Walker's U.S. Women's Amateur bid halted in second round with loss to Valenzuela at Old Waverly

   Brynn Walker will head to Chapel Hill, N.C. for her senior season at North Carolina brimming with confidence after a really positive week at the U.S. Women’s Amateur Championship at Old Waverly Golf Club in West Point, Miss.

   Walker, a two-time PIAA Class AAA champion at Radnor, was unable to get past Stanford senior Albane Valenzuela of Switzerland and No. 5 in the Women’s World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR) in the second round of match play Thursday morning at Old Waverly.

   But she certainly threw a scare into Valenzuela, winning the first three holes and still holding a 1-up lead with three holes to go.

   But Valenzuela, the runnerup in the 2017 U.S. Women’s Amateur at San Diego Country Club, answered like the great player she is, making back-to-back birdies at the 16^th and 17^th holes to turn her 1-down deficit to a 1-up advantage heading to the 18^th tee.

   The two halved the 18^th hole with pars and Valenzuela had survived with a 1-up victory.

   Walker had tuned up for the U.S. Women’s Amateur by capturing the Women’s Golf Association of Philadelphia’s Match Play Championship on her home course at St. Davids Golf Club last month.

   Walker easily made it to match play at Old Waverly, advancing out of qualifying for the first time in her fourth U.S. Women’s Amateur appearance. And she won a match, a birdie-birdie finish giving her a dramatic 1-up victory over two-time U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur champion Julia Potter-Bobb.

   Valenzuela, the low amateur in last month’s Evian Championship, an LPGA major championship held in the French Alps, came back in Thursday afternoon’s round of 16 and rolled into the quarterfinals with a 4 and 3 decision over Megan Schofill of Monticello, Fla. Schofill will join the Auburn program in a couple of weeks.

   That will make two Stanford seniors in the quarterfinals as Andrea Lee of Hermosa Beach, Calif. and No. 2 in the Women’s WAGR gutted out a victory over 14-year-old phenom Alexa Pano of Lake Worth, Fla. on the 23^rd hole in a round of 16 thriller.

   The 20-year-old Lee was a semifinalist in the 2014 U.S. Women’s Amateur at Nassau Country Club. I watched her suffer a gut-wrenching 1-up loss to eventual champion Eun Jeong Seong of South Korea in a tremendous quarterfinal in the 2016 U.S. Women’s Amateur at Rolling Green Golf Club, the William Flynn gem in Springfield.

   Lee was trailing the whole afternoon against the talented Pano, who teed it up in the U.S. Women’s Open at the Country Club of Charleston in the spring. And Lee drew even one more time when she buried a 12-foot birdie putt on the 18^th green to send the match to extra holes.

   Pano, the co-medalist in qualifying at Old Waverly, finally blinked with an errant drive on the 23^rd hole and Lee was able to take the match with a two-putt par.

   Lee will go from one teen sensation to another as her quarterfinal opponent will be 16-year-old Lucy Li of Redwood Shores, Calif. and No. 4 in the Women’s WAGR. The two were teammates on the 2018 U.S. Curtis Cup team that rolled to a 17-3 victory over Great Britain & Ireland at Quaker Ridge Golf Club in Scarsdale, N.Y. They were partners in a four-ball win that weekend.

   Li reached the quarterfinals for the third year in a row with a 2 and 1 victory over Kent State senior stalwart Pimnipa Panthong of Thailand and No. 29 in the Women’s WAGR.

   A year ago, Li gave eventual champion Kristen Gillman all she wanted in a brilliant quarterfinal match at the Golf Club of Tennessee that Gillman finally won on the 19^th hole.

   Valenzuela’s quarterfinal opponent will be Ohio State sophomore Aneka Seumanutufa of Emmitsburg, Md., who withstood a furious comeback attempt by 16-year-old Annabell Fuller of England and a member of the GB&I team that lost to the United States at Quaker Ridge a year ago.

   The other part of that quarter of the bracket will feature a quarterfinal between the remarkable 15-year-old Megha Ganne of Holmdel, N.J. and Caroline Canales, a teen from Calabasas, Calif.

Ganne was the co-medalist in the same U.S. Women’s Amateur qualifier at Raritan Valley Country Club in Bridgewater, N.J. from which Walker emerged.

   After opening match play with a stunning 1-up decision over Duke sophomore Gina Kim, the low amateur in the U.S. Women’s Open at the Country Club of Charleston, Ganne backed it up with a 19-hole nail-biter over Bentley Cotton of Austin, Texas in the second round Thursday morning and then a win on the 20^th hole over Campbell junior Emily Hawkins of Lexington, Ky. in the round of 16 Thursday afternoon.

   Canales reached the quarterfinals with a 3 and 2 decision over Southern California senior Allisen Corpuz of Kapolei, Hawaii and No. 46 in the Women’s WAGR.

   Lurking in the Lee-Li quarter of the bracket is Corpuz’s Southern Cal teammate, junior Gabriela Ruffels of Australia, who rolled to a 6 and 5 decision over Brooke Seay of San Diego in her round of 16 match Thursday afternoon. Seay will be joining Lee and Valenzuela at Stanford in a couple of weeks.

   Ruffels is coming off a victory in the North & South Women’s Amateur Championship at the Pinehurst Resort in North Carolina last month. The talented Aussie might be getting good at this match-play thing.

   Ruffels quarterfinal opponent will be Kenzie Wright, a senior at Alabama who claimed a 3 and 1 victory over Min A Yoon of South Korea.

   The quarterfinals have been moved up to early Friday morning to try to beat some anticipated bad weather. FS1 will have the matches on tape delay from 4 to 7 p.m. EDT. The winners will battle it out in the semifinals Saturday with the scheduled 36-hole final on tap Sunday.