Lancaster Country Club gets well-deserved nod for another U.S. Women's Open in 2024

   MANHEIM TOWNSHIP – Lancaster Country Club president Ted Bloom admits he was in uncharted territory a decade ago after the William Flynn gem was awarded the 2015 U.S. Women’s Open by the United States Golf Association.

   “We had no idea what to expect,” Bloom told a media gathering Tuesday morning at Lancaster Country Club during which the USGA announced that the U.S. Women’s Open will return to the course in 2024. “But we learned very quickly how much the region was going to embrace the challenge.

   “Within a few weeks we had 2,500 volunteers with another 400 on a waiting list. In a couple of months we had $2.6 million in corporate support pledged.”

   Maybe some at the USGA shared the doubts that Bloom and his crew at Lancaster had. It is certainly not a major market, although if you add in the nearby cities of York and Harrisburg and the proximity of the tremendous golfing community that is Philadelphia and its environs, you have no shortage of sports-mad people willing to be a part of a major championship.

   Those doubts were probably not shared by Mike Davis, the USGA executive director. Davis is a Chambersburg native and he is well aware of the can-do attitude that central Pennsylvania brings to any sporting endeavor. He was right, of course, although even he might have been a little surprised at what a rousing success it was.

   Whomever the weather chairmen were – probably some of Lancaster’s past officers over its century-plus of existence who helped make the Flynn design a hidden gem – got the job done. A U.S. Women’s Open record 135,000 fans roamed the Lancaster layout for four days.

   In Gee Chun, the then 20-year-old South Korean, chased down her countrywoman Amy Yang with a stunning burst of three straight birdies at 15, 16 and 17 to capture her first major championship by a shot over Yang.

   The players loved the golf course and, probably moreso, the atmosphere. The fans loved the tournament and the players. Fox Sports loved the drama and the golf course in the radiant green of a central Pennsylvania summer positively shimmered on the TV screen. The community embraced the event and the players felt that embrace.

   The USGA couldn’t wait to come back. And Lancaster Country Club and the city of Lancaster couldn’t wait to have the U.S. Women’s Open come back.

   That much was evident in the brief remarks from Bloom and Mike Butz, the USGA’s senior managing director, Tuesday.

   “We can’t tell you how thrilled we are to bring the U.S. Women’s Open back to Lancaster Country Club,” Butz said. “Those of us from this area who remember the Lady Keystone Open at Hershey years ago knew central Pennsylvania would be supportive.

   “But we couldn’t have expected one of the most successful championships we’ve ever had. The support of the fans, crowds we had never seen at a Women’s Open, the incredible support of the Lancaster community.”

   Lancaster’s Bloom was pretty proud, too, of a couple of other outcomes from the 2015 Women’s Open.

   “There was $1.6 million in merchandise sold,” Bloom said. “And when the USGA got back the results from those who responded to a customer satisfaction survey, we had the highest score of any USGA event ever.”

   The USGA likes to hold its events in Pennsylvania. When the Women’s Open returns to Lancaster in 2024 it will be the 91^st USGA event to be staged in the Keystone State, more than any other state.

   The year following the 2015 Women’s Open at Lancaster saw a foursome of USGA events in Pennsylvania with the U.S. Open making one of its regular stops at venerable Oakmont Country Club in suburban Pittsburgh, the U.S. Women’s Amateur being staged at another Flynn gem at Rolling Green Golf Club in Springfield, Delaware County, the U.S. Mid-Amateur something of a coming-out party for spectacular Stonewall where East Nantmeal Township meets Warwick Township in Chester County, and the U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur being held at The Kahkwa Club in Erie.

   I live-blogged at Rolling Green – I had covered a lot of golf for the local paper there, the Delaware County Daily Times, before getting pink-slipped in early 2016 – and did the rare combination of looper and blogger at Stonewall and both events were pulled off flawlessly.

   Between now and 2024, the USGA will stage the 2020 U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship at the Philadelphia Cricket Club’s Militia Hill and Wissahickon Courses, the 2022 Curtis Cup Match at my favorite golf course in the world, the historic East Course at Merion Golf Club, and the 2022 U.S. Senior Open at Saucon Valley Country Club in Bethlehem for the third time.

