The 92nd Ione D. Jones/Doherty Women’s Amateur Championship was held last week at Coral Ridge Country Club in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
I was under the incorrect impression that the Jones/Doherty was going to be this week, after the completion of another marquee event on the unofficial Orange Blossom Tour of events for amateur women in South Florida in the winter, the South Atlantic Women’s Amateur Championship, known simply as The Sally, which was the subject of my most recent post.
Turns out the Jones/Doherty, a match-play event, and The Sally, a 72-hole stroke-play event, were both played last week. They both have such long and storied histories – it was the 99th playing of The Sally up the coast at Oceanside Country Club in Ormond Beach, Fla. – they have probably ended up overlapping at some time or another.
Both are popular events for college players trying to keep their games in shape during the midseason pause in the college season before they have to head back to campus – a campus often locked in winter’s grip and that grip has been pretty tight this winter – for the start of the spring semester.
Sounds like the Jones/Doherty was a week too late to fit into the schedules of some of the college players last year, so tournament officials moved it up a week this year, the same week as The Sally.
There were a ton of good players in both events. For some, a preference for stroke play over match play, or vice versa, might have been the deciding factor.
The event was originally known as the Doherty Championship. Robert Trent Jones, the designer of Coral Ridge, added a senior division and named it after his wife, Ione D. Jones. It has come be known simply as the Jones/Doherty and last week marked the 70th straight year the event has been played at Coral Ridge.
The Senior division of the Jones/Doherty has become an even bigger draw than the Championship division, but the younger division of the Jones/Doherty still boasts a pretty serious roster of champions over the years. And it sure sounds like Coral Ridge puts on a pretty good golf tournament.
For the second time in three years, Morgan Miller, a 20-year-old junior at Colorado from Cedar Park, Texas, captured the title in the Championship division with a 2 and 1 victory Friday over Remi Bacardi, a 17-year-old who was the runnerup in the Florida 1A Championship as a senior at Miami’s Palmer Trinity, capping a legendary scholastic career.
The Jones/Doherty Senior Women’s Amateur crown went to Dawn Woodard of Greer, S.C., a newly-minted senior after turning 50 last summer, as she edged Canadian Judith Kyrinis, the runnerup in the senior division of the Jones/Doherty in 2023, 1-up.
In the Championship division final, Miller, who was Colorado’s best player during the wraparound 2023-2024 college season, held a 1-up lead over Bacardi, who will join the program at Atlantic Coast Conference power Virginia this summer, going to the ninth tee when Miller’s tee shot found a fairway bunker.
Miller’s second shot caught the lip of the bunker and suddenly she was scrambling to make par. But she knocked a pitching wedge to 15 feet and made the clutch par putt, taking a 2-up lead when Bacardi made a bogey.
Miller made another clutch 15-foot par-saving putt at the 12th hole to take a 3-up lead before Bacardi cut her deficit to 2-down by winning 14 with a par.
When Miller buried a 24-foot birdie putt at the 17th hole, it was over.
“It is match play, so you have to go through everyone to win,” Miller told Gary Carreri, who was doing updates on the Coral Ridge website for the Jones/Doherty last week. “It is hard to win the Jones/Doherty twice. This one, in general, means more because I had surgery over the summer.”
Miller had a meniscus issue in her knee repaired and the surgery required her to sit out for four months. Winning the Jones/Doherty was another step in the right direction.
“I missed the first two tournaments of the fall season for school,” Miller said. “I started playing at the end of October and I was still dealing with knee issues today. It’s a big win, seeing that I did the right thing with the surgery. It was brutal for me. I didn’t hit a ball with a club for four months.”
Miller reached the final by rolling to a 6 and 4 decision over Scarlet Weidig, a 23-year-old redshirt senior at Montana State from Costa Rica, in Thursday’s semifinals.
In the other semifinal, Bacardi pulled out a hard-fought 2 and 1 victory over Anne Ritter, a 23-year-old junior at Illinois in the Big Ten from Columbus, Ohio.
Ritter had captured medalist honors in qualifying for match play Jan. 6th with a sparkling 4-under 68.
In Wednesday’s quarterfinals, Ritter advanced with a 2 and 1 verdict over Aliya Liberatore of Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.
Liberatore has committed to join the program at Missouri in the Southeastern Conference this summer. She was the runnerup last summer in the only American Junior Golf Association (AJGA) stop in the extended Philadelphia area, the AJGA Junior at Huntsville at Huntsville Golf Club, a classy Rees Jones design in Dallas, Luzerne County.
Bacardi was understandably nervous to be taking on a match-play maestro in Meghan Stasi, a legend in both her native South Jersey and in South Florida, in the quarterfinals. Stasi’s 10 wins in the Women’s Golf Association of Philadelphia (WGAP) Match Play Championship – including seven in a row when she was known as Meghan Bolger out of Tavistock Country Club from 1999 to 2005 – and her four titles in the U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur Championship are more than enough evidence of her proficiency in match play, golf’s most inexact science.
