Cox is finding a winning formula at Penn State

 

   When junior Michelle Cox tees it up for Penn State Monday in the opening round of the Juli Inkster Meadow Club Invitational at the Meadow Club in Fairfax, Calif., she will do so with a college tournament victory on her resume for the first time.

   Somehow, I keep missing a lot of Cox’s biggest moments, so I figured that this was as good a time as any to give Cox some overdue credit.

   Penn State was still shaking the rust off from the midseason pause when it opened the spring portion of its 2023-2024 season in the UCF Challenge at Eagle Creek Golf Club in Orlando, Fla. the first week of February.

   Cox was the Nittany Lions’ best finisher in a tough field, ending up in a tie for 40^th place with a 2-over 218 total.

   Penn State came right back four days later in the Columbia Classic, hosted by Columbia, out of the Ivy League, at Duran Golf Club in Melbourne, Fla.

   After opening with a 3-under-par 69 over the 6,303-yard, par-72 Duran layout, Cox recorded a 5-under 67, tying a career best, on Super Bowl Sunday, to take the individual lead. Cox then grinded out a 1-under 71 in the final round for a 9-under 207 total that gave her her first college tournament victory by four shots over Yale’s Alexis Kim, a junior from Irvine, Calif.

   Cox led Penn State to a runnerup finish in the team standings, the Nittany Lions’ 10-over 874 total leaving them three shots behind the team champion, Yale, an Ivy League representative.

   It was the best team finish for Kristen Simpson, who took over for long-time Penn State head coach Denise St. Pierre last summer, and a big shot in the arm for Simpson to have a Nittany Lion hoisting the winner’s trophy and, of course, for Cox.

   “The wind was making things tough today, but coach Simpson kept telling me to be patient and I couldn’t be more appreciative of her sticking by my side,” Cox told the Penn State website following the final round. “The ship finally steadied and I got a few shots back toward the middle of my round and that gave me the momentum I needed.

   “The whole round was a grind-it-out kind of day, so it was definitely a fight. I felt pretty good scrambling all week, which was great, but there were moments in there that tested my patience.”

   I was at the Heritage Hills Golf Resort in York County in the fall of 2020, that strangest and scariest of years, when Cox, a senior at Emmaus, lost in a playoff to West Chester’s East Victoria Kim for the PIAA Class AAA championship.

   In a concession to the coronavirus pandemic, the state tournament was a one-day shootout that year instead of the normal two-day, 36-hole affair. Regardless, it was Cox’s third trip to the PIAA Class AAA Championship and St. Pierre knew she was getting one of the top high school players in Pennsylvania when Cox committed to Penn State.

   Cox did get a nice win the following summer when she defeated Jade Gu, who starred scholastically at Pennsbury and is on the roster at Purdue these days, in a playoff at Lebanon Country Club to capture the title in the Pennsylvania Junior Girls’ Championship.

   Cox had been in the Penn State lineup for the most part in her first two seasons, but struggled at times. She’s contended in the Pennsylvania Women’s Amateur Championship each of the last two summers.

   Cox trailed Jackie Rogowicz, a former Penn State standout, by just two shots going into the final round of the Pennsylvania Women’s Am in the summer of 2022 at Lancaster Country Club, the William Flynn gem that will play host to the U.S. Women’s Open this spring for the second time in nine years.

   Cox struggled in the final round while Rogowicz, who is the best women’s amateur player in Pennsylvania, lapped the field. Still, Cox finished in fifth place.

   Cox finished in a tie for eighth place in last summer’s Pennsylvania Women’s Am at Sunnehanna Country Club, the A.W. Tillinghast classic near Johnstown.

   In between those two Pennsylvania Women’s Ams, it looked like Cox’s sophomore season at Penn State was going to end in disappointing fashion when she struggled to an 86 in the final round of the Big Ten Championship at a tough Fox Chapel Golf Club layout in suburban Pittsburgh that left her tied for 76^th place.

   This past week, I was working on a post on Delaware’s showing in the Reynolds Lake Oconee Invitational, hosted by Mercer in Greensboro, Ga.

   Mercer won the team title and I looked back at how last spring had gone for the Bears. Turned out, Mercer hadn’t received a berth in an NCAA regional, but ended up finishing in third place in something called the National Golf Invitational, held at Ak-Chin Southern Dunes Golf Club in Maricopa, Ariz.

   The winner of the inaugural National Golf Invitational was Penn State, led by a runnerup finish by one Michelle Cox. I went to the Penn State website and did a little digging on last spring’s NGI, which I never posted on as it came in the midst of the college postseason and with a lot of other golf going on locally.

   The National Golf Invitational, the brainchild of Golfweek, offered 10 teams that just missed getting a berth to an NCAA regional a chance to play one more tournament, very much like the National Invitational Tournament has in basketball. I’ve been following the Penn State program pretty closely since the 2016-’17 season and many of those teams would fit that description, always living just on the other side of the NCAA Tournament bubble.

