Alyssa Roland was a nice junior player growing up in Newtown
Square and at Overbrook Golf Club. She was good enough at Yale to win an Ivy
League individual title as a junior in 2009.
She’s got a job in New York City these days that keeps her
pretty busy, but it hasn’t prevented her from keeping her game sharp enough to
compete as a mid-amateur.
The 28-year-old gets away from the Big Apple on weekends to
work on her game at Overbrook when she can. She’ll need a little time off in
October after capturing medalist honors in a U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur
Championship qualifier administered by the Golf Association of Philadelphia
with a 1-over-par 74 at Concord Country Club last week.
The U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur will tee off Oct. 7 at Quail
Creek Country Club in Naples, Fla.
“I don’t really have time to practice in the city, it’s
tough there,” Roland told the GAP website. “But when I turned 25, I wanted to
play in the Mid-Am. It’s a great
tournament with some good competition, so that’s why I picked the game back
up.”
Roland made three birdies in a five-hole stretch over the
5,947-yard, par-73 Concord layout to fuel her run to medalist honors.
She hit a 6-iron to two feet at the 156-yard, par-3 eighth
hole and made that putt. At the par-4 10th hole, her 8-iron approach
finished 10 feet from the hole and she converted that birdie look. She nearly
reached the par-5 12th hole in with a hybrid and two-putted for a
birdie.
Roland will be competing in her fifth USGA event, having
qualified for the U.S. Mid-Am in 2013 and 2014 and for the first two editions
of the U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball in 2015 and 2016.
Catherine Elliott, a junior golf and Ivy League rival of
Roland’s, also earned a ticket to Quail Creek as she was the runnerup with a
3-over 76. Elliott was a standout at perennial Inter-Ac League power Notre Dame
and helped Penn capture the 2010 Ivy League title and earn a trip to the NCAA
Stanford Regional as a senior.
Playing at Merion Golf Club these days, Elliott fell in the
final of the Women’s Golf Association of Philadelphia’s Match-Play Championship
to Penn State junior Cara Basso last month at Spring-Ford Country Club. Elliott
also played on Merion’s top entry in the WGAP’s Inter-Club Matches, which
captured its record 69th Philadelphia Cup title last spring.
“Alyssa and I played a ton of golf together and against each
other,” Elliott told the GAP website. “She’s a great player and just a really
nice person.”
Four more players punched their tickets to Quail Creek at
Concord. Wilmington Country Club’s Meghan Perry and Eleana Collins of Baltimore
shared third place at 4-over 77, Fieldstone Golf Club’s Emma Sills was fifth
with a 78 and Carol Davis of Garret Park, Md. earned the final berth in the
U.S. Women’s Mid-Am with a 79.
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