Global Golf Post names Parziale, Kupcho the world's top amateurs in 2018

   Global Golf Post, the world’s first designed-for-digital golf news publication, continued its tradition of putting together its annual All-Amateur teams last week.

   It is an ambitious undertaking in that Global Golf Post is trying to identify the top male and female amateur players from all over the world, including divisions for mid-amateur and senior amateur players. Global Golf Post is quick to admit it relies heavily on the World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR) for its men’s and women’s amateur selections.

   The WAGR is a proven commodity in amateur circles and thus a legitimate tool for rating the top amateur players on the planet. The mid-am and senior teams, Global Golf Post acknowledges, are tougher to assess, but give the publication credit for giving it a shot.

   For the second straight year, Global Golf Post went to mid-am ranks in choosing its overall male Player of the Year. The selection was Matt Parziale, the Brockton, Mass. firefighter who captured the 2017 U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship at Atlanta’s Capital City Club.

   Global Golf Post stuck to the college ranks for its female Player of the Year as it chose Wake Forest senior Jennifer Kupcho. I might have gone with U.S. Women’s Amateur champion Kristen Gillman, but it’s tough to argue with Kupcho, who captured the NCAA individual title at Karsten Creek Golf Club in Stillwater, Okla. last spring, among other accomplishments.

   I’ve only dropped in on Global Golf Post for its annual All-Amateur teams since expanding this blog in 2016, but in checking out this year’s teams, I signed up. It’s free and promises to give me the kind of weekly coverage of the big golf tournaments I’ve lacked since Golf World ceased publication of its print edition in 2014.

   I like the fact that Global Golf Post goes a little rogue in its Player of the Year selections. The first time I discovered its All-Amateur teams was two years ago when it named Reading native Chip Lutz, the reigning nine-time Golf Association of Philadelphia Senior Player of the Year, its male Player of the Year.

   Were there more talented amateur players in the world in 2016 than Lutz? Certainly, but Lutz was deserving of the recognition he got. In his 60s, the guy still treks across the pond to compete in The Seniors Amateur Championship, an event he’s won three times. As I’ve mentioned on this blog a couple of times, he’s probably more well-known by the golf-mad fans in the United Kingdom than he is in this country.

   A year ago, Global Golf Post went with Stewart Hagestad, the Californian who put on such a show in rallying to capture the 2016 U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship at Stonewall. His 2017 included the silver  medal that goes to the low amateur at the Masters and being a part of a dominating victory for Team USA over Great Britain & Ireland in a Walker Cup Match staged on a Los Angeles Country Club course Hagestad played as a youngster.

   Parziale had a similar follow-up year to his 2017 U.S. Mid-Am victory and his is a story about what amateur golf is all about. The U.S. Mid-Am win gave Parziale, a reinstated amateur, so many exemptions that he took some time off from his firefighting duties to concentrate on his golf.

   Parziale birdied the 18^th hole at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club to make the cut on the number in the U.S. Open. It gave him a 3-over 73 and a 36-hole total of 7-over 147. He added weekend rounds of 74 and 75 to share low-amateur honors with LSU senior Luis Gagne at 16-over 296.

   Parziale was the first mid-am to make the cut in the National Open since Trip Kuehne in 2003. It was also the first time the USGA gave the U.S. Mid-Am winner a ticket to the U.S. Open and Parziale certainly validated that decision by making the cut. That alone makes him worthy of the honor bestowed on him by Global Golf Post.

   Parziale failed to make match play in the U.S. Amateur at the Pebble Beach Golf Links. His defense of the U.S. Mid-Amateur crown at Charlotte Country Club was halted in the first round of match play by Argentinian Andres Schonbaum, who made it all the way to the quarterfinals before falling in 19 holes to eventual champion Kevin O’Connell.

   The Global Golf Post feature on Parziale is a good read and focuses on the fact that he is still very much that Brockton firefighter who was such a great story when he won the U.S. Mid-Am. While busy playing in the Open at Shinnecock Hills and the Amateur at Pebble Beach, Paziale still found time to tee it up in the big Boston metro and Massachusetts amateur events where the legend was born.

