It was a remarkably young group of American golfers that
went into battle with a talented Great Britain & Ireland team at Dun
Laoghaire Golf Club in Enniskerry, Ireland outside of Dublin in the Curtis Cup
Match in the spring of 2016.
It was going to be a tough ask for that group to knock off
GB&I any way you wanted to look at it. The presence of Leona Maguire, a
native of Ireland and one of the top amateur players in the world, on the
GB&I roster probably had the partisan Irish golf fans even more fired up
than they normally would be.
I got a chance to talk to Mariel Galdiano, who was just out
of high school in Pearl City, Hawaii when she represented the U.S. in Ireland,
after she had earned medalist honors in qualifying for the 2016 U.S. Women’s
Amateur at Rolling Green Golf Club.
She was brilliant that day at Rolling Green, firing a 6-under
65, tying the second-best single round in U.S. Women’s Amateur qualifying history
and bettering the 36-hole qualifying record by two shots with her 9-under 133
total. Her experience in Ireland was still very fresh in her mind.
“When you’re in that situation with cameras on you and a big
crowd cheering for GB&I, I had to learn to focus on myself,” Galdiano said.
The UCLA sophomore is one of 12 U.S. women, including one other
holdover from that 2016 U.S. squad that dropped an 11.5-8.5 decision to
GB&I, who accepted an invitation from the USGA International Team Selection Committee to participate in a practice session for
the 2018 Curtis Cup Match. The practice session will be held Dec. 17 and 18 at
Shoal Creek in Alabama, site of the 2018 U.S. Women’s Open.
The 2018 Curtis Cup Match will be held June 8 to 10 at
Quaker Ridge Golf Club in Scarsdale, N.Y. An invitation to the practice session
does not guarantee a spot on the team. A lot of the spring college season will
be played before the final selections are made for the eight-woman U.S. side.
The other veteran of the 2016 Curtis Cup Match invited to
Shoal Creek is Stanford sophomore Andrea Lee of Hermosa Beach, Calif., who,
like Galdiano, had just finished high school when she headed across the pond to
Ireland.
At 19, I suspect Lee will be one of the leaders on this U.S.
team. I was tremendously impressed with her talent and her grit in a 1-up loss
to eventual champion Eun Jeong Seong in the quarterfinals at Rolling Green. A couple
of weeks earlier, Lee fell to Seong in the final of the U.S. Junior Girls’
Championship at Ridgewood Country Club in Paramus, N.J.
While probably not as young as the team that lost at Dun
Laoghaire, it will likely be another youthful bunch representing the Stars and
Stripes at Quaker Ridge. The oldest player invited to the practice session is
21-year-old Sophia Schubert, the reigning U.S. Women’s Amateur champion from
Oak Ridge, Tenn.
Schubert was the leading lady for a Texas team that captured
the Big 12 title last spring and advanced to the NCAA Championship at Rich Harvest
Farms. She was an impressive winner of the U.S. Women’s Amateur Championship,
claiming a hard-fought 6 and 5 victory over Switzerland’s Albane Valenzuela,
No. 4 in the Women’s World Amateur Golf Rankings, in the final at San Diego
Country Club.
Schubert, probably underrated in the Women’s World Amateur
Golf Ranking at 21st, is the senior leader on a young, but talented
Texas team that was ranked 10th by Golfstat when the college golf season took its midseason break.
Schubert missed the beginning of the college season while teeing it up in The
Evian Championship, the LPGA’s final major championship of the season. She was
one of just two amateurs to make the cut at The Evian and finished tied for 58th.
Schubert is one of two U.S. Women Amateur champions who will
participate in the Curtis Cup practice session. Kristen Gillman, a sophomore
for No. 3 Alabama from Austin, Texas, is only 20, but seems older since she’s
been around forever, winning the U.S. Women’s Amateur at 16 in 2014 at Nassau
Country Club. Gillman is No. 11 in the Women’s World Amateur Golf Ranking.
Gillman will be joined by two of her Crimson Tide teammates
not far from their Alabama campus in the practice session at Shoal Creek.
Lauren Stephenson, a 20-year-old from Lexington, S.C., and Cheyenne Knight, a
20-year-old from Aledo, Texas, round out the powerful trio at the top of the
Alabama lineup. Stephenson and Knight, Nos. 6 and 8, respectively, in the
Women’s World Amateur Golf Ranking, are juniors at Alabama.
Galdiano, No. 12 in the Women’s World Amateur Golf Ranking,
will be joined at Shoal Creek by her teammate on the No. 1 UCLA team,
20-year-old Lilia Vu of Fountain Valley, Calif. Vu, who fell to Valenzuela in
the U.S. Women’s Amateur semifinals at San Diego Country Club, is No. 2 in the
Women’s World Amateur Golf Ranking behind only Ireland’s Maguire.
If Vu isn’t the top individual player in college golf, Wake
Forest junior Jennifer Kupcho is. The 20-year-old Kupcho of Westminster, Colo.
is No. 3 in the Women’s World Amateur Golf Ranking. She appeared headed for an
NCAA individual title at Rich Harvest Farms when her approach to the 17th
hole found the water and left her a frustrated runnerup. Kupcho played like a
woman on a mission this fall.
The Pacific Athletic Conference, the best in college golf,
will be well represented at Shoal Creek. In addition to UCLA’s Galdiano and Vu
and Stanford’s Lee, Southern California junior Robynn Ree, a 20-year-old from
Redondo Beach, Calif., and Arizona junior Haley Moore, an 18-year-old from Escondido,
Calif., have also accepted invitations to the Curtis Cup practice session.
The USGA didn’t forget to invite a couple of the top junior
players in the country, Lucy Li, a 15-year-old from Redwood City, Calif., and
Rachel Heck, a 16-year-old from Memphis, Tenn., to Shoal Creek.
Li validated that decision last week by cruising to a
five-shot victory in the American Junior Golf Association’s Rolex Tournament of
Champions at PGA National Resort & Spa in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. Li’s
13-under 275 total included a spectacular 10-under 62 at PGA National’s
Champion Course in which she unfurled a back nine of 7-under 29.
Heck, AJGA’s Rolex Player of the Year, finished tied for
33rd in the U.S. Women’s Open at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J. last
summer before she reached her 16th birthday.
Schubert, Ree, Vu, Stephenson and Li were all
quarterfinalists in the U.S. Women’s Amateur at San Diego Country Club,
Stephenson falling in an epic 30-hole match to Chin Yen Wu, a 13-year-old
phenom from Chinese Taipei.
Galdiano probably won’t have to worry about having cameras
in her face at Quaker Ridge. The Curtis Cup is just not as big a deal in the
States as it is in Great Britain & Ireland. I’m quite certain that the golf
community of the New York City area will represent when it comes to rooting on
the U.S. team.
They better because some of those same loud Irish fans who
rooted GB&I on to victory at Dun Laoghaire will undoubtedly make the trip
across the pond for this one.
U.S. captain Virginia Derby Grimes, a member of winning U.S.
Curtis Cup sides in 1998, 2004 and 2006, will get her first look at some of the
top candidates to make up her team at Shoal Creek. They are a talented dozen
indeed.
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