It was only fitting that the news that Meghan Stasi would be the captain of the next U.S. Curtis Cup team would drop on the eve of the 90th Ione D. Jones/Doherty Women’s Amateur Championship at Coral Ridge Country Club in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
It was at the Jones/Doherty where the then Meghan Bolger caught the eye of Coral Ridge member Danny Stasi, owner/chef of Shuck n Dive, a popular Fort Lauderdale restaurant that featured Chef Staz’s cajun specialties.
And it was at the Curtis Cup Match in 2008 at the Old Course at St. Andrews when Stasi popped the question on the Swilcan Bridge. Timing, of course, is everything, but give Danny Stasi credit for being prepared for the moment.
Meghan Bolger, soon to be Meghan Stasi, had won two U.S. Women’s Amateur Championships, which earned the then 30-year the nod to be on the U.S. Curtis Cup team that included future major champion Stacy Lewis and that was captained by the great Carol Semple Thompson, the World Golf Hall of Famer from western Pennsylvania.
As Megahn Stasi, she would win two more U.S. Women Mid-Am titles, her total of four matched only by Ellen Port.
As John Bodenheimer, the USGA’s chief championship officer, said in making the announcement that Stasi would captain the U.S. team in the 43rd Curtis Cup Match at Sunningdale Golf Club in England, it was just a matter of when not if Stasi would get a chance to lead the U.S. in one of the premier events in international women’s amateur golf.
Stasi was, as you would expect, thrilled to accept her appointment as captain.
“My experience in 2008 with the Curtis Cup was incredibly meaningful and rewarding,” Stasi told the USGA website. “Being asked to fill the role of captain is humbling. I’ve had the opportunity to attend the Match the last two years in Wales and at Merion and the level of talent and poise these amateur golfers have is inspiring and infectious to be around.
“I can’t wait to begin this journey and most of all, be part of the USA Team again.”
For the women who competed in the Women’s Golf Association of Philadelphia’s Match Play Championship at the turn of the century, none of this is surprising.
Meghan Bolger, playing out of Tavistock Country Club, won the thing seven years in a row, from 1999 to 2005. Anybody who has followed women’s amateur golf in the Philadelphia area over the years – and those women have never seemed to care a whole lot if anybody is paying attention to them or not – knows that winning WGAP’s biggest championship is no easy feat. And to do it seven straight years is almost impossible.
The Eastern High product had gone away to play college golf at Tulane and then, at age 23 in July of 2001, Stasi became the youngest coach in Division I women’s college golf at Mississippi. Still, Stasi would come home every summer and capture the Philadelphia Women’s Amateur crown right on schedule.
Then in 2006, Stasi won the first of her four U.S. Women’s Mid-Am crowns at Old Waverly Golf Club in West Point, Miss. By the spring of 2007, Stasi was thinking more about playing than coaching and her career as a college coach came to an end.
She made it two straight U.S. Women’s Mid-Am titles that year, capturing the title at Desert Forest Golf Club in Carefree, Ariz.
It’s pretty easy to connect the dots between the woman who won seven straight Philadelphia Women’s Amateur crowns from 1999 to 2005 and the woman who won back-to-back U.S. Women’s Mid-Am crowns in 2006 and ’07. Stasi had become pretty good at this match-play thing during those years of competing against the best women in the Philadelphia area and, as it turned out, the step to a national stage wasn’t all that different.
Stasi would win two more U.S. Women’s Mid-Am crowns following her 2008 Curtis Cup experience, claiming the title for a third time in 2010 at Wichita Country Club and for a fourth time in 2012 at Briggs Ranch Golf Club in San Antonio, Texas. But even in her 40s, Stasi remains competitive in the Mid-Am, reaching the quarterfinals last summer at Fiddlesticks Country Club’s Long Mean Course in Fort Myers, Fla.
And while Stasi has become a fixture in the amateur golf scene in Florida, she hasn’t forgotten her roots.
WGAP held its Match Play Championship at Tavistock last summer and Stasi came home to tee it up at the golf course that sent her on her golfing way. Stasi won the title for a ninth time and nobody was laying down for Haddonfield’s favorite daughter. If you haven’t been paying attention, it’s not easy to win a Philadelphia Women’s Amateur crown. It’s why Stasi is such a great player.
