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Tuesday, November 28, 2017

Galdiano heads a dozen hopefuls for U.S. Curtis Cup team in practice session at Shoal Creek



   It was a remarkably young group of American golfers that went into battle with a talented Great Britain & Ireland team at Dun Laoghaire Golf Club in Enniskerry, Ireland outside of Dublin in the Curtis Cup Match in the spring of 2016.
   It was going to be a tough ask for that group to knock off GB&I any way you wanted to look  at it. The presence of Leona Maguire, a native of Ireland and one of the top amateur players in the world, on the GB&I roster probably had the partisan Irish golf fans even more fired up than they normally would be.
   I got a chance to talk to Mariel Galdiano, who was just out of high school in Pearl City, Hawaii when she represented the U.S. in Ireland, after she had earned medalist honors in qualifying for the 2016 U.S. Women’s Amateur at Rolling Green Golf Club.
   She was brilliant that day at Rolling Green, firing a 6-under 65, tying the second-best single round in U.S. Women’s Amateur qualifying history and bettering the 36-hole qualifying record by two shots with her 9-under 133 total. Her experience in Ireland was still very fresh in her mind.
   “When you’re in that situation with cameras on you and a big crowd cheering for GB&I, I had to learn to focus on myself,” Galdiano said.
   The UCLA sophomore is one of 12 U.S. women, including one other holdover from that 2016 U.S. squad that dropped an 11.5-8.5 decision to GB&I, who accepted an invitation from the USGA International Team Selection Committee to participate in a practice session for the 2018 Curtis Cup Match. The practice session will be held Dec. 17 and 18 at Shoal Creek in Alabama, site of the 2018 U.S. Women’s Open.
   The 2018 Curtis Cup Match will be held June 8 to 10 at Quaker Ridge Golf Club in Scarsdale, N.Y. An invitation to the practice session does not guarantee a spot on the team. A lot of the spring college season will be played before the final selections are made for the eight-woman U.S. side.
   The other veteran of the 2016 Curtis Cup Match invited to Shoal Creek is Stanford sophomore Andrea Lee of Hermosa Beach, Calif., who, like Galdiano, had just finished high school when she headed across the pond to Ireland.
   At 19, I suspect Lee will be one of the leaders on this U.S. team. I was tremendously impressed with her talent and her grit in a 1-up loss to eventual champion Eun Jeong Seong in the quarterfinals at Rolling Green. A couple of weeks earlier, Lee fell to Seong in the final of the U.S. Junior Girls’ Championship at Ridgewood Country Club in Paramus, N.J.
   While probably not as young as the team that lost at Dun Laoghaire, it will likely be another youthful bunch representing the Stars and Stripes at Quaker Ridge. The oldest player invited to the practice session is 21-year-old Sophia Schubert, the reigning U.S. Women’s Amateur champion from Oak Ridge, Tenn.
   Schubert was the leading lady for a Texas team that captured the Big 12 title last spring and advanced to the NCAA Championship at Rich Harvest Farms. She was an impressive winner of the U.S. Women’s Amateur Championship, claiming a hard-fought 6 and 5 victory over Switzerland’s Albane Valenzuela, No. 4 in the Women’s World Amateur Golf Rankings, in the final at San Diego Country Club.
   Schubert, probably underrated in the Women’s World Amateur Golf Ranking at 21st, is the senior leader on a young, but talented Texas team that was ranked 10th by Golfstat when the college golf season took its midseason break. Schubert missed the beginning of the college season while teeing it up in The Evian Championship, the LPGA’s final major championship of the season. She was one of just two amateurs to make the cut at The Evian and finished tied for 58th.
   Schubert is one of two U.S. Women Amateur champions who will participate in the Curtis Cup practice session. Kristen Gillman, a sophomore for No. 3 Alabama from Austin, Texas, is only 20, but seems older since she’s been around forever, winning the U.S. Women’s Amateur at 16 in 2014 at Nassau Country Club. Gillman is No. 11 in the Women’s World Amateur Golf Ranking.
   Gillman will be joined by two of her Crimson Tide teammates not far from their Alabama campus in the practice session at Shoal Creek. Lauren Stephenson, a 20-year-old from Lexington, S.C., and Cheyenne Knight, a 20-year-old from Aledo, Texas, round out the powerful trio at the top of the Alabama lineup. Stephenson and Knight, Nos. 6 and 8, respectively, in the Women’s World Amateur Golf Ranking, are juniors at Alabama.
   Galdiano, No. 12 in the Women’s World Amateur Golf Ranking, will be joined at Shoal Creek by her teammate on the No. 1 UCLA team, 20-year-old Lilia Vu of Fountain Valley, Calif. Vu, who fell to Valenzuela in the U.S. Women’s Amateur semifinals at San Diego Country Club, is No. 2 in the Women’s World Amateur Golf Ranking behind only Ireland’s Maguire.
   If Vu isn’t the top individual player in college golf, Wake Forest junior Jennifer Kupcho is. The 20-year-old Kupcho of Westminster, Colo. is No. 3 in the Women’s World Amateur Golf Ranking. She appeared headed for an NCAA individual title at Rich Harvest Farms when her approach to the 17th hole found the water and left her a frustrated runnerup. Kupcho played like a woman on a mission this fall.
   The Pacific Athletic Conference, the best in college golf, will be well represented at Shoal Creek. In addition to UCLA’s Galdiano and Vu and Stanford’s Lee, Southern California junior Robynn Ree, a 20-year-old from Redondo Beach, Calif., and Arizona junior Haley Moore, an 18-year-old from Escondido, Calif., have also accepted invitations to the Curtis Cup practice session.
   The USGA didn’t forget to invite a couple of the top junior players in the country, Lucy Li, a 15-year-old from Redwood City, Calif., and Rachel Heck, a 16-year-old from Memphis, Tenn., to Shoal Creek.
   Li validated that decision last week by cruising to a five-shot victory in the American Junior Golf Association’s Rolex Tournament of Champions at PGA National Resort & Spa in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. Li’s 13-under 275 total included a spectacular 10-under 62 at PGA National’s Champion Course in which she unfurled a back nine of 7-under 29.
   Heck, AJGA’s Rolex Player of the Year, finished tied for 33rd in the U.S. Women’s Open at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J. last summer before she reached her 16th birthday.
   Schubert, Ree, Vu, Stephenson and Li were all quarterfinalists in the U.S. Women’s Amateur at San Diego Country Club, Stephenson falling in an epic 30-hole match to Chin Yen Wu, a 13-year-old phenom from Chinese Taipei.
   Galdiano probably won’t have to worry about having cameras in her face at Quaker Ridge. The Curtis Cup is just not as big a deal in the States as it is in Great Britain & Ireland. I’m quite certain that the golf community of the New York City area will represent when it comes to rooting on the U.S. team.
   They better because some of those same loud Irish fans who rooted GB&I on to victory at Dun Laoghaire will undoubtedly make the trip across the pond for this one.
   U.S. captain Virginia Derby Grimes, a member of winning U.S. Curtis Cup sides in 1998, 2004 and 2006, will get her first look at some of the top candidates to make up her team at Shoal Creek. They are a talented dozen indeed. 








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