Emilia Migliaccio probably had it all figured out around this time last year.
By January of 2021, the Cary, N.C. native would be the senior leader of a Wake Forest team that was gearing up for a second straight NCAA Championship run. Maybe she would have gained some status on either the LPGA Tour or the Symetra Tour for 2021 in the LPGA Q-Series in the fall of 2020, so once the Demon Deacons repeated as NCAA champions in the spring, Migliaccio would just slide right into her pro career.
All those plans, though, would have gone out the window in March of 2020 when the wraparound 2019-2020 college golf season came to an unceremonious end with the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic. The young people of these pandemic years will always be the masters of changing course and of rolling with the punches. They will know all too well how quickly circumstances can blow up even the best-laid plans.
Wake Forest was No. 1 in the latest Golfstat rankings when the college golf season was suddenly halted last March. Led by Migliaccio’s individual victory, the Demon Deacons claimed a runaway 26-shot victory in the Darius Rucker Intercollegiate, one of the really neat and competitive stops on the spring college schedule held at the Long Cove Club’s Pete Dye Course on Hilton Head Island, S.C.
Migliaccio is still a senior at Wake Forest, but she hasn’t played in a college tournament since the Darius Rucker. If Wake Forest ever gets back on the golf course, it would certainly still be a contender for the NCAA crown that eluded the Demon Deacons in the spring of 2019 when they fell to Atlantic Coast Conference rival Duke, 3-2, in the Final Match at The Blessings Golf Club in Fayetteville, Ark.
Migliaccio spent a couple of days at the end of 2019 in a practice session for prospects for the team that would represent the United States against Great Britain & Ireland in the 2020 Curtis Cup Match, scheduled to be played in June at Conwy Golf Club in Caernarvonshire, Wales.
When the Curtis Cup Match was postponed by the pandemic, I wondered at the time how many of those dozen women who gathered with U.S. captain Sarah Ingram at Loblolly Golf Club in Hobe Sound, Fla. at the end of 2019 would still be interested in wearing the Red, White & Blue in 2021. And that was before the rescheduled Curtis Cup Match was moved, first from June to September and then to late August.
The USGA’s International Team Selection Committee was facing the type of challenge in filling out a Curtis Cup roster that it has so often looked at when sorting through candidates for a Walker Cup team. The Walker Cup is often played in late August or early September, which makes it a tough call for a college player anxious to get his pro career started.
But when Ingram again convenes a dozen players to audition for the 2021 Curtis Cup Match Jan. 29 and 30 at Lake Nona Golf & Country Club, eight of the Loblolly dozen, including Migliaccio, will still be on board, some of them willing to put their pro ambitions on hold for a little bit longer in order to represent their country in the 41st edition of the Curtis Cup.
It probably didn’t hurt the cause for Ingram and the USGA that there was no LPGA Q-Series in the fall and none of the upperclasswomen were able to earn any status on any pro tour for 2021.
But give Migliaccio and some of the other women who will be at Lake Nona later this month credit for committing to a trip to Wales this summer.
Migliaccio already has a little international experience. She represented the U.S. of A. in the 2019 Pan American Games in Lima, Peru and came home with a couple of gold medals, winning the women’s individual competition and teaming with fellow Curtis Cup prospect Rose Zhang, former Stanford standout Brandon Wu and 2016 U.S. Mid-Amateur champion Stewart Hagestad for a victory in the mixed team event.
Two of the holdovers from Loblolly in late 2019 will return for this month’s practice session at Lake Nona even though they were seniors last year.
Both Southern California’s Allisen Corpuz of Honolulu, Hawaii and No. 22 in the Women’s World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR) and Louisville’s Lauren Hartlage of Elizabethtown, Ky. and No. 70 in the Women’s WAGR accepted the NCAA’s offer of another year of eligibility to make up for the spring of their senior season that was stolen by the pandemic and are playing a fifth year.
You can’t always assume that all these women are planning to play professional golf, but it is always an option. Corpuz and Hartlage, though, have made it clear that they want a shot at representing the U.S. in a Curtis Cup on foreign soil.