Which brings us back to last Monday, qualifying for match play at Coral Ridge for the Jones/Doherty, an event on the unofficial Orange Blossom Tour of women’s amateur events in Florida each winter that Stasi has won twice in 2012 and again in 2018.
Stasi carded a 6-over 78, finishing in a tie for 10th place in qualifying and then fell in the opening round of match play Tuesday, 2 and 1, to Ashley Zagers, who wrapped up a solid college career at South Florida last spring. Stasi could be forgiven for being a little distracted.
Stasi did have a rooting interest in Friday’s final of the Amateur division of the Jones/Doherty as Ina Kim-Schaad, with whom Stasi has partnered to capture the title in the Women’s International Four Ball Championship at The Wanderers Club in Wellington, Fla. three of the last four years, played for the title against Morgan Miller, a freshman at Colorado from Cedar Park, Texas.
Kim-Schaad is a pretty interesting story in her own right. A standout at Northwestern, Kim-Schaad put the sticks away, at least competitively, for a decade while working in corporate board rooms. A couple of years after her husband coaxed her back on the golf course, Kim-Schaad won the U.S. Women’s Mid-Am in 2019 at Forest Highlands Golf Club in Flagstaff, Ariz., beating Stasi in the semifinals.
I don’t have a whole lot of details from the Jones/Doherty, but I do have all the names and results.
Kim-Schaad came up short in Friday’s final as Miller captured the title with a 2 and 1 victory.
Miller had reached the final with a 3 and 2 victory over Zagers, the conqueror of Stasi in the opening round, in one of Thursday’s semifinals.
Kim-Schaad, who reached the round of 16 in last summer’s U.S. Women’s Mid-Am at Fiddlesticks, advanced to the final with a 3 and 2 victory over the latest in a long line of Florida phenoms, Honorine Nobuta Ferry, in the other semifinal.
Nobuta Ferry, one of two 12-year-olds in the field for last summer’s U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship at The Club at Olde Stone in Bowling Green, Ky., was the qualifying medalist for the Jones/Doherty, carding a 2-under 70.
Miller cruised to a 5 and 4 victory over Lea Zeitler, a senior at Iowa from Austria, in her quarterfinal match Wednesday while Kim-Schaad also knocked off a current college player, Canice Screene, a Boston College junior from England, 4 and 3, in her quarterfinal match.
Miller’s road to the title began in the opening round with a 5 and 4 victory over Noelle Maertz, a talented mid-am from Clark, N.J.
In an opening-round battle between a pair of Stasi’s favorite four-ball partners, Kim-Schaad edged Dawn Woodard, 1-up.
Woodard of Greenville, S.C. and Stasi are the only pair to have teed it up in each of the first seven editions of the U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball Championship and they will run that streak to eight, having already booked a spot in this spring’s Four-Ball at The Home Course in DuPont, Wash.
Screene knocked off defending Jones/Doherty champion Brooke Oberparleiter, who splits her time between Jupiter, Fla. and Blackwood, N.J., 4 and 3. Oberparleiter, who has been a solid junior player, will join the program at Kentucky at the end of the summer.
Samantha Perrotta, playing out of Centerton Golf Course in Pittsgrove, N.J., was another first-round casualty as she dropped a 1-up decision to Staci Pla, a youngster representing The First Tee of Palm Beaches.
Perrotta reached the final of the WGAP Match Play Championship three straight times from 2019 to 2021, claiming the title in 2020.
In Thursday’s First Flight final, Ava La Belle of Webster, N.Y., captured the title with a 6 and 5 victory over Reggie Parker of Hobe Sound, Fla.
Merion Golf Club’s Liz Haines, although certainly eligible to compete in the Senior division at 70-something, teed it up qualifying for match play in the Amateur division and finished in 21st place with a 90. She fell to Parker in the First Flight’s opening round.
There wasn’t much of a break between The Sally, another Orange Blossom Tour event that concluded Jan. 7 at Oceanside Country Club up the coast in Ormond Beach, Fla, but Haines played four rounds in the Rockefeller division there and hustled down to Coral Ridge and played a couple of rounds in the Jones/Doherty. Six rounds of competitive golf in seven days by my count.
Friday’s Senior division final was a battle that went beyond the 18th hole as Shelly Haywood, the former head coach at Arizona, outlasted 2017 U.S. Women’s Senior Amateur champion Judith Kyrinis on the 20th hole to capture the title.
