Emmaus junior Michelle Cox and Padua Academy senior Haley
Quickel will be taking their games to a national stage when they tee it up in
the U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball Championship next spring at Quail Creek
Country Club in Naples, Fla.
Cox, the runnerup in this summer’s Pennsylvania Junior
Girls’ Championship at Hershey Country Club’s East Course, and Quickel earned a
ticket to the U.S. Women’s Four-Ball by firing a better-ball 4-under-par 66 in
a Golf Association of Philadelphia-administered qualifier Thursday at Cox’s
home course, Lehigh Country Club.
The 16-year-old Cox, who will be looking to improve on a 13th-place
finish in the PIAA Class AAA Championship in next month’s scholastic
postseason, and the 17-year-old Quickel shared medalist honors in the qualifier
at Lehigh with a couple of Maryland teens, 16-year-old Faith Choi of Frederick,
Md. and 17-year-old Bailey Davis of White Plains, Md.
The key to the round for Cox and Quickel came at the
359-yard, par-4 15th hole where a tee shot by Quickel, who will join
the James Madison program next summer, found a fairway bunker 121 yards from
the hole. With the lip of the trap right in front of her, Quickel gripped down
on a 9-iron and watched as her ball finished at the bottom of the cup for a
hole-out eagle 2.
“We were a good team out there,” Cox told the GAP website.
“Getting to go down the Florida is going to be a lot of fun. We’ve never played
in a (a USGA national championship) yet.”
Quickel’s remarkable shot wasn’t the only dramatic eagle
hole-out of the day. The 4-under 66 recorded by Choi and Davis got a big boost
when Davis’ approach from 165 yards away at the 410-yard, par-4 17th
hole with a 6-iron also found the hole for an eagle that capped a remarkable
6-under back nine for the duo.
This will not be Choi’s first trip to the U.S. Women’s
Four-Ball. A year ago she teamed with another Maryland teen star, Aneka
Seumanutafa, to earn the only ticket available to this year’s U.S. Women’s
Four-Ball in a GAP-administered qualifier held at Kennett Square Golf &
Country Club.
And the pair made quite a splash at Timuquana Country Club,
a Donald Ross classic in Jacksonville, Fla. Seumanutafa, fresh from helping
Ohio State capture the Big Ten team title, made 10 birdies the first time she
looked at the golf course in the opening round of qualifying for match play as
the pair registered a U.S. Women’s Four-Ball single-round record with a
12-under 60.
Choi and Seumanutafa, a quarterfinalist in this summer’s
U.S. Women’s Amateur Championship at Old Waverly Golf Club in West Point,
Miss., added a 70 in the second round to claim medalist honors before falling
in the opening round of match play.
The first alternate is the formidable mid-amateur team of
2015 U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur champion Lauren Greenlief of Ashburn, Va. and
three-time Pennsylvania Women’s Amateur champion Katie Miller of Jeannette.
Coming off deep runs in this month’s U.S. Women’s
Mid-Amateur Championship at Forest Highlands Golf Club in Flagstaff, Ariz.,
Greenlief and Miller carded a 2-under 68 at Lehigh. The duo qualified for match
play in last spring’s U.S. Women’s Four-Ball at Timuquana.
Greenlief reached the semifinals at Forest Highlands while
Miller reached the quarterfinals.
The second alternate was a tandem of Jersey girls, Tiya
Chowdary of Belle Mead and Katherine Lu of Plainsboro, who teamed up to post a
1-under 69.
The qualifier at Lehigh brought together some interesting
teams that came up just short of a trip to Quail Creek.
Two former scholastic rivals, Isabella DiLisio of Hatfield
and Jackie Rogowicz of Yardley, matched par with a 70. They finished 1-2,
respectively, in the 2013 PIAA Class AAA Championship when they were juniors,
DiLisio at Mount St. Joseph and Rogowicz at Pennsbury. They are coming off
outstanding four-year college careers, DiLisio at Notre Dame and Rogowicz at
Penn State.
Sydney Yermish, the 13-year-old phenom from Rolling Green
Golf Club, and her partner Kaia Wu of Princeton, N.J. also matched par with a
70.
A couple of Bucks County standouts, Pennsbury junior and
Yardley resident Jade Gu, the Class AAA East Regional winner last fall, and
George School junior Natasha Kiel of New Hope carded a 2-over 72.
Episcopal Academy junior Lauren Jones and Haverford High
junior Riley Quartermain were another shot behind Gu and Kiel with a 3-over 73.
Jones of Merion Golf Club led the Churchwomen to a second straight Inter-Ac
League title last spring while Quartermain, a product of the junior program at
Llanerch Country Club, was a PIAA Class AAA qualifier last fall.
Overbrook Golf Club’s Alyssa Roland, who lives and works in
New York City, teamed with Callie Kemmer of Washington, D.C. to post a 4-over
74. Roland qualified for match play in the 2017 U.S. Women’s Mid-Am at the
Champions Golf Club’s Cypress Creek Course in Houston.
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