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Monday, March 26, 2018

Li heads list of seven amateurs in the field for ANA Inspiration


   The LPGA’s first major championship of 2018, the ANA Inspiration, tees off Thursday in Rancho Mirage, Calif. and once again the event will have seven of the top amateur players in the world in the field.
   And even though four of the top college players are among the seven, including UCLA’s Lilia Vu, a junior from Fountain Valley, Calif. who resides atop the Women’s World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR), the most intriguing name of the group is that of 15-year-old Lucy Li of Redwood Shores, Calif.
   I have chronicled several times in this blog about how amazing it was to see a 13-year-old Li nearly win the qualifying medal in the 2016 U.S. Women’s Amateur at Rolling Green Golf Club, the William Flynn gem in Springfield, Delaware County. I was there. It wasn’t an easy golf course or certainly not as easy as Li made it look with rounds of 67 and 68.
   Li, No. 11 in the Women’s WAGR, earned her way into the ANA Inspiration a year ago by winning the ANA Junior Inspiration, an AJGA tournament the weekend before the main event that rewards the youngster winning it by giving her a chance to tee it up with the LPGA pros many of them grew up idolizing.
   Playing her first two rounds with Michelle Wie, Li then went out and made the 36-hole cut. She was the only amateur to survive the cut and thus earned low-amateur honors.
   “I can’t wait to return to Mission Hills knowing that I’m already in the field to play in my second ANA Inspiration,” Li told the LPGA website after learning she had been invited to be one of the amateurs in the field. “Last year is definitely one of the highlights of my career and being able to play with Michelle Wie in the first two rounds was a dream come true.
   “The course is always in perfect condition and it’s so fun playing in front of the big crowds. I can’t thank the tournament committee enough for giving me this opportunity.”
   Of course, Li was still eligible to tee it up in the ANA Junior Inspiration over the weekend and did so, partially to get in a round over the Dinah Shore Tournament Course – by the way, with apologies to ANA, but this week’s event will always be the Dinah Shore to me and to many other fans of women’s golf – and also to support the AJGA.
   Li had rounds of 70 and 73 in Saturday’s double-round over the Pete Dye Course at Mission Hills before finishing up with a 3-over 75 on the Dinah Shore Tournament Course Sunday to finish eighth at 2-over 218.
   The title and the final ticket into the ANA Inspiration went to another 15-year-old, Rose Zhang, a local gal from Irvine, Calif. who birdied the familiar par-5 18th hole at the Dinah Shore Tournament Course to cap a 3-under-par 69 that gave her a one-shot victory.
    The AJGA players were joined by LPGA Legends and Zhang played with World Golf Hall of Famer Patty Sheehan, the winner of the 1996 Nabisco Dinah Shore. Sheehan and Zhang celebrated Zhang’s win by jumping into Poppie’s Pond, which fronts the 18th hole at the Dinah Shore Tournament Course. It has become a tradition for the winner of the ANA Inspiration to make that leap into Poppie’s Pond.
   Zhang captured the title in one of the biggest events in junior golf last summer when she won the Girls Junior PGA Championship at the Country Club of St. Albans’ Lewis and Clark Course in St. Albans, Mo. Zhang ran away with the title by putting together a ridiculous 20-under 268 total for the 72-hole event.
   Li and Zhang will be joined by one more teen phenom, 15-year-old Atthaya Thitikul of Thailand, recent winner of the Women’s Amateur Asia-Pacific Championship. Thitikul became the youngest player to win a Ladies European Tour event at age 14 last summer.
   Then there is the foursome of standout collegians in the field, including three of the four semifinalists in last summer’s U.S. Women’s Amateur at San Diego Country Club.
   The group is led by Vu, who defeated Li in the quarterfinals to earn that semifinal berth in the U.S. Women’s Amateur last summer. Vu earned her fourth straight individual victory and set a new standard for career wins at UCLA with her eighth by taking the title in the Wildcat Invitational earlier this month.
   Stanford’s Albane Valenzuela, a sophomore from Switzerland and the No. 4 player in the Women’s  WAGR, will also be in the field. Valenzuela was the low amateur in the ANA Inspiration two years ago.
   Valenzula was the runnerup in the U.S. Women’s Amateur and in the European Ladies’ Amateur championships. She defeated her UCLA rival Vu in the semifinals of the U.S. Women’s Amateur.
   The woman Valenzuela lost to in the U.S. Women’s Amateur final, Texas’ Sophia Schubert, a senior from Oak Ridge, Tenn. and the No. 19 player in the Women’s WAGR, will be at Mission Hills.
   Schubert has worked her senior season around the opportunities to play in the professional majors that comes with winning the U.S. Women’s Amateur. She was low amateur in the rain-shortened Evian Championship in France last fall, finishing in a tie for 58th, one shot better than Thailand’s Thitikul.
   Finally, there is Arkansas’ Maria Fassi, a junior from Mexico who is No. 22 in the Women’s WAGR. She is coming into the ANA Inspiration on a similar roll to the one UCLA’s Vu is on. A victory in last week’s Evans Derby Experience was Fassi’s fifth of the season, just one win shy of the program record of six established a decade ago by Stacy Lewis.
   I wouldn’t be surprised one bit to see any of the four collegians show up on the ANA Inspiration leaderboard at some  point. They have all been playing a lot of competitive golf since the beginning of February and all of them can play.
   Not surprisingly, the teams of all four of those players are among the best in Division I. Vu’s UCLA Bruins are No. 1 in the latest Golfstat rankings, Fassi’s Arkansas Razorbacks are No. 3, Valenzuela and the Stanford Cardinal are No. 4 and Schubert’s Texas Longhorns are No. 6.




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