   Kupcho probably nailed down her selection as the female Player of the Year with her runnerup finish in the LPGA Q-Series played over two weeks at two of the Pinehurst Resort’s courses, Nos. 6 and 7, in October. The Westminster, Colo. resident beat the rest of the field by 10 shots in finishing just a shot behind the winner, South Korea’s Jeongeun Lee6.

   The Global Golf Post feature on Kupcho focuses on her decision to not turn pro right away, but take the deferment the LPGA Tour offered for the first time and turn pro after playing out her senior season at Wake Forest.

   It is always a tough decision for a talented player the likes of Kupcho, but she wanted to play the spring portion of her senior season. She has been such a consistently good player throughout her college career it would be tough to imagine her not having a solid professional career. Even if the late start she will have on the 2019 season by deferring the start of her pro career lands her back in the Q-Series next fall, she obviously proved she has what it takes to survive the eight-round test.

   Kupcho followed up her NCAA title at Karsten Creek by being part of a powerful U.S. side that dominated Great Britain & Ireland, 17-3, in the Curtis Cup Match at Quaker Ridge Golf Club in Scarsdale, N.Y.

   Joining Parziale on the men’s mid-am first team were the two finalists from that memorable 2016 U.S. Mid-Amateur final at Stonewall, Hagestad and Scott Harvey, the Greensboro, N.C. native who won the 2014 U.S. Mid-Am at Saucon Valley.

   The highlight of Hagestad’s year was probably his run to the round of 16 in the U.S. Amateur at Pebble Beach. After struggling to an opening round of 4-over 76 at Spyglass Hill Golf Course in qualifying for match play, Hagestad fired a brilliant 5-under 66 at Pebble Beach and then won a couple of matches.

   It looked like Hagestad was headed for a second U.S. Mid-Am title in September at Charlotte Country Club when he ran into another first-team mid-am selection in Brett Boner, who stunned Hagestad in the semifinals when he drained a 22-foot birdie putt on the 18^th hole to win the match, 1-up, much to the delight of a partisan crowd that came out to cheer on the Charlotte native.

   Even though the U.S. Mid-Am was being held in his hometown, Boner chose to try to qualify in a GAP-administered qualifier at Cedarbrook Country Club. Something to do with bent-grass greens. The plan worked out pretty well.

   O’Connell, a former North Carolina standout, earned his spot on the mid-am first team by defeating Boner in the final to capture the U.S. Mid-Am title.

   Rounding out the mid-am first team are: Germans Claudio Consul and Allen John, Carlos De Corral, the European Mid-Am champion from Spain, Euan McIntosh of Scotland, Peter O’Keefe of Ireland and American Joseph Deraney, who captured the Canadian Mid-Am title.

   Among the second-team selections were Saucon Valley Country Club’s Matthew Mattare and Nathan Smith, the four-time U.S. Mid-Amateur champion from Pittsburgh.

   Mattare didn’t have quite the year he did in 2016 when he earned a rare double with wins in the Philadelphia Open and the Met Amateur Championship in New York, but he made a nice run to the round of 16 in the U.S. Mid-Am at Charlotte Country Club after surviving a playoff to earn a spot in the match-play bracket.

   Smith put his match-play prowess on display by winning the Pennsylvania Golf Association’s R. Jay Sigel Match-Play Championship for the sixth time at Schuylkill Country Club.

   Heading the men’s amateur first team, at least in my eyes, is Cole Hammer, the kid from Houston who lost in the semifinals of the U.S. Junior Amateur and the U.S. Amateur.

   Global Golf Post does not include junior events in its consideration for its amateur teams, but Hammer, a freshman at Texas, got on a serious match-play roll in the summer. In addition to the deep runs in the U.S. Junior Amateur at Baltusrol Golf Club and in the U.S. Amateur at Pebble Beach, he also captured the Western Amateur title at Sunset Ridge Country Club, a grueling test that includes four rounds of stroke-play qualifying.

