Ridderstrom the star in Symetra Tour's debut at Raven's Claw

   I wasn’t quite sure what to make of last weekend’s inaugural Valley Forge Invitational, a Symetra Tour stop at Raven’s Claw Golf Club near Pottstown.

   Unlike the vast majority of sports fans in the Philadelphia area, I know what the Symetra Tour is. I did a little post on the 10 players who advanced out of the LPGA’s developmental tour to the big show last year. The Volvik Race for the Card, as it’s known, is a big part of the Symetra Tour season and things can get pretty tight in the battle for the last few spots down the stretch.

   Frequent visitors to my blog know that I have paid close attention to the college scene the last couple of years and the Symetra Tour is where many of the top college players head to try to make it to the LPGA Tour. The LPGA is the big leagues of women’s golf. It’s where you want to get.

   I’ve also tried to pay attention to the progress of some of the women I watched in the 2016 U.S. Women’s Amateur at Rolling Green Golf Club. Of the 10 players who graduated to the LPGA Tour via the Volvik Race for the Card last year, three of them, Australian Hannah Green, France’s Celine Boutier, a collegiate standout at Duke, and American Katelyn Dambaugh, the Southeastern Conference individual champion as a senior at South Carolina, made deep runs in match play at Rolling Green.

   Raven’s Claw is a relatively new entry on a crowded public-course scene in western Montgomery County. I was there for the opening round of the District One Championship when Chichester’s Aurora Kan, as a freshman in the fall of 2007, started on her run of three straight district titles. I didn’t really get out on the course, an Ed Shearon design that opened in 2005, but it seemed like it would be a good fit for the fledgling women pros.

   The tournament started on the Thursday before the Memorial Day weekend and there was good weather as conditions started to deteriorate not long after Sweden’s Louise Ridderstrom rolled to a four-shot victory Saturday afternoon. The weather’s been pretty lousy around here ever since.

   I’m not exactly sure how the event was received, but admission was free, courtesy of the Women’s Golf Association of Philadelphia. The golf community in the Philadelphia area always seems to come out for pro golf.

   As I’ve often said it is one of the great mysteries to me why there is no regular pro golf stops in the Philadelphia area. We do get the BMW Championship, the next-to-last round of the PGA Tour’s FedEx Cup Playoffs, this summer and an LPGA major, the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, in 2020, both at Aronimink Golf Club, a Donald Ross masterpiece in Newtown Square.

   I do know one thing about the inaugural Valley Forge Invitational: Ridderstrom, a former UCLA standout, was the star of the show.

   Trailing by three heading into Saturday’s final round, Ridderstrom fired a sizzling 8-under-par 63 over the 6,080-yard, par-71 Raven’s Claw layout to finish at 16-under 197.

   Ridderstrom was a member of a powerful UCLA team two springs ago that included Annika Award winner Bronte Law, an Englishwomen who is on the LPGA Tour, and Lilia Vu, a freshman then and the No. 1 player in the latest Women’s World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR). The Bruins were stunned in the semifinals by an overachieving Washington team on its way to the NCAA title at Eugene Country Club.

   They were playing for a total purse of $100,000 at Raven’s Claw and Ridderstrom grabbed the top prize of $15,000, moving into that coveted top 10 in the Volvik Race for the Card.

   Ridderstrom made the drive from the Symetra’s previous stop, the Symetra Classic in Davidson, N.C., with fellow Swede Jenny Haglund, who had earned her first tour win. That winning feeling must have rubbed off.

   Ridderstrom got steadily better each time she teed it up at Raven’s Claw, opening with a 2-under 69 and adding a 6-under 65 before finishing up by establishing the competitive course record with that final-round 63.

   “It’s pretty amazing,” Ridderstrom told the Symetra Tour website. “Even before the round, I knew I had a chance. After I made a birdie on No. 9 and I was 5-under after nine holes, I was like ‘I have a pretty good chance now.’ In the same way, I was trying to think just stick to what I’m doing.”

It’s called learning how to win, exactly the kinds of lessons you hope to master on a developmental tour.

   Laura Wearn of Charlotte, N.C., a product of perennial college power Furman, opened with a 6-under 65 and had a 5-under 66 in Friday’s second round and held the lead at 11-under 131. She cooled off with a final-round 70 to get a share of second with South Korea’s Min-G Kim, who climbed the leaderboard in the final round with her second straight 66.

