Pano of Lake Worth, Fla. was the youngest of 12 players
invited to audition for a spot on the United States Curtis Cup team last month
at Loblolly in Hobe Sound, Fla. The U.S. will take on Great Britain &
Ireland when the Curtis Cup Match tees off June 12 at the Conwy Golf Club in
Caernarvonshire, Wales.
Most of the players invited to the practice session at
Loblolly are college standouts who will get to put their games on display for
U.S. captain Sarah Ingram throughout the spring portion of the college season
before the USGA International Team Selection Committee chooses the U.S. team in
April.
Pano won’t have that option, but she knew she could make a
splash this month in some of the Orange Blossom Tour events. And no tournament in
that unofficial series of South Florida events was more important to Pano’s
Curtis Cup hopes than this week’s Ione D. Jones/Doherty Women’s Amateur
Championship at Coral Ridge Country Club in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
It was actually the 88th edition of the Doherty
Women’s Amateur Championship and the 35th Ione D. Jones Women’s
Senior Amateur Championship, but it has come to be known as the Jones/Doherty.
Most importantly, it’s a match-play event, just like the Curtis Cup.
And while match play can be something of a foreign concept
to most 15-year-old golfers, Pano is not one of them. Pano won the
Jones/Doherty for the second straight year and the third time in four years –
she lost in the final to the pride of Eastern High and South Jersey, Meghan
Stasi, three years ago – with a 4 and 3 victory Friday over Courtney McKim, a
tough mid-amateur from Raleigh, N.C. who was a member of Alabama’s 2012
national championship team, in windy and occasionally rainy conditions.
McKim, who reached the quarterfinals in the U.S. Women’s
Mid-Amateur Championship at the Champions Golf Club’s Cypress Creek Course in
2017, probably thought she was going to walk off the ninth green with a 1-up
lead when Pano’s tee shot on the par-4 hole bounced right into an unplayable
lie in a bush on the right side of the hole.
After taking her drop, Pano promptly ripped a 3-wood 225
yards to four feet. She would make the par putt and, when McKim couldn’t get
her par-saver to fall, it was Pano who took a 1-up lead to the 10th
tee. It’s the kind of match-play turnaround on which the outcome of so many
matches hinge. I’m guessing Ingram will hear about it, if she didn’t witness
it.
I’ve been following the fortunes of Pano since she claimed
her first American Junior Golf Association (AJGA) victory as a 12-year-old in
the PDQ / Philadelphia Runner Junior at Saucon Valley Country Club’s Weyhill
Course in 2016.
Earlier that month, while still an 11-year-old, Pano failed
to qualify for match play in the U.S. Women’s Amateur at Rolling Green Golf
Club. She’s made the match-play bracket in the three ensuing U.S. Women’s Ams.
I still think Pano’s finest hour was her epic final day in
the U.S. Girls’ Junior Amateur Championship two summers ago at Poppy Hills Golf
Course on northern California’s Monterey Peninsula. Fog wreaked havoc with the
schedule all week, so, after edging Lucy Li on the 18th hole in a
morning semifinal, Pano proceeded to fall to Yealimi Noh on the 33rd
hole of the scheduled 36-hole final. All in the same day. A year-and-a-half
later, Li and Noh are professional golfers, Li on the Symetra Tour and Noh on
the LPGA Tour.
For the second straight January, Pano was the runnerup to
Florida State’s Amanda Doherty in the South Atlantic Women’s Amateur
Championship, The Sally, a 72-hole stroke-play event that wrapped up last
Saturday at Oceanside Country Club in Ormond Beach, Fla.
With her past success at Coral Ridge, Pano felt confident
enough to pass on a Sunday practice round and showed up Monday for the
match-play qualifying round. Pano was right to feel confident at the
6,173-yard, par-72 Robert Trent Jones design.
“It feels pretty good,” Pano said in release from Coral
Ridge following Friday’s final. “I always feel happy when I’m playing in this
golf tournament. To start off the year with a win is a great start.”
Pano carded a 4-over 76 in some persistent South Florida
winds in Monday’s qualifying round to finish in a tie for sixth. Medalist
honors were shared by Noelle Maertz of Clark, N.J., the reigning New Jersey
State Golf Association Women’s Mid-Amateur champion who played college golf at
Wagner, and Maisie Filler, a senior at Oxbridge Academy who will join the Florida
Gators program at the end of the summer, both of whom carded a solid 2-over 74.
Pano knocked off Alexis Hios of Rye, N.Y., 3 and 2, in
Tuesday’s opening round of match play.
Pano was a 12-year-old phenom when she captured her first Jones/Doherty
in 2016 and found herself taking on 12-year-old Amy Zweig of McKinney, Texas in
Wednesday’s quarterfinals and the kid gave Pano a battle before falling, 3 and
1.
The match was even when Pano hit it to a foot at the eighth
hole and tapped in for a birdie, won the ninth hole with a par, knocked it four
feet away at the 10th hole and won the hole with a birdie and
pitched it two feet at the par-5 11th hole for another birdie and a
fourth straight win that gave her a 4-up lead.