   Penn State senor Mathilde Delvallade, the French woman who had been the Nittany Lions’ best player for the last two seasons, had accepted a bid to compete in the NCAA Athens Regional as an individual and the NGI officials ruled that a player who competed in an NCAA Regional would not be eligible to tee it up in the NGI.

   The NGI would be a lifeline for Penn State and probably for Cox, too. If Delavallade had been eligible to tee it up in Arizona, Cox might have stayed home.

   And Cox made the absolute most of the opportunity. She blitzed the 6,318-yard, par-72 Ak-Chin Southern Dunes layout with a sparkling 5-under 67 in the opening round and took a two-shot lead into the final round after posting a 1-under 71 in the second round.

   Cox closed with a 3-over 75 in the final round for a 3-under 215 total and was overtaken by Iowa’s Shannyn Vogler, then a freshman from Moline, Ill. whose final round of 1-under 71 gave her a 5-under 211 total.

   I have to think Cox had put that experience of contending in the NGI in the bank and it really paid dividends when she found herself in the exact same position nine months later in the Columbia Classic.

   Behind Cox’s strong start in the NGI, Penn State matched par with a 288 in the opening round, added a 8-over 297 in the second round and closed with a 5-over 293 for a 14-over 878 total that gave the Lions an 11-shot victory over their Big Ten rival Iowa.

   A couple of days after the victory in the UGI, St. Pierre announced she was stepping down as Penn State’s head coach. She had arrived at Penn State to play for the Nittany Lions in 1979 and was involved with program in one way or another for the majority of the following 44 years, the last 31 as the head coach of the women’s team.

   I would imagine she had told her players that the UGI was going to be her last tournament as Penn State’s head coach. They gave her a pretty nice going-away present.

   Cox was solid during the fall portion of this season.

   She had back-to-back top-10 finishes as she ended up in a tie for ninth place in the Nittany Lion Invitational at Penn State’s Blue Course and in a tie for seventh in the Evie Odom Invitational at Princess Anne Country Club in Virginia Beach, Va.

   Cox finished out the fall campaign by finishing in a tie for 19^th place against a loaded field in the Landfall Tradition at the Country Club of Wilmington’s Pete Dye Course in Wilmington, N.C. with a 2-under 214 total.

   As a team Penn State struggled in Simpson’s first season at the helm in the fall, including a sixth-place finish in its home event, the Nittany Lion Invitational, in which the home team has often contended for the title, claiming the team crown 25 times.

   Led by Cox, Penn State had its best team showing of the season in the Columbia Classic.

   After opening with an 8-over 296, the Nittany Lions surged into first place with a 7-under 281, fueled by Cox’s 67, in the second round. That gave Penn State a one-shot lead over Old Dominion and a two-shot edge over Yale going into the final round.

   The Bulldogs, however, closed with a 4-over 292 to overtake Penn State with a 7-over 871 total. The Nittany Lions closed with a 9-over 297 that left them three shots behind Yale with a 10-over 874 total.

   Yale’s Kim opened with a 4-under 68 and added a 70 in the second round that left her two shots behind Cox going into the final round. Kim closed with a 1-over 73 in the final round to finish four shots behind Cox in second place with a 5-under 211 total.

   Backing up Cox in Penn State’s best showing of the season was Drew Nienhaus, a junior from St. Louis, Mo. who landed in a tie for sixth place with a 1-under 215, her first career top-10 finish. After matching par in the opening round with a 72, Nienhaus posted a 1-over 73 in the second round before closing with a 2-under 70.

   Delavallade, who is back for a fifth season with the Nittany Lions, opened with a 3-over 75 and contributed a 3-under 69 to Penn State’s second-round surge. Delavallade finished up with a 79 to finish in the group tied for 18^th place with a 7-over 223 total.

   Carlota Garcia, a graduate student from Spain, finished among the group tied for 36^th place with a 229 total as she bounced back from an opening-round 80 by matching par in the second round with a 72 before closing with a 5-over 77.

   Rounding out the Penn State lineup was Victoria Tip-Aucha, a senior from Vienna, Va. via Thailand who finished in a tie for 75^th place with a 242 total. Tip-Aucha sandwiched a 6-over 78 in the second round with a pair of 82s.

   Jami Morris, a junior from Chagrin Falls, Ohio, competed for Penn State as an individual and finished in a tie for 83^rd place with a 251 total. Morris opened with a 6-over 78, but struggled after that, registering an 84 in the second round before closing with an 89.

   Cox and Penn State are headed west for the Juli Inkster Invitational and will tee it up on a Meadow Club layout that was designed by Alister MacKenzie and Robert Hunter nearly 100 years ago, the one and the same Alister MacKenzie who teamed up with Bobby Jones to design Augusta National Golf Club.

   It is unlikely that Cox would win again against much tougher competition. But it won’t be because she doesn’t know how to win because she’s proven she does know how to win.