   Hammer, three of his fellow men’s amateur first-team selections, Texas A&M senior Chandler Phillips, Alabama senior Davis Riley and Oklahoma State sophomore Matthew Wolff, and three players from the mid-am first team, Parziale, Hagestad and O’Connell, are among the 16 players invited to audition for the U.S. team that will travel to Royal Liverpool Golf Club for the 2019 Walker Cup Match next summer. Riley fell to Hammer in the Western Amateur final.

   Two members of the dominant U.S. team that won the 2017 Walker Cup Match, California senior Collin Morikawa and Mississippi senior Braden Thornberry, the 2016 NCAA individual champion, are also on the first team. Morikawa’s Pac-12 rival, Southern California senior Justin Suh, the reigning Pac-12 individual champion, is also a first-team selection.

   Heading up the foreign contingent on the first team is Viktor Hovland, who became the first Norwegian to win the U.S. Amateur at Pebble Beach. The Oklahoma State junior was a key player in the Cowboys’ run to the NCAA team title on their home course at Karsten Creek last spring.

   The presence of Hovland and Wolff on the roster makes Oklahoma State a contender to make it two straight national championships next spring.

   Rounding out out the first team are Nicolai Hojgaard, who teamed with twin brother Rasmus to give  Denmark its first title in the World Amateur Team Championship, Asia-Pacific Amateur champion  Takomi Kanaya of Japan and Auburn junior Jovan Rebula, the nephew of Ernie Els from South Africa who won The Amateur Championship at Royal Aberdeen Golf Club in Scotland.

   Three more college standouts invited to this month’s U.S. Walker Cup practice, Vanderbilt’s John Augenstein, a junior, and Will Gordon, a senior, and Stanford senior Isaiah Salinda lead the men’s amateur second team.

   A third member of Oklahoma State’s national championship team, junior Zach Bauchou, is a second-team selection. A couple of individual conference champions, Florida junior Andy Zhang, the Southeastern Conference medalist from China, and Virginia senior Thomas Walsh, the Atlantic Coast Conference winner, are also on the second team.

   Ireland’s Robin Dawson, the runnerup to South African Rebula in The Amateur Championship and Australia’s Daniel Hillier, who shared U.S. Amateur qualifying medalist honors with Hammer, are part of a strong foreign contingent on the second team.

   Rounding out the second-team selections are Hillier’s fellow Aussie, David Micheluzzi, Sadom Kaewkanjana of Thailand and Matthew Jordan of England.

   Among the honorable mention picks are Doug Ghim, who played out his senior season at Texas to cap an outstanding amateur career, Broc Everett, who captured the NCAA individual title at Karsten Creek as a senior at Augusta last spring, and Duke senior Alex Smalley, another player who was invited to participate in the U.S. Walker Cup practice session.

   Jeff Wilson, who captured the U.S. Senior Amateur title at Portland Country Club, heads the 10-man senior amateur first team.

   Wilson is one of nine Americans on the first team as the U.S. dominated the squad. The other Americans on the first team included: Gene Elliott, Brady Exber, the Canadian Senior Amateur champion, Jack Hill, Doug Hanzel, Tim Jackson, Mark Knecht, Mike McCoy and Paul Simson.

   Rounding out the first team is Trevor Foster of England, winner of The Seniors Amateur Championship at Royal Porthcawl Golf Club in Wales.

   Somehow, the two Pennsylvanians whom Wilson had to beat to claim the U.S. Senior Amateur, Lutz in the semifinals and Sean Knapp, who made a strong defense of his 2017 title before falling in the final, landed on the second team.

   Lutz, who plays out of LedgeRock Golf Club, had a typically solid campaign. He finished tied for fourth at Royal Porthcawl in his bid for a fourth win in The Seniors Amateur Championship. He teed it up in The Senior Open Championship at the home of golf, St. Andrews, and fired a brilliant opening round of 3-under 69 that had him on the leaderboard before faltering with an 83 in the second round that left him outside the cut line.

   Knapp, the perennial western Pennsylvania standout, captured the PAGA’s Senior Amateur Championship at the Philadelphia Cricket Club’s Militia Hill Course.