   Next year’s U.S. Women’s Open will be held at The Country Club of Charleston in South Carolina, in 2020 it will be at Champions Golf Club in Houston, in 2021 it will be at The Olympic Club in San Francisco, in 2022 it will be at the Pine Needles Lodge & Golf Club in North Carolina and the Pebble Beach Golf Links on northern California’s spectacular Monterey Peninsula will do the honors in 2023 before it returns to Lancaster in 2024.

   And Lancaster proved in 2015 that it belongs in that roll call of great American golf courses.

   I didn’t know it at the time, but I was in my final year at the Daily Times in 2015. I couldn’t fit the entire U.S. Women’s Open into my schedule, but I did get here the day before the championship started and there was an unmistakable buzz. It’s not always something you can quantify, but you could tell this was a happening.

   I used the opportunity to write a state-of-women’s-golf column and I found it, particularly at Lancaster that week, to be in pretty good shape. Women’s golf remains somewhat under the radar in this country. But the people who run the sport had started to figure out that women’s golf is a pretty big deal in a lot of the rest of the world and have successfully branded it as such.

   The people in the Lancaster area understood that they were putting on an event with an international audience that week in July of 2015 and treated it as such.

   You can argue that The Open Championship or the Masters rival the U.S. Open for supremacy in the men’s game – be forewarned: Don’t make that argument with anybody from the USGA – but the U.S. Women’s Open is the biggest event in women’s golf.

   And in 2024, for the second time in less than 10 years, it’s going to be held at Lancaster Country Club.

   “I sat down at my computer late at night in October and did some Googling,” Bloom, the Lancaster president, said. “I was trying see how many clubs had hosted two major championships, men’s, women’s, whatever. I came up with about 40 clubs in the whole country.

   “We wanted Lancaster Country Club to be known as a USGA club and now we are. And Lancaster is now a USGA city.”

Ray Thompson was a great golfer right to the very end

   It was qualifying day in the 2014 BMW Philadelphia Amateur Championship at White Manor Country Club and Overbrook Golf Club and, as always, no shortage of angles for the guy covering it for the Delaware County Daily Times, which was me.

   Could have easily just written a story about the qualifying medalist, Michael McDermott, who had won the second of his three Philly Am titles a year earlier at Aronimink Golf Club. He’s a Delco guy, a scholastic standout at Haverford High who had emerged out of the junior program at Llanerch Golf Club to become one of the top mid-ams in this part of the country.

   But no, there was something better, much better.

   Finishing in a tie for 11^th at 2-over 143 was 62-years-young Ray Thompson, the perennial Overbrook Golf Club standout who had been a major factor in Golf Association of Philadelphia senior circles for a decade.

   Thompson was Marple Newtown Class of 1969, finishing as the runnerup in the PIAA Championship a few weeks before graduation back when golf was a spring sport on the scholastic scene.

   Also making match play that day was Sam Soeth, Marple Newtown Class of 2014. If I remember correctly Soeth, who is wrapping up a solid college career at Temple this season, was walking in his Marple Newtown graduation that very week.

   To me the fact that two guys who graduated 45 years apart from the same high school had earned spots in match play in the Philly Am told you all you needed to know about the GAP scene. And trust me, those 32 spots in match play at a Philly Am are as hard-earned as any in any metropolitan golf association championship you can find.

   But that wasn’t the end of the story for Thompson. Not by a long shot. Pretty nice playing by the old guy, going 36 holes. But the 1-under 69 he shot was on his home course at Overbrook, a course he could probably shoot 1-under on blindfolded.

   McDermott even gave Thompson a little of the credit for his winning the qualifying medal because he was paired with Thompson. White Manor, McDermott was fine with, shooting a brilliant 5-under 66. He admitted he’s never played Overbrook well and when the pairings came out and he was with Thompson, his strategy was just to pay attention to how Ray was playing the course. That strategy resulted in a career-best 1-over 71 for McDermott.

   But match play was at White Manor and the first two rounds would be 36 more holes. So what does Ray Thompson do? Well, he beats Joseph Fabrizio Jr. of Aronimink, 3 and 2, and then he goes 19 holes to beat Aaron Fricke, the Lancaster Country Club standout who would go on to have a solid college career at Drexel.

