giles High School (Group A).

The VSGA Junior Stroke Play Championship has a history of crowning superb champions. Lanny Wadkins and Curtis Strange won this tournament twice each, Wadkins in the ‘60s and Strange in the ‘70s, before going on to exceptional PGA Tour careers.

Cedar Point’s course opened in 1964 and went through significant renovations in 2003, reopening in 2004, with the redesign done by Virginia-based course designer Tom Clark. The course sits on the end of a peninsula into the Nansemond River near the mouth of the Nansemond into the James River.