Yermish gets off to solid start in qualifying for match play in U.S. Girls' Junior Championship

 

   Hard to believe it’s been five years since a then 12-year-old Sidney Yermish teed it up in the U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship at the Poppy Hills Golf Course on California’s Monterey Peninsula.

   A lot has happened since the kid from Rolling Green Golf Club shot rounds of 86 and 87 at Poppy Hills and failed to make it into the match-play bracket.

   One thing that didn’t happen was Yermish getting back to one of the premier events in junior golf for girls, at least not until this year.

   When Yermish matched par with a 72 at The 1912 Club in a Golf Association of Philadelphia-administered qualifier to get back to the U.S. Girls’ Junior for the first time since 2018, the recent Lower Merion graduate told the GAP website that she wanted to be identified pronoun-wise as they/them.

   The GAP website honored that request and even though it may be difficult for an old-school journalist like myself to toss some of my rules of pronoun usage out the window, I’ll give it my best shot.

   Watching Yermish win three District One Class AAA crowns and claim two PIAA Class AAA Championship victories gives them the right to merit some special pronoun treatment. I’ve always admired the way Yermish competes and their teammates at Michigan, where Yermish is headed at the end of the summer, will love that about them as well.

   Yermish improved dramatically over their first-round performance five years ago at Poppy Hills in qualifying for match play in this year’s U.S. Girls’ Junior as they opened with a solid even-par 72 Monday at the U.S. Air Force Academy Eisenhower Golf Club’s Blue Course in Colorado Springs, Colo. that left them in a group of nine players tied for 16^th place.

   The second round of qualifying for match play will be Tuesday with the top 64 finishers advancing to match play.

   Yermish has put themself in very good position to be one of those 64 teeing it up in match play Wednesday.

   Yermish got off to a great start over the 6,788-yard, par-72 Blue Course layout as they made birdies at the first, seventh and ninth holes to make the turn at 3-under.

   Yermish hit a rough patch to open the incoming nine at the Blue Course, making a bogey at the 10^th hole, a double bogey at 11 and a bogey at 12 to fall back to 1-over. A birdie at the 16^th hole got Yermish back to even-par for the round.

   Yermish has experienced plenty of frustration the last few years. They were the medalist in a U.S. Girls’ Junior qualifier a year ago only to get disqualified for signing an incorrect scorecard.

   Yermish might have won four District One titles and three state championships, but they were forced to sit out the 2020 postseason when the Central League schools couldn’t come to an agreement on coronavirus pandemic protocols when it came to athletics.

   Yermish has been waiting for this chance to perform on a national stage again. This just might be their week.

   I mentioned in a post last week that 13-year-old Aphrodite Deng had lit up the Moorestown Field Club to the tune of a 14-under 130 total to capture the Women’s Golf Association of Philadelphia’s Junior Girls’ Championship July 5^th and 6^th.

   It made me think the kid, who had previously qualified for the U.S. Girls’ Junior, might have a shot at making the match-play bracket at the U.S. Air Force Academy.

   Well, sure enough, there was Deng, who apparently is a native of Canada, but who listed Short Hills, N.J. as her home at the Moorestown Field Club, firing a 1-under 71 to land in the group of five players tied for 11^th place.

   All five of Deng’s birdies came in the first 13 holes at the first, third, fourth, 12^th and 13^th holes. With bogeys at the fifth and eighth holes, Deng was at 3-under after the back-to-back birdies at 12 and 13. Deng backed off a little with bogeys at the 14^th and 18^th holes to finish at 1-under.

   A couple of other local girls are also in the hunt for a spot in the match-play bracket as Central Bucks East junior Elle Lundquist, who missed the high school postseason last fall with an illness, and Avery McCrery, who captured the Delaware scholastic crown at Baywood Greens in Long Neck, Del. as a sophomore at Tower Hill School in the spring, each carded a 2-over 74 and are in the group tied for 31^st place.

   McCrery’s Tower Hill teammate, Sawyer Brockstedt, like McCrery heading into her junior year, has some work to do to get into the match-play bracket as she opened with a 7-over 78 that left her in the group tied for 96^th place.

   Brockstedt teamed with Lundquist to reach the match-play bracket in the 2022 U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball Championship at the Grand Reserve Golf Club in Rio Grande, Puerto Rico.

   Another player who came out of the GAP-administered qualifier at The 1912 Club, Anushka Sawant, a senior at South Brunswick High School in New Jersey, was also in the group along with Brockstedt tied for 96^th place with a 6-over 78.

   Sawant survived a seven-for-one playoff to grab the final spot in the field for the U.S. Girls’ Junior in the qualifier at The 1912 Club.

   Another one of the co-medalists in the qualifier at The 1912 Club, Helen Yeung, a senior at Rising Hill High School in Clarksville, Md., was in a group of six players tied for fifth place as she posted a 2-under 70. Yeung plans to join the program at North Carolina in the summer of 2024.

   Recent South Fayette graduate Marissa Malosh, a two-time PIAA Class AAA qualifier, opened with a 5-over 77 that left her in the group tied for 78^th place. Malosh will join the program at Delaware later this summer.

   Gwendolyn Powell, a North Pocono senior who has reached the PIAA Class AAA Championship in each of her first three years of scholastic golf, and Angelina Tao, a sophomore at Santa Magarita Catholic in Santa Margarita, Calif., were the other two co-medalists in the qualifier at The 1912 Club and both landed in the group tied for 117^th place as each recorded an 80.

   At the top of the leaderboard at the end of the first round were the biggest name in girls junior golf, Anna Davis, the left-hander from Spring Valley, Calif. who is No. 4 in the Women’s World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR), and her pal Kiara Romero of San Jose, Calif., both of whom carded a 4-under 68.

   Davis made a huge splash when she won the Augusta National Women’s Amateur Championship in the spring of 2022. She has committed to join the program at Auburn in the summer of 2024, but the fact that she has made the cut in five of the eight LPGA-sanctioned events she has entered means she has to be seriously considering just getting on with it and bypass college and turn pro.

   Romero, who will join the program at Pac-12 power Oregon later this summer, teamed with Davis as they reached the round of 16 in the U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball Championship at The Home Course in DuPont, Wash. in May.

   Kaili Xino, the 14-year-old from China who earned a spot in the U.S. Women’s Open at the Pebble Beach Golf Links earlier this month, and Tanapath Panya, a 16-year-old from Thailand, were a shot behind the two Cali girls in a tie for third place as they each registered a 3-under 69.

   The finalists from the U.S. Girls’ Junior at The Club at Olde Stone in Bowling Green, Ky. a year ago, Yana Wilson, the champion from Henderson, Nev., and Gianna Clemente, the runnerup from Estero, Fla. via Warren, Ohio, headed a group of six players tied for sixth place at 2-under 70.

   The 15-year-old Clemente is No. 41 in the Women’s WAGR and teamed with junior pal Avery Zweig of McKinney, Texas to capture the title in the U.S. Women’s Four-Ball in May at The Home Course. Wilson is just 16.

   The 16-year-old Zweig was in a group tied for 60^th place with a 4-over 76.

   Also in that group at 2-under was China’s Alice Ziyi Zhao, who was one of the qualifying co-medalists in last summer’s U.S. Women’s Amateur Championship at Chambers Bay in University Place, Wash. at age 13.

   Another talented youngster, 14-year-old Angela Zhang of Bellevue, Wash., was also in the group at 2-under. Zhang joined China’s Xiao as one of the 14-year-olds who earned a spot in the field for the U.S. Women’s Open at Pebble Beach earlier this month.

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