The LPGA’s first major championship of 2018, the ANA
Inspiration, tees off Thursday in Rancho Mirage, Calif. and once again the
event will have seven of the top amateur players in the world in the field.
And even though four of the top college players are among
the seven, including UCLA’s Lilia Vu, a junior from Fountain Valley, Calif. who
resides atop the Women’s World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR), the most intriguing
name of the group is that of 15-year-old Lucy Li of Redwood Shores, Calif.
I have chronicled several times in this blog about how
amazing it was to see a 13-year-old Li nearly win the qualifying medal in the
2016 U.S. Women’s Amateur at Rolling Green Golf Club, the William Flynn gem in
Springfield, Delaware County. I was there. It wasn’t an easy golf course or
certainly not as easy as Li made it look with rounds of 67 and 68.
Li, No. 11 in the Women’s WAGR, earned her way into the ANA
Inspiration a year ago by winning the ANA Junior Inspiration, an AJGA
tournament the weekend before the main event that rewards the youngster winning
it by giving her a chance to tee it up with the LPGA pros many of them grew up
idolizing.
Playing her first two rounds with Michelle Wie, Li then went
out and made the 36-hole cut. She was the only amateur to survive the cut and
thus earned low-amateur honors.
“I can’t wait to return to Mission Hills knowing that I’m
already in the field to play in my second ANA Inspiration,” Li told the LPGA
website after learning she had been invited to be one of the amateurs in the
field. “Last year is definitely one of the highlights of my career and being
able to play with Michelle Wie in the first two rounds was a dream come true.
“The course is always in perfect condition and it’s so fun
playing in front of the big crowds. I can’t thank the tournament committee
enough for giving me this opportunity.”
Of course, Li was still eligible to tee it up in the ANA
Junior Inspiration over the weekend and did so, partially to get in a round
over the Dinah Shore Tournament Course – by the way, with apologies to ANA, but
this week’s event will always be the Dinah Shore to me and to many other fans
of women’s golf – and also to support the AJGA.
Li had rounds of 70 and 73 in Saturday’s double-round over
the Pete Dye Course at Mission Hills before finishing up with a 3-over 75 on
the Dinah Shore Tournament Course Sunday to finish eighth at 2-over 218.
The title and the final ticket into the ANA Inspiration went
to another 15-year-old, Rose Zhang, a local gal from Irvine, Calif. who birdied
the familiar par-5 18th hole at the Dinah Shore Tournament Course to
cap a 3-under-par 69 that gave her a one-shot victory.
The AJGA players were joined by LPGA Legends and Zhang
played with World Golf Hall of Famer Patty Sheehan, the winner of the 1996 Nabisco
Dinah Shore. Sheehan and Zhang celebrated Zhang’s win by jumping into Poppie’s
Pond, which fronts the 18th hole at the Dinah Shore Tournament
Course. It has become a tradition for the winner of the ANA Inspiration to make
that leap into Poppie’s Pond.
Zhang captured the title in one of the biggest events in
junior golf last summer when she won the Girls Junior PGA Championship at the
Country Club of St. Albans’ Lewis and Clark Course in St. Albans, Mo. Zhang ran
away with the title by putting together a ridiculous 20-under 268 total for the
72-hole event.
Li and Zhang will be joined by one more teen phenom,
15-year-old Atthaya Thitikul of Thailand, recent winner of the Women’s Amateur
Asia-Pacific Championship. Thitikul became the youngest player to win a Ladies
European Tour event at age 14 last summer.
Then there is the foursome of standout collegians in the
field, including three of the four semifinalists in last summer’s U.S. Women’s
Amateur at San Diego Country Club.
The group is led by Vu, who defeated Li in the quarterfinals
to earn that semifinal berth in the U.S. Women’s Amateur last summer. Vu earned
her fourth straight individual victory and set a new standard for career wins
at UCLA with her eighth by taking the title in the Wildcat Invitational earlier
this month.
Stanford’s Albane Valenzuela, a sophomore from Switzerland
and the No. 4 player in the Women’s
WAGR, will also be in the field. Valenzuela was the low amateur in the
ANA Inspiration two years ago.
Valenzula was the runnerup in the U.S. Women’s Amateur and
in the European Ladies’ Amateur championships. She defeated her UCLA rival Vu
in the semifinals of the U.S. Women’s Amateur.
The woman Valenzuela lost to in the U.S. Women’s Amateur
final, Texas’ Sophia Schubert, a senior from Oak Ridge, Tenn. and the No. 19
player in the Women’s WAGR, will be at Mission Hills.
Schubert has worked her senior season around the
opportunities to play in the professional majors that comes with winning the
U.S. Women’s Amateur. She was low amateur in the rain-shortened Evian
Championship in France last fall, finishing in a tie for 58th, one
shot better than Thailand’s Thitikul.
Finally, there is Arkansas’ Maria Fassi, a junior from
Mexico who is No. 22 in the Women’s WAGR. She is coming into the ANA
Inspiration on a similar roll to the one UCLA’s Vu is on. A victory in last
week’s Evans Derby Experience was Fassi’s fifth of the season, just one win shy
of the program record of six established a decade ago by Stacy Lewis.
I wouldn’t be surprised one bit to see any of the four
collegians show up on the ANA Inspiration leaderboard at some point. They have all been playing a lot of
competitive golf since the beginning of February and all of them can play.
Not surprisingly, the teams of all four of those players are
among the best in Division I. Vu’s UCLA Bruins are No. 1 in the latest Golfstat rankings, Fassi’s Arkansas
Razorbacks are No. 3, Valenzuela and the Stanford Cardinal are No. 4 and
Schubert’s Texas Longhorns are No. 6.
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