Andrea Lee, who is having a spectacular freshman season at
Stanford, and Eun Jeong Seong, who recorded an unprecedented USGA double last
summer, will get to renew their friendly rivalry next week on a major stage.
Lee and Seong are two of the six amateur invitees who will
get to tee it up in the ANA Inspiration, the LPGA’s first major of the year
which gets under way Thursday at the Dinah Shore Tournament Course of Mission
Hills Country Club in Rancho Mirage, Calif. With apologies to the event’s
corporate sponsor, but it will always be the Dinah Shore to me.
At age 16 last summer, Seong captured victories in the U.S.
Girls’ Junior Championship at Ridgewood Country Club in Paramus, N.J. and the
U.S. Women’s Amateur Championship at Rolling Green Golf Club, the William Flynn
gem in Springfield, Delaware County. In both cases, the South Korean had to get
past Lee to claim those trophies.
In the 36-hole Girls’ Junior final, Seong had to rally to
defeat Lee, who hails from Hermosa Beach, Calif., 4 and 2, to become the first
repeat winner of the event since Hollis Stacy won her third straight in 1971.
A couple of weeks later at Rolling Green, Seong and Lee ran
into each other again, this time in the quarterfinals of the Women’s Amateur. I
got to see a lot of the match and it wasn’t decided until Lee’s par putt on the
18th hole somehow stayed out of the cup to give Seong a hard-fought
1-up victory. (You can find my blog post on that match Aug. 5, 2016).
A couple of days later, Seong rolled in a dramatic 40-foot
birdie putt on the 36th hole to edge Italy’s Virginia Elena Carta,
who had won the NCAA individual title as a freshman at Duke earlier in the
year, 1-up. The Girls’ Junior-Women’s Amateur double had never been done
before.
Seong, No. 12 in the latest Women’s World Amateur Golf
Ranking (WAGR), had a couple of strong showings in professional events late in
2016. She finished tied for 18th in KEB Hana Bank Championship, an
LPGA event played in her native South Korea in October. Her 3-under total
included a sparkling 6-under 66 in the second round.
Seong then finished in a tie for sixth at the Oates Vic
Open, a Ladies European Tour event in Australia in December. She threw a couple
of 68s on the board in that one.
Lee headed for Stanford, where she is the best player on the
No. 1 team in the latest Golfstat
rankings. Lee, No. 9 in the Women’s WAGR has won three tournaments and is the
No. 2 player in college golf, again according to Golfstat.
Lee isn’t the only Stanford freshman who will tee it up in
the ANA Inspiration. Switzerland’s Albane Valenzuela, No. 4 in the Women’s
WAGR, will also be in the field. Valenzuela represented Switzerland in the
Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro last summer, finishing 21st in a
field largely populated by professionals.
Valenzuela is making a return trip to the ANA Inspiration
and was one of two amateurs to make the cut a year ago.
The other will also be back in the field, 2015 U.S. Women’s
Amateur champion Hannah O’Sullivan, No. 2 in the Women’s WAGR. Valenzuela and
O’Sullivan, of Chandler, Ariz., finished tied for 65th a year ago.
It looked like O’Sullivan was about to turn pro at one point
last year. She had committed to play college golf at Southern California, but
reconsidered that decision. O’Sullivan and Lee were teammates on the U.S.
Curtis Cup team that fell to a talented Great Britain & Ireland side in
Ireland.
A 2016 schedule tightened worldwide by the return of golf to the
Olympics left O’Sullivan with a tough call and she decided to tee it up in the
Ricoh Women’s British Open rather than defend her Women’s Amateur title at
Rolling Green.
But just when it seemed like O’Sullivan was ready to turn
pro, she reconsidered again and started accepting college offers. Late last
year she announced she would join the Duke program beginning in the fall of
2017. She will join her Curtis Cup rival, Ireland’s Leona Maguire, a junior
with the Blue Devils who sits atop the Women’s WAGR.
Also in the field at Mission Hills will be South Carolina
senior Katelyn Dambaugh, the runnerup to UCLA’s Bronte Law in voting for the
Annika Award last year. I got to see the talented left-hander, No. 7 in the
Women’s WAGR, quite a bit at Rolling Green last summer. She was ousted in the
round of 16 by very talented Japanese teenager Nasa Hataoka in a crackling
match (Got a blog post on that, too, Aug. 4, 2016).
Dambaugh teamed with Lee and Mariel Galdiano, a freshman at
UCLA, to help the United States finish sixth in the Women’s World Amateur Team
Championship in Mexico. She shared the lead after the opening round of the LPGA
Qualifying School Final Stage at the end of 2016 – Hataoka, the youngest player
in the field, was a shot back in a tie for third – although Dambaugh wasn’t
really planning to turn pro right then and there, a decision she might have
faced had she finished in the top 20.
Dambaugh faded out of the top 20 in the 90-hole marathon at
LPGA International in Daytona Beach, Fla., but earned some status for the
Symetra Tour when she does turn pro after completing her senior season with the
Gamecocks. Hataoka did earn a Tour card.
Rounding out the group of six amateurs invited to play in
the ANA Inspiration is Thailand’s Paphangkorn Tavalanakit, the 2016 American
Junior Golf Association Rolex Junior Player of the Year. I didn’t catch
Tavalanakit at Rolling Green, but she was there. She made it to the round of 16
before falling, 1-up, to France’s Mathilda Cappeliez, who was on her way to a
second straight Women’s Amateur semifinal appearance.
Tavalanakit has committed to join the UCLA program in the
fall.
One more amateur will be added to the field after this
weekend’s ANA Junior Inspiration at Mission Hills. The winner will get to move
to the big stage.
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