Corpuz and the Trojans were No. 4 in the Golfstat rankings when the 2019-’20 season was halted and she might be thinking a very strong Southern Cal team can make a run for an NCAA crown this spring.
Getting an invitation to Lake Nona does not guarantee anybody of a spot on the U.S. team. The winner of the U.S. Women’s Amateur, which tees off Aug. 2 at Westchester Country Club in Rye, N.Y., will get an automatic spot on the team. In a normal Curtis Cup cycle that would be the previous year’s U.S. Women’s Amateur champion.
At some date in the summer, the top three American women in the Women’s WAGR will receive automatic spots on the team. If the winner of the McCormack Medal, which is awarded to the No. 1 player in the Women’s WAGR right after the U.S. Women’s Amateur, is an American, she will receive an automatic spot on the team. Zhang received a delayed 2019 McCormack Medal in October and remains No. 1 in the latest Women’s WAGR.
Migliaccio is the next highest-ranked American on the Women’s WAGR at No. 8. Two spots behind her is Texas senior Kaitlyn Papp, another of the Loblolly dozen who has accepted an invitation to Lake Nona. The Austin, Texas home girl is No. 10 in the Women’s WAGR.
I did a fairly lengthy post on the five women from the Loblolly dozen who were among the 24 amateur players awarded spots in the rare December U.S. Women’s Open at Houston’s Champions Golf Club and none performed better than Papp did. The only American to make the cut, Papp worked her way into the final group in Saturday’s third round and ended up as the low amateur, finishing in a tie for ninth place at 3-over 287.
I wondered if Papp would remain an amateur long enough to give the Curtis Cup a shot. I got my answer when I found out Papp was among the players who accepted an invitation for the golf retreat at Lake Nona.
Papp’s Longhorns were ranked No. 2 by Golfstat when the college golf season ended in March. Among her teammates is Hailee Cooper, with whom she teamed to capture the 2016 U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball Championship at the Streamsong Golf Resort’s Blue Course. I suspect Papp, Cooper and the rest of a loaded Texas roster have designs on an NCAA title as well this spring.
I did a post earlier this week on Gina Kim, a junior at Duke and No. 40 in the Women’s WAGR, winning the Harder Hall Invitational, a stop on the unofficial Orange Blossom Tour at Harder Hall Golf Club in Sebring, Fla. Gina Kim is listed as a Durham, N.C. resident these days, but she came out of Chapel Hill.
In checking some of my notes from the match-play portion of the 2019 NCAA Championship at The Blessings Golf Club in Fayetteville, Ark., I noticed that Migliaccio edged Gina Kim, 1-up, in the Final Match for one of Wake Forest’s two points in a 3-2 loss to the national champion Blue Devils.
Of course, a day earlier, Gina Kim, then a freshman, delivered a huge point with a 1-up victory over Stanford’s Albane Valenzuela, a two-time U.S. Women’s Amateur runnerup, in the quarterfinals and then came up big in the semifinals with another tough 1-up win over Arizona’s Bianca Pagdanganan, who is turning heads on the LPGA Tour with her length off the tee these days. Duke won both matches, 3-2.
Maybe the native North Carolinians, Migliaccio and Gina Kim, just want to see what it would be like to be teammates. Gina Kim, who was invited to Loblolly a year ago, will be at Lake Nona later this year, hoping to take the first step toward a U.S. Curtis Cup team berth.
There is another Kim, Vanderbilt junior Auston Kim of St. Augustine, Fla. and No. 25 in the Women’s WAGR who was at Loblolly and will be at Lake Nona this month. Auston Kim was one of the Loblolly dozen who teed it up in last month’s U.S. Women’s Open.
Auston Kim missed the cut by four, but was two shots better than Migliaccio and five shots better than Corpuz.
Then there is Zhang. She carded a pair of 73s at Champions and missed the cut by a shot. The rising junior star who was invited to Loblolly at the end of 2019 will arrive at Lake Nona as the No. 1 amateur player in the world.