Oh yeah, Stasi of Oakland Park, Fla. has won a pair of Jones/Doherty crowns. Stasi had a busy 2024 as she was the captain of the U.S. Curtis Cup team, which dropped a tough 10.5-9.5 decision to Great Britain & Ireland at Sunningdale Golf Club in Berkshire, England.
But Bacardi booked her spot in the semifinals with a 3 and 2 victory.
Miller advanced to the semifinals with a 2 and 1 decision over Liv Romer of Boynton Beach, Fla. Romer was a softball player until she tore up her knee. A sophomore on the golf team at Palm Beach State, Romer is quickly figuring out this golf thing.
Weidig pulled off probably the biggest surprise of the quarterfinals when she claimed a 4 and 2 victory over Brooke Oberparleiter, a sophomore at Kentucky and the 2022 Jones/Doherty champion.
Oberparleiter is a Jupiter, Fla. resident, but always spends some time each summer in South Jersey. She showed up in last summer’s Pennsylvania Women’s Amateur Championship at Waynesborough Country Club and finished in a tie for seventh place.
A day after capturing medalist honors in qualifying, Ritter knocked it to eight feet at the 18th hole and converted the birdie try to pull out a 1-up decision over Lilly Riegger of Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Riegger is a Class of 2026 kid who is from Germany.
Miller cruised to a 7 and 5 win in her opening-round match against Ket Preamchuen Vanderpool, the head coach of the Georgia State women’s golf team and a reinstated amateur after spending some time on the Symetra Tour.
Oberparleiter had her hands full in the round of 16 before getting past Ashley Balcom of Lighthouse Point. Fla., 2 and 1. Looks like Balcom already has a couple of Coral Ridge club championships under her belt and she’s just a Class of ’28 kid, the equivalent a high school freshman.
Sounds like a piece of the cold air that brought frigid conditions to us in southeastern Pennsylvania made it all the way to South Florida for that round of 16 in the Championship division Jan. 7th and, along with gusty winds, made for some difficult conditions.
In much calmer weather a day earlier, Ritter offset two bogeys with six birdies in claiming medalist honors in qualifying with her 68.
Ritter enjoyed her pairing in a group that included Stasi, Preamchuen Vanderpool and Valentina Marie Guertin, a junior at FAU High in Boca Raton, Fla.
Oberparleiter was the runnerup to Ritter in qualifying, finishing three shots behind the medalist with a solid 1-under 71.
Woodard and Kyrinis had a tremendous match in the battle for the Jones/Doherty Senior Amateur Championship. The 60-year-old Canadian finally blinked when her tee shot at the 18th hole found the water and Woodard was able to pull out a 1-up victory.
Watched almost the entire match between Kyrinis and Isabella DIlisio, a local gal from the Philly suburbs, Hatfield, to be specific, who played collegiately at Notre Dame, in a second-round match when the U.S. Women’s Mid-Am was played at Stonewall’s North Course two summers ago.
And Kyrinis was just so solid in pulling out a 1-up victory over a much younger player who was driving it 40, 50 yards past her all day.
Woodard was part of a formidable mid-am team along with Stasi that played in the first eight editions of the U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball Championship, the pair making a couple of nice runs.
Woodard admitted she had been looking forward to being eligible to play with the seniors. She made her debut in the U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur last summer at the Broadmoor Golf Club in Seattle, falling to eventual champion Nadene Gole of Australia in the quarterfinals.
Kyrinis, the 2017 U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur champion, always seems to earn herself a spot in the U.S. Senior Women’s Am match-play bracket. She suffered a 1-up setback at the hands of USGA legend Ellen Port (four U.S. Mid-Am and three U.S. Senior Women’s Am titles) in the second round at Broadmoor.
“It’s a great tournament,” Woodard told Correri of the Coral Ridge website about the Jones/Doherty. “The Senior field is always strong with a lot of good players, so I had some really tough matches to get here and then had to play Judith in the finals.
“You know you have to play well. I played great golf and had a lot of birdies today.”
A day earlier, the Senior division had a double round with the quarterfinals in the morning and the semifinals in the afternoon.
Woodard reached the final with her 3 and 1 victory over Leigh Klasse of Surprise, Ariz. in the one semifinal match. Klasse is the reigning Arizona Women’s Senior Amateur champion.
The other semifinal was a rematch of the 2023 Jones/Doherty Senior Amateur Championship final with Kyrinis getting a little revenge for her loss in the title match two years ago by claiming a 3 and 2 decision over Shelly Haywood of Laguna Woods, Calif.
Haywood, the former women’s golf coach at Arizona, had reached the final in defense of the title she won in 2023 a year ago, but was denied a repeat when she fell in the final to Tara Joy-Connelly of Middleboro, Mass.