   Thompson came back the next morning and claimed a 1-up victory over another youngster, LedgeRock Golf Club’s Alex Blickle. At age 62, Thompson was in the Philly Am semifinals.

   The Cinderella story ended there as Huntingdon Valley Country Club’s Jeff Osberg, on his way to a dominating first title in the event, rolled to a 5 and 4 decision over Thompson. Osberg is friendly with the Overbrook crowd. He knew better than to look past Thompson.

   Ray Thompson died the day after Thanksgiving, having turned 67 last month. He had won the Philly Am in 1972 following his sophomore season at Florida State. Next year would be 50 years since that runnerup finish in the state tournament.

   He was a very good player in 1969 as a high school senior. He was a very good player as a 66-year-old senior player in 2018. He was a very good player his whole life.

   Thompson got it going last summer at Old York Road Country Club in the Brewer Cup, the only GAP senior major championship that had eluded him over the years.

   All he had to do was get past the best senior amateur player on the planet the last decade or so, Chip Lutz of LedgeRock, in the semifinals. Lutz was GAP’s Senior Player of the Year for the ninth straight time in 2018. He’s won The Seniors Amateur Championship – The as in across the pond in the UK -- three times, the Canadian Senior Amateur twice and captured the U.S. Senior Amateur Championship in 2015 at Hidden Creek Golf Club at the Jersey Shore.

   One of the reasons Lutz is such a great player is because he had to be better than Ray Thompson. Lutz is a product of the ridiculously competitive GAP senior scene and Thompson was always right in the middle of it.

   They met in the 2013 U.S. Senior Amateur quarterfinals the fall before Thompson’s run to the Philly Am semis at White Manor, a GAP rivalry playing out at Wade Hampton Country Club in Cashiers, N.C. Thompson wasn’t sneaking up on Lutz, who claimed a 4 and 3 victory.

   But that day in the Brewer Cup semis, Thompson got his old rival down and rolled to a 5 and 4 victory over Lutz. Thompson defeated Steve Walczk of Wilmington Country Club, 2-up, in the final.

   The GAP website rolled out the Thompson record in its senior biggies after that: Two Francis B. Warner Cup wins; a Frank H. Chapman win; two GAP Senior Amateur triumphs; three Senior Silver Cross Awards; and finally that Brewer Cup win that gave him GAP’s career “senior slam.” We just didn’t know at the time that it was the final roll call of Thompson’s major GAP senior accomplishments.

   Thompson was the quintessential Overbrook guy. Every spring Overbrook is a contender in the GAP Team Matches at the highest level. I can’t speak to how many of those matches Thompson has competed in over the years. I suspect it is most of them.

   So many good young players have emerged from Overbrook over the years. Did having to play your best possible golf just to compete against an “old guy” like Thompson in the club championship make you a better player? Again, I suspect the answer is yes.

   Thompson was old school in all the best possible connotations of that expression. The week following Thompson’s run to the Philly Am semifinals, a handwritten note showed up at the Daily Times. Handwritten. The youngsters on the Daily Times sports staff were dumbfounded that anyone still actually did such a thing. The guy put pen to paper and mailed the thing. Can you imagine.

   It read: “Tom, Thanks for the great ink regarding my play at the recent Philly Am. I think you know my golf history better than I do. It was a great run for me and way above my expectations. Maybe I’ll give it a try again in 2015. Thanks again. Ray Thompson.”

   I saved it and I didn’t hesitate to throw it in a box when it was time to clean out my desk at the Daily Times in early 2016. Because, after all, it came from a guy who was a great golfer right to the end.

Hammer, Bhatia the young guns in a cast that will audition for 2019 U.S. Walker Cup team

   One of the more intriguing matches of 2018 came in the semifinals of the U.S. Junior Amateur at Baltusrol Golf Club’s Upper Course in Springfield, N.J. when two players clearly destined for stardom, Cole Hammer of Houston and Akshay Bhatia of Wake Forest, N.C., hooked up with a spot in the final on the line.

