Prendergast, Secor fit a U.S. Women's Amateur Four-Ball crown into their schedule

   Having earned invitations to compete as individuals in the NCAA Austin Regional made it a pretty good spring for Colorado State’s Katrina Prendergast, a junior from Sparks, Nev., and Ellen Secor, a sophomore from Portland, Ore.

   But the spring got even better last week when the Colorado State teammates joined forces to capture the U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball Championship at chilly El Caballero Country Club in Tarzana, Calif.

   The Women’s Four-Ball had been placed a little later in the calendar in its first three years of existence, but was moved up a little this year. It’s unclear if the USGA was aware that it had found a spot between conference championships and the start of the NCAA regionals that would give college players at least the possibility of sneaking in a USGA championship in the midst of a busy spring college schedule.

   Prendergast and Secor, among several other collegians, did just that. And there they were last Wednesday, rattling off wins on three straight holes to rally from 2-down with four holes to play to edge Yachun Chang, a 17-year-old from Chinese Taipei, and Lei Ye, a 16-year-old from China, 1-up, and capture the championship.

   Prendergast and Secor had the blessing of their coach, Annie Young, to tune up for regionals by teeing it up in the Women’s Four-Ball. Young was the 2002 winner of the U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links Championship, the event the Four-Ball replaced on the USGA calendar, and played on the winning U.S. Curtis Cup team in 2004.

   In the final, Prendergast and Secor made the turn with a 1-up advantage before Chang, who will join the Arizona program this summer, and Ye, headed Stanford in the summer of 2019, won the 10^th with a par and the 13^th and 14^th holes with birdies to take a 2-up lead.

   But Prendergast and Secor turned their tables on their young rivals, winning 15 with a par and 16 with birdie to draw even before Prendergast dropped a five-foot birdie putt on the 17^th hole at the 6,168-yard, par-72 El Caballero layout to give her team a 1-up lead heading to the last.

   The fiery Secor pumped up her teammate after the duo fell behind by two holes on the 14^th.

   “That’s how she plays,” Prendergast told the USGA website. “She gets fired up and that really helps her and I think it actually helped me, too. I got pumped up after I made par on 15 and then we got two good shots in on 16. We had the tee and I think those two shots really helped put pressure on them.”

   When Ye’s tough downhill seven-footer for birdie on the 18^th hole slid by, Prendergast and Secor had a USGA trophy with their name on it.

   They were paired together in the opening round of the Austin Regional Monday at The University of Texas Golf Club and Prendergast carded a 1-over 73 and is in a group tied for 32^nd while Secor struggled to an 82 and is tied for 91^st.

   In the semifinals earlier last Wednesday, Prendergast and Secor took out reigning U.S. Girls’ Junior  champion Erica Shepherd, a 17-year-old from Greenwood, Ind., and her fellow Duke recruit, Megan Furtney, a 17-year-old from Chicago, 3 and 2.

   Shepherd and Furtney had ousted another formidable pair of college teammates in the quarterfinals when they claimed a 2 and 1 win over Arizona’s Haley Moore, a junior from Escondido, Calif., and Gigi Stoll, a junior from Tigard, Ore.

    Chang and Yi reached the final with a 4 and 3 victory over a couple of California teenagers, Leila Dizon, an 18-year-old from Los Angeles, and Irene Kim, a 17-year-old from LaPalma. Dizon will be headed for Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania this summer while Kim is a Northwestern recruit.

   This was the first time in the short history of the U.S. Women’s Four-Ball that there wasn’t a player involved whom I covered in high school during my previous life as a golf writer at the Delaware County Daily Times.

   But there were people from the Philly area involved and there are always interesting connections in the world of amateur golf.

   Even though the Women’s Four-Ball has been dominated by teens and college kids in its brief four-year history, one pair of mid-ams, Meghan Stasi, the South Jersey native who has won eight Women’s Golf Association of Philadelphia Match-Play Championships, and her pal, Dawn Woodard of Greer, S.C., have been there every year and made it to the match-play bracket every year.

   The 39-year-old Stasi, a four-time U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur champion who lives in Oakland Park, Fla. outside of Fort Lauderdale, and the 43-year-old Woodard were involved in probably the match of the tournament at El Caballero, falling on the 21^st hole in the round of 16 to former Kansas State standouts Katherine Gravel-Coursol and Paige Nelson.

   Gravel-Coursol, a 24-year-old from Canada, and her former college teammate Nelson, a 23-year-old from Farmers Ranch, Texas, had pulled off the first big upset of the tournament, knocking off qualifying medalists Annick Haczkiewicz and Sydney Smith, a couple of Las Vegas teens, in the opening round of match play.

   Haczkiewicz, a Brigham Young recruit, and Smith, who will join Four-Ball champions Prendergast and Secor at Colorado State this summer, fired better-ball rounds of 66 and 69 for a 10-under 134 total that won medalist honors by two shots.

   Stasi and Woodard had steady rounds of 72 and 68 to earn their spot in the match-play bracket.

   I thought the mid-am team of Katie Miller, a two-time Pennsylvania Amateur champion from Jeannette in western Pennsylvania, and Lauren Greenlief of Ashburn, Va. would make a formidable Four-Ball entry, but the pair failed to advance out of qualifying. They struggled in an opening-round 79 before bouncing back with a 73.

   Miller, a three-time PIAA champion at Hempfield Area who starred collegiately at North Carolina, and Greenlief, a former Viriginia standout, were two of the three co-medalists in qualifying for match play in the U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur at Champions Golf Club’s Cypress Creek Course in Houston in November.

   The two teamed up in Florida in February to capture the 71^st Women’s International Four-Ball at The Wanderers Club in Wellington, Fla., the culmination of the Orange Blossom Tour of amateur events for women in Florida each winter. It was repeat win for the pair.

   Miller and Greenlief fired a final round of 8-under 64 to storm to a five-shot victory in the International Four-Ball with a 9-under 135 total.

   Miller had teed it up in the U.S. Women’s Four-Ball a year ago with Aurora Kan, the 2010 PIAA champion at Chichester and a former Purdue standout. The duo qualified for match play at The Dunes Golf & Beach Club in Myrtle Beach, S.C. and were knocked out in the first round.

   Kan reportedly turned pro at some point last year and Miller turned to her Women’s International partner to join her for the U.S. Women’s Four-Ball.

   A Keystone State duo of senior standouts, 58-years young Philadelphian Lisa McGill, a quarterfinalist in last fall’s U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur at Waverly Country Club in Portland, Ore., and Pittsburgh’s Courtney Myhrum, 56, earned a trip to El Caballero, but failed to advance to match play with rounds of 76 and 80 for a 156 total.