You could make the argument that Council Rock North’s Erica Herr was the finest female golfer ever produced by District One.
Herr won back-to-back PIAA Class AAA crowns in 2011 and 2012 and nearly made it three straight, before finishing in a tie for third place in 2013. Herr earned a spot in the 2013 U.S. Women’s Open at Sebonack Golf Club on Long Island the summer before her senior year in high school and has U.S. Junior Girls’ Championship and U.S. Women’s Amateur appearances on her resume.
Herr, however, had been missing from the competitive golf scene, at least as far as I could tell, since limping home at the end of her junior season at Wake Forest in the NCAA Athens Regional in the spring of 2017.
A season that was filled with promise for the Demon Deacons ended with Herr playing basically with one arm because of an injury just so Wake could post a team score. Had it not, Jennifer Kupcho, who nearly won the NCAA individual title that spring, would have been ineligible to advance to the NCAA Championship.
I figured eventually Herr would pop up teeing it up in a Pennsylvania Women’s Amateur or maybe I would hear that she was giving LPGA Tour Qualifying School a shot. But there was no sign of one of the best scholastic players in Pennsylvania history.
That’s why I was so happy to see Herr finishing second in a Golf Association of Philadelphia-administered U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur Championship qualifier at Philadelphia Country Club Tuesday. Having turned 25, Herr was in her first year of eligibility as a mid-am and her 3-over-par 75 will return her to the national stage when the 34th U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur Championship tees off Sept. 25 at the Berkeley Hall Club’s North Course in Bluffton, S.C.
More importantly, it sounded like Herr is having fun playing golf again. Injury has derailed many a golf career, but even if Herr has given up her dream of playing professionally, she can have many years of amateur golf ahead of her.
“It’s definitely different compared to playing in all of those championships,” Herr told the GAP website when asked about her previous appearances in some of the USGA’s biggest events. “Today, I didn’t care about my score. It was more about having fun. I was more relaxed today. It was more just about making good shots as much as worrying about my score.
“Getting back in competition like this, it just feels really great. I feel like I’m almost back where I used to be.”
Herr, a New Hope resident playing out of Jericho National Golf Club, got off to a great start making six pars around a birdie at the third hole as she was 1-under through seven holes. She made a bogey at the eight hole, but closed out the front nine with a birdie at nine. Herr got on the bogey train on the incoming nine with bogeys at the 10th, 11th, 13th and 16th holes before making a birdie at 17. A bogey at the last left her with a 3-over total over the 6,026-yard, par-72 Philadelphia Country Club layout, home to the 2003 U.S. Women’s Amateur Championship.
If Herr wants some intel on just how much fun and competitive a U.S. Women’s Mid-Am can be, she can check with the qualifying medalist at Philly, Merion Golf Club’s Catherine Elliott, who starred scholastically at Notre Dame and collegiately at Penn.
The 33-year-old Elliott told the GAP website that making it to the U.S. Women’s Mid-Am has become her main competitive goal each year. As with the junior and senior golfers, the mid-ams didn’t have a national championship to shoot for in 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic forced the USGA to cancel all of its championships except the U.S. Open, the U.S. Women’s Open, the U.S. Amateur and the U.S. Women’s Amateur.
Elliott, a Wayne resident, will be making her fourth U.S. Women’s Mid-Am appearance as she carded a solid 1-over 73 at Philly. It was an up-and-down round for Elliott as she offset six bogeys with five birdies.
Elliott was 3-over standing on the tee at the 426-yard, par-5 17th hole. She reached the putting surface in two from 190 yards away. Elliott’s 30-footer for eagle went 10 feet by the hole, but she made the comebacker for birdie.
Elliott then finished with a flourish, knocking a 3-wood on to the 367-yard, par-4 18th hole to 20 feet and got her birdie try to fall.
In her third appearance in the U.S. Women’s Mid-Am two years ago at Forest Highlands Golf Club’s Meadows Course in Flagstaff, Ariz., Elliott earned a spot in the match-play bracket for the first time and won a match. It seems like a neat collection of mid-am standouts who get together at the U.S. Women’s Mid-Am, a sorority Elliott enjoys being part of.
An old junior rival of Elliott’s, Overbrook Golf Club’s Alyssa Roland will be making her first U.S. Women’s Mid-Am appearance since 2018 after she finished in third place, two shots behind Herr at 5-over 77.
Roland lives and works in New York City, but still calls Overbrook her home course. Roland survived a playoff to earn a spot in the match-play bracket in the 2017 U.S. Women’s Mid-Am at the Champions Golf Club’s Cypress Creek Course in Houston.
The fourth ticket to Berkeley Hall went to the Golf Course at Glen Mills’ Grace Battista, who finished three shots behind Roland in fourth place with an 80.
The 30-year-old Battista is a 2013 West Chester graduate who hasn’t played a lot of competitive golf in the ensuing eight years, but decided to give the Mid-Am qualifier a go.
The fifth and final berth to Berkeley Hall out of the Philadelphia Country Club qualifier went to Lookaway Golf Club’s Stephanie Harris as she parred the first hole of a playoff after finishing in a tie with Alicia Kapheim of Pennington, N.J. and Barbora Maralikova of Austria, who plays out of Honeybrook Golf Club, as each carded an 81.
Kapheim, the reigning New Jersey Senior Women’s Amateur champion, emerged as the first alternate with Maralikova coming away with second-alternate status. The third alternate was Aronimink Golf Club’s Lauren Bernard, who registered an 82. Bernard is another product of the Notre Dame program who played collegiately at Bucknell.
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