Filler of Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. proved to be another
tough customer in perfect conditions in Thursday’s semifinals, but Pano pulled
out a 2 and 1 victory.
Pano was 1-down through 11 holes when she squared the match
with a par at the 12th hole. Filler’s tee shot on the par-3 hole was
bunkered and her par-saving putt lipped out. A par at the par-5 13th
hole for Pano put her ahead to stay.
The road to the final for McKim, who runs the corporate real
estate division of a medical company, began with a 1-up victory over Nonie
Marler of Canada. That earned McKim a date in the quarterfinals with Stasi, a
four-time U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur champion.
Coral Ridge has a special place in the heart of Stasi, who
won the Women’s Golf Association of Philadelphia’s Match Play Championship
seven straight times as Meghan Bolger while playing out of Tavistock Country
Club. It was while playing in the Doherty/Jones that she met her future husband,
Danny Stasi, a Coral Ridge member who owns Shuck n Dive, a popular Cajun-style
restaurant in Fort Lauderdale.
Stasi has also won the Jones/Doherty twice, the second time
two years ago when she beat Pano in the title match.
McKim, though, was up to the challenge, pulling out a 1-up
victory over Stasi. McKim reached the final with a 3 and 2 victory over Chelsea
Dantonio of East Aurora, N.Y. in Thursday’s semifinals. Dantonio, who wrapped
up a solid college career at Winthrop last spring, had knocked off Maertz, the
qualifying co-medalist, 4 and 3, in the quarterfinals.
McKim, however, had to settle for a runnerup finish after
running into a determined Pano, No. 22 in the Women’s World Amateur Golf
Ranking (WAGR), in the final. Pano is determined to prove she belongs on that U.S. team
when it departs for Wales in June.
Hios, Pano’s victim in the opening round of match play, came
back to capture the Amateur Division consolation bracket, an 18-hole
stroke-play event, with a 79.
The Jones/Doherty Senior Championship title went to Canadian
Judith Kyrinis, who captured the 2017 U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur crown at
Waverley Country Club in Portland, Ore. Kyrinis rallied from 3-down to send the
match to extra holes and defeated Corey Weworski of Carlsbad, Calif. on the 19th
hole in the title match.
Kyrinis sent the match to the 19th hole by
dropping a 15-foot birdie putt on the 18th hole that enabled her to
draw even with Weworski, a perennial contender in the U.S. Senior Women’s
Amateur. Kyrinis then holed another 15-footer for birdie on the 19th
hole to win the match.
After earning medalist honors in qualifying with a 1-over
73, Kyrinis, who reached the round of 16 in last summer’s U.S. Senior Women’s
Amateur at Cedar Rapids Country Club in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, earned a 2-up
victory over Janet Moore of Centennial, Colo. in Tuesday’s opening round of
match play.
Kyrinis rolled to a 4 and 3 decision over Susan West of
Tuscaloosa, Ala. in the quarterfinals and then reached the final with a 6 and 5
semifinal victory over Kathy Glennon of Naples, Fla.
Glennon, who reached match play in last summer’s U.S. Senior
Women’s Amateur at Cedar Rapids, had to go 20 holes in win her quarterfinal
match against Canadian Terrill Samuel, who had fallen in the Jones/Doherty
Senior final each of the last three years. Samuel lost to her fellow Canadian
Kyrinis in the U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur final in 2017 at Waverley in the
first all-Canadian final in USGA history.
Weworski, who lost to eventual champion Lara Tennant in the
quarterfinals of the 2018 U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur at the Orchid Island Golf
& Beach Resort in Vero Beach, Fla., reached the semifinals with a 6 and 5
victory over Sherry Herman of Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., the 2009 U.S. Senior
Women’s Amateur champion, in the quarterfinals.
Weworski reached the final with a 2 and 1 victory over
Martha Leach of Hebron, Ky. in Thursday’s other semifinal.
Leach, the qualifying medalist in last summer’s U.S. Senior
Women’s Amateur at Cedar Rapids, edged Beatrice De Arenas of Guatemala, 1-up,
in the quarterfinals.
Therese Quinn of Jacksonville, Fla. captured the Senior
First Flight crown with a 2-up victory over Natalia McNicholas. Mimi Hoffman of
Springfield, Va. won the Senior Second Flight title, also claiming a 2-up
decision over Mo Sheehan of Grayslake, Ill.
Andrea Kraus captured top honors in the Senior Third Flight,
a 36-hole stroke-play event, with rounds of 82 and 81 for a 163 total.
Merion Golf Club’s Liz Haines, the runnerup in the 1994 U.S.
Senior Women’s Amateur Championship, capped a busy few weeks on the Orange
Blossom Tour by finishing fifth in the Senior Third Flight with rounds of 86
and 88 and a 174 total.
Haines, in her early 70s, teed it up in the Former
Forty-Nine Division of the Harder Hall Invitational a couple of weeks ago in
Sebring, Fla., and played four rounds in The Sally at Oceanside Country Club in
Ormand Beach, Fla. before heading to Coral Ridge for the Jones/Doherty. Looks
like somebody is planning to keep playing some competitive golf in 2020.
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