   It was a second straight strong showing for Haglund, who sandwiched a second-round 68 with a pair of 67s to head a group of four players tied for fourth at 11-under 202. Haglund solidified her spot atop the Volvik Race for the Card standings.

   Also in the group with Haglund tied for fourth was Charlotte Thomas, an Englishwoman who was the lone senior on that Washington team that stormed past Ridderstrom’s UCLA Bruins to an NCAA title two years ago.

   Thomas trailed Wearn by just a shot after firing a 6-under 65 in the second round before backing off with a final-round 70. The strong showing enabled Thomas to maintain her hold on the ninth spot in the Volvik Race for the Card.

   Rounding out the foursome at 11-under were Demi Runas, who is trying to work her way back to the big leagues after spending the last three years on the LPGA Tour, and Jenny Coleman, a former collegiate standout at Colorado.

   Runas, who starred at California-Davis, finished up with a 68 after a pair of 67s at Raven’s Claw while Coleman had a final round of 2-under 69.

   Only one amateur player made the cut to the final 60 for Saturday’s final round and that was Notre Dame senior Isabella DiLisio, the 2013 PIAA Class AAA champion as a junior at Mount St. Joseph. DiLisio and another former Mount St. Joe standout, Emily Gimpel, were given sponsor’s exemptions into the field and DiLisio, a Hatfield resident who won the 2014 Pennsylvania Women’s Amateur the summer before her senior year at the Mount, made the most her chance.

   It was an up-and-down junior season for DiLisio at Notre Dame, although she did help the Fighting Irish earn an invitation to the NCAA Madison Regional.

   DiLisio opened with a 1-under 70 and matched par in the second round with a 71 to earn a tee time for Saturday’s final round. She finished with her best round of the week, a 2-under 69, to finish tied for 34^th in her first pro event.

   “It meant so much to me,” DiLisio told The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Joe Juliano. “It was awesome just getting a chance to see how the pros  play and seeing kind of like how I stack up against them. Having my friends and family out here also made it really special.”

   Gimpel played on state team champions in 2006 and 2007 and state runnerup teams in 2008 and 2009 during her time at Mount St. Joseph. Her collegiate career started at William & Mary and finished at Maryland.

   Gimpel, who is still trying to earn some Symetra Tour status, struggled in her first tour of Raven’s Claw with a 78 before bouncing back with a 1-under 70 in the second round, but her 148 total did not make the cut.

   Samantha Wagner, an Easton native who moved to Florida as a youngster and turned pro after her sophomore season with Florida a year ago, made the cut at Raven’s Claw and finished in the group tied for 42^nd at 2-under 211.

   By the way, the LPGA does come to the Jersey Shore each year. Normally, this would be the week for the ShopRite LPGA Classic at the Stockton Seaview Hotel and Golf Club’s Bay Course across the bay from Atlantic City, but it was pushed back a week this year when the U.S. Women’s Open was moved up to this week in the USGA schedule.

   Ireland’s Maguire twins, Leona and Lisa, will make their professional debuts when this year’s ShopRite tees off June 8.

   Leona Maguire is coming off one of the great college careers ever at Duke. Her scoring average of 70.97 is the lowest for a player with more than 100 rounds in NCAA Division I history. She has been at or near the top of the Women’s World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR) for most of the last three years. She will vacate the No. 2 spot in the Women’s WAGR when she turns pro.

   Leona’s twin sister Lisa is not quite as accomplished as Leona Maguire is, but is a pretty good player who was part of the lineup for a Duke team that reached match play in the NCAA Championship at Karsten Creek Golf Club before falling to Southern California in the quarterfinals.

   The Maguires will play on sponsor’s exemptions in the ShopRite. They might show up on the Symetra Tour at some point this summer. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to see Leona Maguire contend at the Shore. She’s that good.

Oklahoma State makes it look easy in winning NCAA title on its home course

   If you just tuned in to The Golf Channel for the NCAA Championship’s Final Match Wednesday and watched Oklahoma State roll to the title with a dominating 5-0 victory over Alabama in front of an adoring home crowd at Karsten Creek Golf Club in Stillwater, Okla., maybe you thought it was easy for the Cowboys.

