Having earned invitations to compete as individuals in the
NCAA Austin Regional made it a pretty good spring for Colorado State’s Katrina
Prendergast, a junior from Sparks, Nev., and Ellen Secor, a sophomore from
Portland, Ore.
But the spring got even better last week when the Colorado
State teammates joined forces to capture the U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball
Championship at chilly El Caballero Country Club in Tarzana, Calif.
The Women’s Four-Ball had been placed a little later in the
calendar in its first three years of existence, but was moved up a little this
year. It’s unclear if the USGA was aware that it had found a spot between
conference championships and the start of the NCAA regionals that would give
college players at least the possibility of sneaking in a USGA championship in
the midst of a busy spring college schedule.
Prendergast and Secor, among several other collegians, did
just that. And there they were last Wednesday, rattling off wins on three
straight holes to rally from 2-down with four holes to play to edge Yachun
Chang, a 17-year-old from Chinese Taipei, and Lei Ye, a 16-year-old from China,
1-up, and capture the championship.
Prendergast and Secor had the blessing of their coach, Annie
Young, to tune up for regionals by teeing it up in the Women’s Four-Ball. Young
was the 2002 winner of the U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links Championship, the
event the Four-Ball replaced on the USGA calendar, and played on the winning
U.S. Curtis Cup team in 2004.
In the final, Prendergast and Secor made the turn with a
1-up advantage before Chang, who will join the Arizona program this summer, and
Ye, headed Stanford in the summer of 2019, won the 10th with a par
and the 13th and 14th holes with birdies to take a 2-up
lead.
But Prendergast and Secor turned their tables on their young
rivals, winning 15 with a par and 16 with birdie to draw even before
Prendergast dropped a five-foot birdie putt on the 17th hole at the
6,168-yard, par-72 El Caballero layout to give her team a 1-up lead heading to
the last.
The fiery Secor pumped up her teammate after the duo fell
behind by two holes on the 14th.
“That’s how she plays,” Prendergast told the USGA website.
“She gets fired up and that really helps her and I think it actually helped me,
too. I got pumped up after I made par on 15 and then we got two good shots in
on 16. We had the tee and I think those two shots really helped put pressure on
them.”
When Ye’s tough downhill seven-footer for birdie on the 18th
hole slid by, Prendergast and Secor had a USGA trophy with their name on it.
They were paired together in the opening round of the Austin
Regional Monday at The University of Texas Golf Club and Prendergast carded a
1-over 73 and is in a group tied for 32nd while Secor struggled to
an 82 and is tied for 91st.
In the semifinals earlier last Wednesday, Prendergast and
Secor took out reigning U.S. Girls’ Junior
champion Erica Shepherd, a 17-year-old from Greenwood, Ind., and her
fellow Duke recruit, Megan Furtney, a 17-year-old from Chicago, 3 and 2.
Shepherd and Furtney had ousted another formidable pair of
college teammates in the quarterfinals when they claimed a 2 and 1 win over
Arizona’s Haley Moore, a junior from Escondido, Calif., and Gigi Stoll, a
junior from Tigard, Ore.
Chang and Yi reached the final with a 4 and 3 victory over a
couple of California teenagers, Leila Dizon, an 18-year-old from Los Angeles,
and Irene Kim, a 17-year-old from LaPalma. Dizon will be headed for
Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania this summer while Kim is a Northwestern
recruit.
This was the first time in the short history of the U.S.
Women’s Four-Ball that there wasn’t a player involved whom I covered in high
school during my previous life as a golf writer at the Delaware County Daily Times.
But there were people from the Philly area involved and
there are always interesting connections in the world of amateur golf.
Even though the Women’s Four-Ball has been dominated by
teens and college kids in its brief four-year history, one pair of mid-ams,
Meghan Stasi, the South Jersey native who has won eight Women’s Golf
Association of Philadelphia Match-Play Championships, and her pal, Dawn Woodard
of Greer, S.C., have been there every year and made it to the match-play
bracket every year.
The 39-year-old Stasi, a four-time U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur
champion who lives in Oakland Park, Fla. outside of Fort Lauderdale, and the
43-year-old Woodard were involved in probably the match of the tournament at El
Caballero, falling on the 21st hole in the round of 16 to former Kansas
State standouts Katherine Gravel-Coursol and Paige Nelson.
Gravel-Coursol, a 24-year-old from Canada, and her former
college teammate Nelson, a 23-year-old from Farmers Ranch, Texas, had pulled
off the first big upset of the tournament, knocking off qualifying medalists
Annick Haczkiewicz and Sydney Smith, a couple of Las Vegas teens, in the
opening round of match play.
Haczkiewicz, a Brigham Young recruit, and Smith, who will
join Four-Ball champions Prendergast and Secor at Colorado State this summer,
fired better-ball rounds of 66 and 69 for a 10-under 134 total that won
medalist honors by two shots.
Stasi and Woodard had steady rounds of 72 and 68 to earn
their spot in the match-play bracket.
I thought the mid-am team of Katie Miller, a two-time Pennsylvania
Amateur champion from Jeannette in western Pennsylvania, and Lauren Greenlief
of Ashburn, Va. would make a formidable Four-Ball entry, but the pair failed to
advance out of qualifying. They struggled in an opening-round 79 before
bouncing back with a 73.
Miller, a three-time PIAA champion at Hempfield Area who
starred collegiately at North Carolina, and Greenlief, a former Viriginia standout, were two of the three co-medalists in
qualifying for match play in the U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur at Champions Golf
Club’s Cypress Creek Course in Houston in November.
The two teamed up in Florida in February to capture the 71st
Women’s International Four-Ball at The Wanderers Club in Wellington, Fla., the
culmination of the Orange Blossom Tour of amateur events for women in Florida each winter.
It was repeat win for the pair.
Miller and Greenlief fired a final round of 8-under 64 to
storm to a five-shot victory in the International Four-Ball with a 9-under 135
total.
Miller had teed it up in the U.S. Women’s Four-Ball a year
ago with Aurora Kan, the 2010 PIAA champion at Chichester and a former Purdue
standout. The duo qualified for match play at The Dunes Golf & Beach Club
in Myrtle Beach, S.C. and were knocked out in the first round.
Kan reportedly turned pro at some point last year and Miller
turned to her Women’s International partner to join her for the U.S. Women’s
Four-Ball.
A Keystone State duo of senior standouts, 58-years young Philadelphian
Lisa McGill, a quarterfinalist in last fall’s U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur at
Waverly Country Club in Portland, Ore., and Pittsburgh’s Courtney Myhrum, 56, earned
a trip to El Caballero, but failed to advance to match play with rounds of 76
and 80 for a 156 total.
No comments:
Post a Comment