   Bhatia, the precocious left-hander, got the lead on the front nine and never let Hammer, who was going to join the Texas program at the end of the summer, back in the match in a 4 and 2 victory. Bhatia fell in an epic final with Michael Thorbjornsen of Wellesely, Mass. that wasn’t decided until the 36^th and final hole of the match when Thorbjornsen prevailed, 1-up.

   A couple of weeks later, Bhatia wowed the golf world with his deft chip-in for eagle from the back of the 18^th green at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Ky. that gave him his second straight Boys Junior PGA Championship.

   A couple of weeks after Bhatia’s stunning victory at Valhalla, Hammer was one of the stars at the U.S. Amateur at one of America’s most iconic courses, the Pebble Beach Golf Links. He earned a share of the qualifying medalist honors by adding a 4-under-par 68 at Spyglass Hills Golf Course to the 2-under 69 he shot at Pebble Beach.

   Hammer made it all the way to the semifinals before falling to eventual champion Viktor Hovland, the Oklahoma State standout from Norway who claimed a hard-fought 3 and 2 victory.

   It wasn’t too surprising then, when the United States Golf Association announced the 16 players who will get together next month under the watchful eye of United States captain Nathaniel Crosby as potential candidates for his team in next summer’s Walker Cup Match, that Hammer and Bhatia were among those receiving invitations.

   The 2019 Walker Cup Match will be hosted by Great Britain & Ireland Sept. 7 and 8 at Royal Liverpool Golf Club in Hoylake, England. The U.S. team has a tough act to follow after the Stars & Stripes cruised to an emphatic 19-7 victory in September of 2017 at Los Angeles Country Club.

   It might have been one of more talented groups of U.S. amateurs ever assembled for a Walker Cup Match. And it had the added motivation of getting a victory for captain Spider Miller, whose U.S. team had been spanked by a similar margin two years early at Royal Lytham and St. Anne’s Golf Club.

   Former Stanford standout Maverick McNealy, the lone holdover from that whipping in England, former Texas star Doug Ghim and California’s Collin Morikawa each went 4-0, the first time in the long history of the event that three players went unbeaten in four matches.

   The 56-year-old Crosby, winner of the 1981 U.S. Amateur at The Olympic Club, was an inspired choice to captain the next two U.S. Walker Cup sides. Not only was the son of Bing Crosby, an American singing and golfing icon, a member of the 1983 winning U.S. side at Royal Liverpool, but he resides in South Florida and is a member at Seminole Golf Club, which will host the 2021 Walker Cup Match the next time it is contested in the United States.

   Crosby is not guaranteed to be the U.S. captain in 2021, but it appears the USGA is following the same winning game plan it used a decade ago when Haverford High graduate Buddy Marucci captained the U.S. in a victory in 2007 at Royal County Down Golf Club in Northern Ireland and then came back two years later to guide the U.S. to a win in 2009 on Marucci’s home course, the historic East Course at Merion Golf Club.

   There is no guarantee that the final 10-man U.S. roster will come out of the 16 players who will gather for next month’s practice session. Six of the players invited to the 2016 practice session made the roster for the 2017 Walker Cup Match.

   The USGA has some guaranteed spots on the 2019 roster, one of which goes to the U.S. Amateur champion, who will be crowned Aug. 18 at the Donald Ross masterpiece, the Pinehurst Resort’s No. 2 Course.

   The USGA is simply making official what has usually been customary as the U.S. Amateur champion has nearly always earned a spot on the team. Former Clemson standout Doc Redman was probably not on the radar for the 2017 U.S. team until his U.S. Amateur victory at Riviera Country Club that summer.

   The top three Americans in the World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR) at some point in early August will get automatic invitations to join the team. That trio on Thanksgiving weekend of 2018 are No. 1 Justin Suh of Southern California, No. 2 Cal’s Morikawa and No. 4 Mississippi’s Braden Thornberry, the NCAA individual champion in 2017.

   All three have apparently let it be known that they will be pursuing their professional aspirations by the end of next summer. Morikawa and Thornberry were part of that powerful 2017 U.S. team. Suh, the reigning Pac-12 individual champion, was probably on the short list of players who just missed being invited to join that 2017 team.

   The top three Americans in the WAGR after those three are Oklahoma State sophomore Matt Wolff (No. 5), Alabama senior Davis Riley (No. 9) and Hammer (No. 11).

