I wasn’t quite sure what to make of last weekend’s inaugural
Valley Forge Invitational, a Symetra Tour stop at Raven’s Claw Golf Club near
Pottstown.
Unlike the vast majority of sports fans in the Philadelphia
area, I know what the Symetra Tour is. I did a little post on the 10 players
who advanced out of the LPGA’s developmental tour to the big show last year.
The Volvik Race for the Card, as it’s known, is a big part of the Symetra Tour
season and things can get pretty tight in the battle for the last few spots
down the stretch.
Frequent visitors to my blog know that I have paid close
attention to the college scene the last couple of years and the Symetra Tour is
where many of the top college players head to try to make it to the LPGA Tour.
The LPGA is the big leagues of women’s golf. It’s where you want to get.
I’ve also tried to pay attention to the progress of some of
the women I watched in the 2016 U.S. Women’s Amateur at Rolling Green Golf
Club. Of the 10 players who graduated to the LPGA Tour via the Volvik Race for
the Card last year, three of them, Australian Hannah Green, France’s Celine
Boutier, a collegiate standout at Duke, and American Katelyn Dambaugh, the
Southeastern Conference individual champion as a senior at South Carolina, made
deep runs in match play at Rolling Green.
Raven’s Claw is a relatively new entry on a crowded
public-course scene in western Montgomery County. I was there for the opening
round of the District One Championship when Chichester’s Aurora Kan, as a
freshman in the fall of 2007, started on her run of three straight district
titles. I didn’t really get out on the course, an Ed Shearon design that opened
in 2005, but it seemed like it would be a good fit for the fledgling women
pros.
The tournament started on the Thursday before the Memorial
Day weekend and there was good weather as conditions started to deteriorate not
long after Sweden’s Louise Ridderstrom rolled to a four-shot victory Saturday
afternoon. The weather’s been pretty lousy around here ever since.
I’m not exactly sure how the event was received, but
admission was free, courtesy of the Women’s Golf Association of Philadelphia.
The golf community in the Philadelphia area always seems to come out for pro
golf.
As I’ve often said it is one of the great mysteries to me
why there is no regular pro golf stops in the Philadelphia area. We do get the
BMW Championship, the next-to-last round of the PGA Tour’s FedEx Cup Playoffs,
this summer and an LPGA major, the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, in 2020, both
at Aronimink Golf Club, a Donald Ross masterpiece in Newtown Square.
I do know one thing about the inaugural Valley Forge
Invitational: Ridderstrom, a former UCLA standout, was the star of the show.
Trailing by three heading into Saturday’s final round,
Ridderstrom fired a sizzling 8-under-par 63 over the 6,080-yard, par-71 Raven’s
Claw layout to finish at 16-under 197.
Ridderstrom was a member of a powerful UCLA team two springs
ago that included Annika Award winner Bronte Law, an Englishwomen who is on the
LPGA Tour, and Lilia Vu, a freshman then and the No. 1 player in the latest
Women’s World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR). The Bruins were stunned in the
semifinals by an overachieving Washington team on its way to the NCAA title at
Eugene Country Club.
They were playing for a total purse of $100,000 at Raven’s
Claw and Ridderstrom grabbed the top prize of $15,000, moving into that coveted
top 10 in the Volvik Race for the Card.
Ridderstrom made the drive from the Symetra’s previous stop,
the Symetra Classic in Davidson, N.C., with fellow Swede Jenny Haglund, who had
earned her first tour win. That winning feeling must have rubbed off.
Ridderstrom got steadily better each time she teed it up at
Raven’s Claw, opening with a 2-under 69 and adding a 6-under 65 before
finishing up by establishing the competitive course record with that
final-round 63.
“It’s pretty amazing,” Ridderstrom told the Symetra Tour
website. “Even before the round, I knew I had a chance. After I made a birdie
on No. 9 and I was 5-under after nine holes, I was like ‘I have a pretty good
chance now.’ In the same way, I was trying to think just stick to what I’m
doing.”
It’s called learning how to win, exactly the kinds of
lessons you hope to master on a developmental tour.