Haywood earned a spot in the title match with a hard-fought 2-up victory in Thursday afternoon’s semifinals over Gigi Higgins while Kyrinis earned a 2 and 1 victory over Kathy Hartwiger in the other semifinal.
Higgins and Hartwiger both reached the quarterfinals of the 2021 U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur at The Lakewood Club in Port Clear, Ala. Higgins was the co-medalist in qualifying for match at Lakewood. Hartwiger is a legendary amateur player in Alabama.
Earlier Thursday, Haywood knocked off three-time Jones/Doherty Senior champion Andrea Kraus, 3 and 2, in a quarterfinal match while Kyrinis got past a tough customer in 2002 U.S. Women’s Mid-Am champion Corey Weworski, 4 and 3, in another quarterfinal contest.
In Wednesday’s second round, Haywood pulled out a 2 and 1 decision over 2015 WGAP Match Play Championship winner Suzi Spotleson, who, I’m pretty sure, lives and works in Ohio, but keeps an affiliation with the RiverCrest Golf Club & Preserve that enables her to compete in WGAP events.
Regardless, Spotleson can play. She fell to Merion’s Loraine Jones in the final as the WGAP included a Senior division for the first time in its Match Play Championship last summer at Tavistock.
Kyrinis advanced to the quarterfinals with a 3 and 1 victory over Susie Keane, a professional tennis player who took up golf in her 40s after injuries derailed her tennis career.
Haywood opened her bid for the Senior division title with a tough 1-up victory over another former tennis standout, Susan West, another Alabama resident, in the opening round.
Kyrinis cruised to a 6 and 5 victory in the opening round over Beatriz Arenas, the native of Guatemala who was coming off a win in the Rockefeller division at The Sally.
Terrill Samuel had claimed medalist honors in qualifying for match play as she matched par with a 72. Samuel was the runnerup to Kyrinis in the all-Canadian final in the 2017 U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur Championship at Waverley Country Club in Portland, Ore. Samuel won the Royal & Ancient’s Senior Women’s Amateur Championship last summer at Royal Dornoch.
Samuel fell to Kraus in the second round, dropping a 1-up decision.
Another second-round casualty in the Senior division was Sarah LeBrun Ingram, Stasi’s predecessor as the U.S. Curtis Cup captain who capped her unusual two terms with a 15.5-4.5 victory for the homestanding Stars & Stripes last summer at Merion’s historic East Course.
The onset of the coronavirus pandemic threw a monkey wrench into the Curtis Cup schedule with the 2020 Match postponed until August of 2021 at Conwy Golf Club in Caernarvonshire, Wales. As a result, Ingram led the U.S. to a pair of Curtis Cup victories in a nine-month stretch.
Ingram fell to Higgins, 5 and 4, in a second-round match in the Jones/Doherty Senior division. I’m sure Ingram, a three-time U.S. Women’s Mid-Am champ herself, will be an invaluable resource for Stasi as she embarks on her captaincy of the U.S. side.
The Senior First Flight title went to Marilyn Hardy, the runnerup in the Jones/Doherty Amateur division in 1989 and in the Senior division in 2014 who claimed a 3 and 2 decision over Susan Temple in Friday’s final.
One of the matches of the week came in Thursday’s Senior Second Flight final as Denise Callahan claimed the title in a 22-hole marathon with Carolyn Creekmore.
Callahan was coming off a runnerup finish to Arenas in The Sally’s Rockefeller division last weekend at Oceanside. Creekmore defeated Merion’s Haines in the 2004 U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur final at Pasatiempo Golf Course in Santa Cruz, Calif. and also owns a Jones/Doherty Senior division crown that she won in 2009.
Hopefully, women’s golf fans in the Philadelphia area will get to see Stasi and the always fashionable Kim-Schaad in action, in September when the U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur Championship is played at Stonewall’s North Course in the northwest corner of Chester County.
As I checked out the results from the Jones/Doherty last week, they used the old-fashioned let’s-take-a-picture-of-the-scoreboard maneuver to update the tournament.
In the corner was a little note that said. “Congratulations … Meghan Stasi 2024 Curtis Cup captain.” It was a message worth celebrating at Coral Ridge, at Tavistock, at Tulane and at Old Miss.
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