Earlier in the day, it was a reunion of long-time rivals as Woodard rallied from 3-down after nine holes to claim a 3 and 2 victory over Joy-Connelly, ending her bid to repeat as the Jones/Doherty Senior champion.
I celebrated Joy-Connelly’s victory in a post on the Jones/Doherty a year ago since only a few months earlier I had carried and occasionally pushed Joy-Connelly’s bag in the U.S. Women’s Mid-Am at Stonewall’s North Course. Joy-Connelly survived a playoff to make the match-play bracket at Stonewall before falling in the opening round of match play, but she earned my respect with her talent and competitiveness. I wasn’t surprised in the least to see her put her name on the Jones/Doherty Senior Amateur Championship trophy.
It was a comfortable pairing for Woodard and Joy-Connelly as they have been competing against each other since they were teen-agers.
Joy-Connelly toured the outgoing nine in 2-under to jump out to a 3-up advantage after nine holes. But Joy-Connelly’s putter betrayed her on the incoming nine with three-putts at the 10th, 12th, 13th and 16th holes, enabling Woodard to rally for the victory.
“We have played together since we were 17 and then played against each other in college golf and in amateur golf after that,” Joy-Connelly said of her ongoing friendly rivalry with Woodard.
Klasse punched her ticket to the semifinals with a 5 and 4 victory over Jayne Pardus of Isle of Palms, S.C. in a quarterfinal match. Pardus is another player who earned a spot in the match-play bracket in last summer’s U.S. Women’s Senior Am at Broadmoor and reached the round of 16.
Kyrinis faced a tough customer in her quarterfinal match as she pulled out a 1-up victory over Martha Leach of Hebron, Ky., Kyrinis draining a five-footer for birdie at the 18th hole to seal the win.
Leach, another victim of eventual U.S. Senior Women’s Am champion Gore in the opening round at Broadmoor, was coming off a runaway win in the Forever 49 division in the Citrus Golf Trail Ladies Invitational, which wrapped up on New Year’s Eve at the Sun ’n Lake Golf Club’s Deer Run Course in Sebring, Fla.
The Second Flight final was held Jan. 9th and South Florida legend Mary Jane Hiestand of Naples, Fla. knocked off Robin Krapfl of Peoria, Ariz. Hiestand, quite memorably, reached the final of the U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur at age 58 in 2017 at Champions Golf Club’s Cypress Creek Course in Houston before falling to Kelsey Chugg.
A day earlier in the round of 16, Leach had ousted Sue Cohn of Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., the medalist in qualifying for match play, 3 and 1.
Leach’s round was highlighted by a hole-in-one, her fifth career ace and fourth in competition, as her 9-iron shot on the 125-yard eight hole found the bottom of the cup.
In a round-of-16 thriller, Haywood, the 2023 champion, needed 22 holes to get past Suzi Spotleson of Canton, Ohio. Haywood was 3-down after 11 holes and still 2-down with two holes to go before rallying to force extra holes and finally prevailing.
Although Spotleson lists Canton as her home, she’s in the Philadelphia area enough to maintain a membership at the RiverCrest Golf Club & Preserve. She won the WGAP Senior Match Play Championship for the second year in a row last summer at Riverton Country Club.
Spotelson also represented Canton and RiverCrest in last summer’s U.S. Senior Women’s Am at Broadmoor and qualified for match play, falling in the second round.
Cohn needed an extra hole in the opening round of match play Jan. 7th, edging Sue Curtin of Westwood, Mass. on the 19th hole. Curtin is a dominant player in senior women’s amateur circles in Massachusetts.
Joy-Connelly stared down a tough challenge in her opening-round match, needing 20 holes to get past Molly Steffes of Scottsdale, Ariz.
Cohn had grabbed medalist honors in qualifying for match play Jan. 6th with a solid 2-under 70. Cohn is the reigning Florida State Golf Association (FSGA) Senior Women’s Amateur Match Play champion and a 15-time winner of the Palm Beach County Women’s Amateur Championship.
Kristyl Sunderman of McDonough, Ga. was the runnerup in qualifying with a 1-under 71. If you google Sunderman, you should come upon a pretty tremendous story on her golf journey authored by Tom Mackin, a frequent USGA contributor, in advance of last summer’s U.S. Women’s Senior Amateur.
A shot behind Sunderman in third place was Kathy Hartwiger of Pinehurst, N.C. as she matched par with a 72. Hartwiger reached the quarterfinals of last summer’s U.S. Women’s Senior Am at Broadmoor, which, I’m pretty sure, exempts her into the field for this year’s U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur, which tees off Sept. 13 at The Omni Homestead Resort’s Cascades Course in Hot Springs, Va.
I suspect she’ll be running into many of her fellow competitors from last week’s Jones/Doherty Women’s Senior Amateur Championship in Hot Springs.