Laura Wearn of Charlotte, N.C., a product of perennial
college power Furman, opened with a 6-under 65 and had a 5-under 66 in Friday’s
second round and held the lead at 11-under 131. She cooled off with a
final-round 70 to get a share of second with South Korea’s Min-G Kim, who
climbed the leaderboard in the final round with her second straight 66.
It was a second straight strong showing for Haglund, who
sandwiched a second-round 68 with a pair of 67s to head a group of four players
tied for fourth at 11-under 202. Haglund solidified her spot atop the Volvik
Race for the Card standings.
Also in the group with Haglund tied for fourth was Charlotte
Thomas, an Englishwoman who was the lone senior on that Washington team that
stormed past Ridderstrom’s UCLA Bruins to an NCAA title two years ago.
Thomas trailed Wearn by just a shot after firing a 6-under
65 in the second round before backing off with a final-round 70. The strong
showing enabled Thomas to maintain her hold on the ninth spot in the Volvik
Race for the Card.
Rounding out the foursome at 11-under were Demi Runas, who
is trying to work her way back to the big leagues after spending the last three
years on the LPGA Tour, and Jenny Coleman, a former collegiate standout at
Colorado.
Runas, who starred at California-Davis, finished up with a
68 after a pair of 67s at Raven’s Claw while Coleman had a final round of
2-under 69.
Only one amateur player made the cut to the final 60 for Saturday’s
final round and that was Notre Dame senior Isabella DiLisio, the 2013 PIAA
Class AAA champion as a junior at Mount St. Joseph. DiLisio and another former
Mount St. Joe standout, Emily Gimpel, were given sponsor’s exemptions into the
field and DiLisio, a Hatfield resident who won the 2014 Pennsylvania Women’s
Amateur the summer before her senior year at the Mount, made the most her
chance.
It was an up-and-down junior season for DiLisio at Notre
Dame, although she did help the Fighting Irish earn an invitation to the NCAA Madison
Regional.
DiLisio opened with a 1-under 70 and matched par in the
second round with a 71 to earn a tee time for Saturday’s final round. She
finished with her best round of the week, a 2-under 69, to finish tied for 34th
in her first pro event.
“It meant so much to me,” DiLisio told The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Joe Juliano. “It was awesome just
getting a chance to see how the pros
play and seeing kind of like how I stack up against them. Having my
friends and family out here also made it really special.”
Gimpel played on state team champions in 2006 and 2007 and
state runnerup teams in 2008 and 2009 during her time at Mount St. Joseph. Her
collegiate career started at William & Mary and finished at Maryland.
Gimpel, who is still trying to earn some Symetra Tour
status, struggled in her first tour of Raven’s Claw with a 78 before bouncing
back with a 1-under 70 in the second round, but her 148 total did not make the
cut.
Samantha Wagner, an Easton native who moved to Florida as a
youngster and turned pro after her sophomore season with Florida a year ago,
made the cut at Raven’s Claw and finished in the group tied for 42nd
at 2-under 211.
By the way, the LPGA does come to the Jersey Shore each
year. Normally, this would be the week for the ShopRite LPGA Classic at the
Stockton Seaview Hotel and Golf Club’s Bay Course across the bay from Atlantic
City, but it was pushed back a week this year when the U.S. Women’s Open was
moved up to this week in the USGA schedule.
Ireland’s Maguire twins, Leona and Lisa, will make their
professional debuts when this year’s ShopRite tees off June 8.
Leona Maguire is coming off one of the great college careers
ever at Duke. Her scoring average of 70.97 is the lowest for a player with more
than 100 rounds in NCAA Division I history. She has been at or near the top of
the Women’s World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR) for most of the last three years.
She will vacate the No. 2 spot in the Women’s WAGR when she turns pro.
Leona’s twin sister Lisa is not quite as accomplished as
Leona Maguire is, but is a pretty good player who was part of the lineup for a
Duke team that reached match play in the NCAA Championship at Karsten Creek
Golf Club before falling to Southern California in the quarterfinals.
The Maguires will play on sponsor’s exemptions in the
ShopRite. They might show up on the Symetra Tour at some point this summer. I
wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to see Leona Maguire contend at the Shore.
She’s that good.
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