Zhang made a remarkable run to the McCormack Medal. Still nursing a wrist injury and faced with fewer than normal competitive opportunities due to the pandemic, Zhang showed up at the U.S. Women’s Amateur at Woodmont Country Club in Rockville, Md. in August and defeated the defending champion, Corpuz’s Southern Cal teammate, Aussie Gabriela Ruffels, in an epic 38-hole final.
The Stanford commit finished in a tie for 11th place in the pandemic delayed ANA Inspiration with an 8-under 280 total in the LPGA major championship held in September at the Dinah Shore Tournament Course at Mission Hills Country Club in Rancho Mirage, Calif., edging Ruffels by a shot for low-amateur honors.
After securing the McCormack Medal in October, Zhang defeated a talented field by four shots to win the premier event on the American Junior Golf Association (AJGA) calendar, the Rolex Tournament of Champions, over the Thanksgiving weekend at the PGA National Resort & Spa in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.
The last of the eight players who were at Loblolly and have been invited to Lake Nona is Ohio State sophomore Aneka Seumanutafa of Emmitsburg, Md. and No. 50 in the Women’s WAGR.
The list of talented daughters of the Tar Heel state invited to Lake Nona doesn’t stop with Migliaccio and Gina Kim. Migliaccio’s Wake Forest teammate, Rachel Kuehn, a sophomore from Asheville, N.C. and No. 34 in the Women’s WAGR, will also be a candidate for the U.S. Curtis Cup team.
When the golf world started to re-emerge from the spring’s coronavirus-enforced shutdowns in July, Kuehn was ready to go. She captured the North & South Women’s Amateur Championship on the Pinehurst Resort’s iconic No. 2 Course, edging Corpuz in 19 holes in a dramatic final.
Kuehn carried that momentum to the U.S. Women’s Amateur at Woodmont, where she finished in a tie for eighth place in qualifying for match play and reached the round of 16. Kuehn’s mother, Wake Forest Hall of Famer Brenda Corrie-Kuehn, played in 16 U.S. Women’s Amateurs, nine U.S. Women’s Opens and twice represented the United States in the Curtis Cup Match. I’m sure Corrie-Kuehn would love nothing more than to see her daughter follow in mom’s footsteps and make a U.S. Curtis Cup team.
Also getting a chance to show Ingram what she’s got will be Mississippi’s Kennedy Swann, a fifth-year player from that women’s golf hotbed of Austin, Texas and No. 77 in the Women’s WAGR.
Swann was the co-medalist for Ole Miss in qualifying for match play in the East Lake Cup, one of the few big college events that was staged in the fall. Swann helped Ole Miss capture the women’s team crown at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta.
Two other Southeastern Conference standouts, Arkansas’ Brooke Matthews, a redshirt junior from Rogers, Ark. and No. 62 in the Women’s WAGR, and Auburn’s Megan Schofill, a freshman from Monticello, Fla. and No. 24 in the Women’s WAGR, round out the group of 12 players invited to audition for the U.S. team later this month.
Matthews met up with Kuehn in the second round of the U.S. Women’s Amateur at Woodmont, dropping a 3 and 1 decision.
Schofill had a nice run in the U.S. Women’s Amateur at Woodmont as well as she reached the round of 16, where Schofill went toe-to-toe with Migliaccio for 22 holes before falling in one of the week’s best matches.
Hopefully, we’ll see all of these ladies playing some college golf this spring. And they’ll have most of the summer to continue to impress the USGA’s International Team Selection Committee.
As far as I know, the 2022 Curtis Cup Match is still on schedule, which interests us in the Philadelphia area because it will be held at Merion Golf Club’s iconic East Course in the Ardmore section of Haverford Township.
Most of the 12 players who will gather at Lake Nona later this month will be professional golfers by the time the 2022 Curtis Cup Match is played. But who knows, maybe a youngster like Zhang will relish the opportunity to play in two Curtis Cups in the space of about 10 months, the second of which will be held on one of the most renowned golf courses in the world.
I’m planning to be there. We’ll see who else shows up.
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