   It was the 11^th NCAA championship for one of the storied programs in Division I men’s golf, but the first since 2006 for the Cowboys. More to the point, it was the first since the NCAA added a layer of match play on top of what had historically been a stroke-play event in 2009.

   It is never easy to win an NCAA Championship anymore. Oklahoma State has had some great teams in the 10 seasons that match play has become a part of the NCAA Championship. It’s not just going out there and freewheeling it in a stroke-play event, making a bunch of birdies, go low and win.

   This will look easy in the record book, Oklahoma State, coming into the NCAA Championship on its home course ranked No. 1 by Golfstat, claiming the top seed by winning the stroke-play qualifying and then winning three matches, the final in dominating fashion.

   But you didn’t hear the collective gulp among the Cowboy faithful when the stroke-play qualifying was finished Monday and they realized that the road to the Final Match was going to go through No. 2 Texas A&M and either No. 3 Oklahoma, the defending national champion, or No. 9 Auburn, winner of the Southeastern Conference championship in a match-play format.

   But, as they had season long, the Oklahoma State players put their heads down and just played. As big an advantage as playing in your home course is, I would argue that the Cowboys’ biggest advantage in the postseason was playing the Big 12 Championship on a U.S. Open/PGA Championship-caliber course like Southern Hills Country Club and being selected to go to the Columbus Regional and taking on The Ohio State University Golf Club’s Scarlet Course.

   They’re the kinds of golf courses that build the kind of mental toughness you need to survive three rounds of match play in, what, 40 hours, over three of the toughest teams in college golf.

   It was estimated that more than 3,000 Oklahoma State backers roamed the fairways of Karsten Creek Wednesday and I’m sure that gave the Cowboys a huge emotional boost. But the team did a lot of heavy lifting to give itself that opportunity. Oklahoma State didn’t get exempted into the Final Match.

   But yes, when they got there, the Cowboys took care of business. Alabama was ranked sixth. The Crimson Tide had been the runnerup to Auburn in that SEC match-play final. They finished fourth in a Stockton Regional that got stood on its head by a couple of Big 12 upstarts in regional champion Kansas and Iowa State.

   Oklahoma State has two players among the top 25 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking, No. 7 Viktor Hovland, a sophomore from Norway, and No. 23 Zach Bauchou, a junior from Forest, Va.

   They were matched up against Alabama’s veteran seniors, Lee Hodges of Ardmore, Tenn. and Jonathan Hardee of Greer, S.C. And Hovland and Bauchou just crushed them.

   Bauchou was unconscious. When he chipped in for eagle at the ninth to complete an outward 29, he was 7-up on a stunned Hardee. It was over two holes later, Bauchou giving the Cowboys their first point in an 8 and 7 romp. Match play isn’t so draining when you’re playing like that.

   Hovland completed a 3-0 run through match play with a 4 and 3 victory over Hodges for Oklahoma State’s second point.

   After that, it was just a matter of time for Oklahoma State. Matthew Wolff, the Cowboys’ talented freshman from Agoura Hills, Calif. drained a 12-foot birdie putt to complete a 4 and 3 victory over Davis Riley, a junior from Hattiesburg, Miss., and it was over.

   Moments later, Kristoffer Ventura, a senior from Norway, completed a 4 and 3 victory over Alabama’s talented freshman, Wilson Furr of Jackson, Miss.

   Oklahoma State had another freshman who was rock solid all year, Austin Eckroat of Edmond, Okla. He was 1-up on Alabama’s Davis Shore, a freshman from Knoxville, Tenn., when the Cowboys clinched and was awarded a full point. Eckroat had authored the clinching points in two hard-won matches Tuesday over Texas A&M and Auburn.

   “I have never seen an atmosphere like this,” head coach Alan Bratton told the Oklahoma State website. “I am so proud again for our Oklahoma State family and Cowboy golf. This is bigger than just Cowboy golf. Our fans, they turn out. They did that in a big way.

   “I’m glad the world got to see it and I’m glad these guys got to live it. It is certainly not about me. It is about off of these players and all of the former players we had. I can’t tell you how many former players we had in the crowd this week. All of us were standing on their shoulders this week.”