   If you think Bhatia’s time is still to come, that he still has college and several more years of amateur golf ahead of him, think again. Bhatia, No. 28 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR), has no intention to go to college. He’s turning pro sooner, rather than later, although he’ll prolong his amateur career for a chance to represent the United States at Royal Liverpool

   Wolff and Riley are both among the group invited to tee it up in the Walker Cup practice session. They squared off in the NCAA Championship’s Final Match last spring with Wolff claiming a 4 and 3 victory as the Cowboys swept to a 5-0 victory on their home course at Karsten Creek Golf Club. Riley also fell to Hammer in the final of the Western Amateur Championship at Sunset Ridge Golf Club in Northfield, Ill.

   As is often the case, a good way to impress the USGA is to play well in the U.S. Amateur and four of the eight quarterfinalists last summer at Pebble Beach are candidates for the U.S. Walker Cup team, including Hammer, Riley, Vanderbilt senior Will Gordon, No. 34 in the WAGR, and Stanford’s Isaiah Salinda, No. 31 in the WAGR.  Gordon fell to Salinda in the quarterfinals at Pebble Beach.

   To get to the quarterfinals at Pebble Beach, Salinda pulled off a hard-fought, 1-up win over the hero of Stonewall, 2016 U.S. Mid-Amateur champion Stewart Hagestad, who has played at a high level ever since his dramatic comeback victory at the ‘Wall and is No. 15 in the WAGR, in the round of 16.

   Hagestad fired a brilliant 5-under 66 at Pebble Beach in the second round of qualifying for the U.S. Amateur and made a nice run in match play. That earned him an invitation to audition for captain Crosby. It also made him the only veteran of the 2017 U.S. victory at Los Angeles Country Club, a course he played growing up, to join the group being considered for the 2019 team.

   Two other mid-ams, Matt Parziale, the golfing firefighter from Brockton, Mass. who captured the 2017 U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship at the Capital City Golf Club’s Crabapple Course in Atlanta, and Matt O’Connell, the former North Carolina standout who won this year’s U.S. Mid-Am title at Charlotte Country Club.

   O’Connell, No. 24 in the WAGR, had been considering trying to qualify for the European Tour, but apparently reconsidered since turning pro would force him to pass up an exemption into the 2019 U.S. Open and a likely invitation to the 2019 Masters. And the winner of the previous year’s U.S. Mid-Am has made the U.S. Walker Cup the following year with regularity in recent cycles.

   Gordon’s Vanderbilt teammate, junior John Augenstein, No. 27 in the WAGR, will join him for the U.S. Walker Cup practice session. Augenstein’s performance in match play in leading the Commodores to the Southeastern Conference championship as a freshman two springs ago was fairly epic.

   Salinda’s Stanford teammate, senior Brandon Wu, No. 45 in the WAGR, will join him among those playing in the Walker Cup practice session.

   Auburn sophomore Brandon Mancheno, No. 48 in the WAGR, lost in a playoff for the individual title in the NCAA Championship at Karsten Creek and was unconscious during a Tigers’ spring that included an SEC team title and a spot in the final four of match play at Karsten Creek. That run alone makes him deserving of a look for the U.S. Walker Cup team.

   Rounding out the 16 invited to audition for the 2019 U.S. Walker Cup team are Texas A&M senior Chandler Phillips, No. 12 in the WAGR, Clemson senior Bryson Nimmer, No. 36 in the WAGR, Duke senior Alex Smalley and Georgia Tech junior Tyler Strafacci.

   The 2017 cycle caught a group of collegians who were playing great golf and, for the most part, were a year, or a little less, from embarking on a pro career. But this crew of collegians is very strong. And, as I mentioned in a post in the aftermath of that U.S. romp in Los Angeles, the advent of match play in the NCAA Championship has made our collegians much more experienced in the ways of that idiosyncratic version of the game than were their predecessors.

   Pure talent is pure talent. But dealing with a situation in which your opponent drops a 30-foot par putt and you three-putt to lose a hole that you had already mentally put in the win column is quite another. Particularly when the 30-foot putt is punctuated by a roar from the GB&I’s rabid following that can nearly be heard across the Atlantic Ocean. Just sayin’.