   Four of Kupcho’s teammates on the U.S. team that dominated Great Britain & Ireland in the Curtis Cup Match at Quaker Ridge, Alabama teammates Gillman and Lauren Stephenson, Stanford junior Andrea Lee and UCLA senior Lilia Vu, joined Kupcho on the women’s amateur first team. Time may reveal that this was one of the most talented U.S. Curtis Cup teams ever assembled.

   Gillman, whose U.S. Women’s Amateur title at The Golf Club of Tennessee was her second, and Stephenson helped the Crimson Tide reach the final of the NCAA Championship at Karsten Creek before they fell to Arizona. Stephenson also reached the semifinals at The Golf Club of Tennesssee.

   Stephenson finished tied for eighth and Gillman ended up in a tie for 13^th in the LPGA Q-Series and, unlike Kupcho, they are leaving college behind and joining the LPGA Tour at the start of 2019.

Vu, who also earned her LPGA Tour card at Pinehurst by finishing in a tie for 27^th, is also passing up the spring portion of her senior season and getting her pro career started.

   There is, unfortunately, a posthumous first-team selection in Celia Barquin Arozamena, the Big 12 champion as a senior at Iowa State who was senselessly murdered while playing a solo round at a course near the Ames, Iowa campus as she prepared for Stage II of the LPGA Q-School. Arozamena captured the European Ladies Amateur Championship at the Penati Golf Resort in Slovakia last summer.

   Vu's UCLA teammate, sophomore Patty Tavatanakit of Thailand, is also on the first team. Vu and Tavatanakit shared the Pac-12 individual title. Tavatanakit was at the head of an enormously talented freshman class throughout Division I women’s golf last season. She was the low amateur at the U.S. Women’s Open at Shoal Creek in Alabama, finishing in the group tied for fifth.

   Rounding out the first team are Sweden’s Frida Kinhult, who was as good as advertised with a blazing start as a freshman at Florida State this fall, Thai phenom Atthaya Thitikul, German teen standout Esther Henseleit and Italian phenom Alessia Nobilio.

   Speaking of phenoms, Lucy Li, the precocious 15-year-old from California, heads the list of second-team selections. Li thrived on the big stage for the U.S. in the Curtis Cup Match at Quaker Ridge and gave her Curtis Cup teammate Gillman all she wanted before falling in the U.S. Women’s Amateur quarterfinals at The Golf Club of Tennessee.

   I might have argued for the inclusion of Mexico’s Maria Fassi, a senior at Arkansas, on the first team. The winner of the Annika Award that goes to the top player in Division I women’s golf, Fassi earned a ticket to the LPGA Tour at Pinehurst, but, like Kupcho, seems to have some unfinished business to tend to at Arkansas next spring. The NCAA Championship will be played on the Razorbacks’ home course, The Blessings Golf Club, and I think Fassi is planning to give the home folks in Fayetteville something to cheer about.

   Also on the second team is South Korea’s Jiwon Jeon, a junior at Alabama who lost to her future teammate Gillman in the U.S. Women’s Amateur final. With Gillman and Stephenson moving on to the LPGA Tour, Jeon, who was the top player in the junior college ranks before transferring to Alabama, emerges as the top player for the Crimson Tide in the spring.

   Houston senior Leonie Harm, winner of the Ladies’ British Open Amateur Championship at Hillside Golf Club in Southport, England, also earned a second-team nod. Spain’s Ainhoa Olarra, who beat Arkansas’ Fassi in a playoff to cap her college career at South Carolina with an SEC individual title, is another foreign-born college standout on the second-team list.

   Also fitting that profile is first-team selection Andrea Lee’s Stanford teammate, Albane Valenzuela, a junior from Switzerland. Lee and Valenzuela have led the Cardinal to the semifinals of the NCAA Championship in each of their first two years. They would like to take the next step to the Final Match next spring.

   Another South Korean, A Yean Cho, is on the second team. Rounding out the second team is Rachel Heck, a Stanford recruit from Memphis, Tenn. who played four rounds in the Evian Championship, an LPGA Tour major championship, this fall in France and finished tied for 44^th.

   Three members of that celebrated 2017-’18 freshman class besides Tavatanakit, Southern California’s Jennifer Chang, Wake Forest’s Emilia Migliaccio and Texas’ Kaitlyn Papp, are on the honorable mention list.