   Don’t kid yourself, it is never easy to win an NCAA Championship in the match-play era with so many talented players out there. Bretton’s Cowboys just made it look easy Wednesday.

Parson hits the jackpot with Haverford Philadelphia PGA Classic vicitory

   Mark Parson, a 48-year-old teaching pro at Harbor Pines Golf Club in Egg Harbor Township, N.J., is $100,000 richer Wednesday than he was when he teed off in Tuesday’s 22^nd annual Haverford Philadelphia PGA Classic at Sunnybrook Golf Club.

   It is the richest top prize offered in a PGA Section tournament around the country and it annually creates a buzz among the talented group of local pros in the Philadelphia Section. The Haverford Trust Company puts up the jackpot and the event, played on the day after Memorial Day, is circled on the calendar each year for those pros.

   The prize structure drops off pretty quickly to more normal levels for a Philadelphia Section PGA events, so, in many ways, it has a winner-take-all feel to it.

   Parson teed off in the last group of the day Tuesday, knowing that 3-under-par 69 over the 6,740-yard, par-72 Sunnybrook layout, was in the clubhouse. But he did his best to ignore the goings-on with everybody else in the 150-player field that included 138 pros and 12 amateurs and concentrate on what he was doing.

   Parson immediately went out and made birdies at the third, fifth, sixth and eighth holes to get it to 4-under. A bogey at the ninth left him at 3-under making the turn.

   Parson went bogey-birdie on 10 and 11 and went bogey-birdie again on 13 and 14. He was still 3-under with five holes to go.

   But he reached the par-5 16^th in two and got an easy two-putt birdie and then dropped a 30-foot bomb for birdie at the par-3 17^th. Parson wasn’t exactly sure where he stood, but he figured 5-under was a good number. A nervous par at the last enabled him to finish with a 5-under 67 and indeed earned him the big prize, $100 grand.

   “I don’t want to tell you how scared I was on that last putt,” Parson told The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Joe Juliano. “I didn’t know what the score was. I didn’t know what the winner was. I didn’t know anything and I tried to keep it that way.”

   The early lead was established in the very first group of the day when Radley Run Country Club assistant pro Brett Melton, the Philadelphia Section’s reigning Omega Player of the Year, fired a 3-under 69.

   That ultimately landed Melton in a three-way tie for second place with Squires Golf Club assistant pro Corey McAlarney and Brian Bergstol, an assistant at the Shawnee Inn & Golf Resort. Pretty sure McAlarney worked in the Sunnybrook pro shop a couple of years ago before moving on to Squires.

   ACE Club assistant pro Billy Stewart, a standout at Malvern Prep and Saint Joseph’s University, headed a group of four players tied for fifth at 2-under 70. Stewart, the Philadelphia Section PGA’s Comeback Player of the Year in 2017, is a past winner of the Haverford Philadelphia PGA Classic, but I’m pretty sure the top prize was only $50 grand then. Still, a pretty good chunk of change.

   Defending champion Andrew Turner, in his second year as an assistant at Sunnybrook, also finished tied for fifth place at 2-under 70. Rounding out the foursome at 2-under were Lookaway Golf Club’s Michael Little, the Philadelphia Section PGA’s Omega Player of the Year in 2016, and University of Pennsylvania head coach Jason Calhoun.

   Three members of the Philadelphia’s standout senior contingent, including reigning eight-time Robert “Skee” Riegel Senior Player of the Year Stu Ingraham, the head of instruction at the M Golf Range in Newtown Square, headed a foursome tied for 10^th at 1-under 71.

   Joining Ingraham at that figure were fellow senior stalwarts George Forster, the head pro at Radnor Valley Country Club, and Philmont Country Club’s Dave Quinn, the reigning Philadelphia Section PGA Professional Championship winner.

   Rounding out the quartet at 1-under 71 was Mike Tobiason of Deerfield Golf Club.

   Four more players – Overbrook Golf Club head pro Eric Kennedy, Jamie Komancheck of RiverCrest Golf Club & Preserve, Philadelphia Country Club head pro Scott Reilly, and Stephen Sieracki of Indian Springs Country Club – shared 14^th place, each matching par with a 72 at Sunnybrook.