   Sierra Brooks, the 2015 U.S. Women’s Amateur runnerup who had a big bounce-back year in 2018 after joining the Florida program as a sophomore, also earned honorable mention.

   Also earning honorable mention were two foreign-born college standouts in Ohio State senior Jaclyn Lee of Canada and Arizona State junior Olivia Mehaffey of Ireland.

   Lee was the Big 10 individual champion and also earned a ticket to the LPGA Tour by finishing sixth in the LPGA Q-Series at Pinehurst. The last I saw, Lee was still trying to decide whether to start her pro career in January or take the deferment as Kupcho and Fassi will.

   Mehaffey, a freshman on Arizona State’s 2017 NCAA championship team, represented Great Britain & Ireland for the second time in the Curtis Cup Match at Quaker Ridge.

   And while Global Golf Post doesn’t factor in results in junior tournaments, it couldn’t ignore Yealimi Noh, the California teen who ripped off impressive victories in the Girls Junior PGA Championship at the Kearney Hill Golf Links in Lexington, Ky. and the U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship at Poppy Hills Golf Course on northern California’s Monterey Peninsula. Noh, who had planned to play college golf at UCLA, reconsidered that commitment and plans to turn pro in 2019. She earned an honorable mention nod.

   The 10-player women’s mid-amateur first team, nine of whom are Americans, is led by Shannon Johnson, the winner of the U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur Championship at Norwood Hills Country Club in St. Louis.

   Johnson, who had lost in the 2016 U.S. Women’s Mid-Am final at the Kahkwa Club in Erie, held on for a hard-fought 1-up victory over defending champion Kelsey Chugg in the final at Norwood Hills. Chugg also earned a first-team nod.

   Meghan Stasi, the South Jersey native who is a four-time U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur champion, also made the first team. Stasi, an eight-time winner of the Women’s Golf Association of Philadelphia’s Match-Play Championship, reached the quarterfinals at Norwood Hills before falling to Chugg.

   Stasi also won the Ione D. Jones/Doherty Amateur Championship, part of the South Florida Orange Blossom Tour, last winter for the second time in her glittering amateur career.

   Michelle Butler, who lost in the semis at Norwood Hills to Shannon Johnson, and Gretchen Johnson, who was ousted in the other semifinal by Chugg, also made the first team. Clare Connolly, a Congressional Country Club looper who lost to Shannon Johnson in the quarterfinals at Norwood Hills, got a first-team nod.

   Lauren Greenlief, a former Virginia standout and the 2015 U.S. Women’s Mid-Am champion, did her best work at the U.S. Women’s Amateur at The Golf Club of Tennessee, where she battled her way to the quarterfinals before falling to Lauren Stephenson. That showing earned her a spot on the women’s mid-am first team.

   Rounding out the first team are Americans Tara-Joy Connelly and Courtney McKim and Canada’s Julia Hodgson.

   Lara Tennant, the winner of the U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur Championship at the Orchid Island Golf & Beach Resort in Vero Beach, Fla., heads the women’s senior amateur first team.

   Australian Sue Wooster, who lost, 3 and 2, to Tennant in the final at Orchid Island, also made the first team.

   Judith Kyrinis and Terrill Samuel, the Canadians who met for the 2017 U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur title, also made the first team. Kyrinis defeated Samuel for the title in 2017, but Samuel turned the tables on her Toronto-area golfing buddy in the quarterfinals at Orchid Island with a 1-up victory before falling to Tennant in the semifinals.

   Martha Leach earned a spot on the first team as she was the low amateur in the inaugural U.S. Senior Women’s Open at Chicago Golf Club, finishing tied for 10^th.

   Ellen Port, who reached the second round of the U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur in front of her hometown St. Louis supporters at Norwood Hills before falling to eventual champion Shannon Johnson, is another first-team selection.

   Two more Canadians, Mary Ann Hayward and Jackie Little, also landed spots on the first team. Rounding out the first-team selections were American Mary Jane Hiestand, Spain’s Macarena Campomanes, the winner of the European Seniors’ Championship, and Laura Webb of Ireland.