I first discovered Global Golf Post three years ago
when the digital golf site named Reading’s Chip Lutz the top men’s Amateur
player in the world at age 61.
It was part of Global Golf Post’s annual All-Amateur
teams, an ambitious undertaking that, in succeeding years, has expanded to
includes lists of men’s and women’s amateur, mid-amateur and senior amateur
first- and second-team and honorable mention selections.
It’s November here in the Northeast and the looping days are
down to a precious few. November hasn’t even been as warm as it could be,
although there will be a few more rounds still played. And they played the
annual Black Friday scramble at Stonewall a year ago in temperatures in the
20s. Fun in the retelling, not so much when you were actually out there.
Global Golf Post’s All-Amateur teams, the seventh of
which was released this week, provide an excellent excuse to relive all the
USGA championships, the Walker Cup Match, the NCAA men’s and women’s
Championships, the inaugural Augusta National Women’s Amateur Championship.
Close your eyes and it’s almost summer time again.
This time last year, I broke down and became an official Global
Golf Post “subscriber.” It’s free, so subscribing means you give them your
e-mail address. Global Golf Post is the closest thing I’ve found to the
old Golf World that wrapped up every pro event each week and did what it
could to keep up with the big amateur events.
The All-Amateur teams separate Global Golf Post from
nearly every golf publication I’ve ever seen. Sure, the golf world stopped what
it was doing on a Sunday morning in April to watch Tiger Woods win another
Masters crown.
But there is so much great golf going on out there and so
many great stories. And for one week in November, Global Golf Post
celebrates the people who are really good players, but will never get paid for
it. Or even a few that once did get paid to play, but realized they were never
going to compete with Tiger Woods. But they still loved to play, still loved to
compete.
And yes, some of them have turned pro, but not before some
major amateur accomplishments before heading to the next level. For some,
amateur golf is merely a stepping stone toward a professional career, but it so
often can be such an important step forward.
Global Golf Post’s Amateurs of the Year aren’t always
the best amateur players. They almost always are the best representatives of
the amateur game for the year that is almost up.
That is certainly the case this year. The men’s Amateur of
the Year is Brandon Wu, who matched one of Woods’ amateur accomplishments by
leading Stanford to an NCAA crown last spring at The Blessings Golf Club in
Fayetteville, Ark. Global Golf Post went to the seniors, as it did with
Lutz three years ago, in naming Lara Tennant, the repeat winner of the U.S.
Senior Women’s Amateur at Cedar Rapids Country Club in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, as
its women’s Amateur of the Year.
Wu and Tennant are the subjects of a couple of really neat
profiles, Wu’s by Sean Fairholm and Tennant’s by Steve Eubanks. I would highly
recommend anybody who loves the game to check out both stories.
Wu is a professional by now. But he took his good old time
getting there. Along the way he qualified for the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach and
made the cut. Forced to miss his graduation ceremony to tee it up in the third
round of the National Open, Wu was presented with his diploma by USGA
Championship Committee chairman Stuart Francis on the 18th green at
Pebble after finishing tied for 35th place.
The Scarsdale, N.Y. native decided he wanted to try to play
in the Open Championship at Royal Portrush in Northern Ireland. Wu spent a week
preparing for a qualifier in Scotland and earned medalist honors. He was the
first amateur player to make it through qualifiers for both the U.S. Open and
the Open Championship since some time in the 1970s, you know, before the
Internet.
Wu represented the United States in the Pan-American Games
in Lima, Peru, then flew to Pinehurst and captured medalist honors for the U.S.
Amateur. Then it was back across the pond as he helped an under-appreciated
U.S. team rally for a victory over Great Britain & Ireland in the Walker
Cup Match at Royal Liverpool in Hoylake, England.
It was the Walker Cup Match that was the ultimate goal of
his summer of amateur golf and he got just about everything he could get out of
the journey.
There were more than a few Walker Cup competitors, from both
sides, among Wu’s 12 fellow Men’s Amateur first-team selections. Eight, to be
precise, five of Wu’s teammates on the U.S. side and three members of a really
tough GB&I team.
Georgia Tech senior Andy Ogletree and Vanderbilt senior John
Augenstein were two of Wu’s U.S. teammates. They had met in a riveting U.S.
Amateur final on the iconic No. 2 Course at Pinehurst, with Ogletree prevailing,
2 and 1.
U.S. captain Nathaniel Crosby twice paired the U.S. Amateur
finalists in foursome matches, which they split and Ogletree and Augenstein
each contributed a match win to a stunning U.S. domination of the Sunday
singles that enabled the Stars & Stripes to turn an 8.5-7.5 deficit into a
deceptively easy 15.5-10.5 victory.
Texas sophomore Cole Hammer put an exclamation point on his
freshman season by helping the Longhorns dethrone reigning national champion
and Big 12 rival Oklahoma State in the NCAA semifinals at The Blessings.
Texas fell to Stanford in the Final Match and Hammer
struggled, by his standards, at times in the summer before salvaging a tough
Walker Cup with a 6 and 5 victory in the Sunday singles, the kind of win that
poured a little jet fuel on the U.S. rally. Hammer is No. 2 in the latest World
Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR), which Global Golf Post unapologetically
leans on in making its all-amateur selections.
The youngest player to ever represent the U.S. in a Walker
Cup Match, Akshay Bhatia, is another first-team selection. He teamed with Men’s
Mid-Amateur first-team selection Stewart Hagestad to split a pair of foursome
matches and won his Sunday Singles match.
Bhatia immediately turned pro, but failed to make it out of
Stage II of the Korn Ferry Tour Qualifying School. He will start 2020 with no
status, but he’ll be all right.
Florida State junior John Pak, the Atlantic Coast Conference
individual champion and No. 11 in the WAGR, rounds out the six members of the
U.S. Walker Cup team that appear on the Men’s Amateur first team.
Irishman James Sugrue, who captured The Amateur Championship
on his home soil at Portmarnock, heads the trio of GB&I team members on the
first team. He was joined by English phenom Connor Gough and Scotsman Euan
Walker, a gritty runnerup to Sugrue at Portmarnock. Gough is No. 3 in the WAGR.
Oklahoma State’s Matthew Wolff already owns a PGA Tour
victory, but he had to be included on the first team on the strength of his
college season alone. Wolff capped his college career by cruising to a
five-shot victory to claim the NCAA individual crown.
Wolff’s fellow Cowboy, Norwegian Viktor Hovland, is also off
to a great start to his professional career, but the guy was the low amateur at
both the Masters and the U.S. Open before heading to the next level.
Japan’s Takumi Kanaya is holding down the No. 1 spot in the
WAGR and that certainly earns him a spot on the first team. Kanaya played the
weekend after making the cut at the Masters last spring. Rounding out the
first-team selections was German Matthias Schmid, a senior at Louisville who
helped the host Cardinals advance to the NCAA Championship by finishing in a
tie for second in the Louisville Regional.
Among the second-team selections were three more members of
the winning U.S. Walker Cup team, Isaiah Salinda, Wu’s fellow veteran senior on
Stanford’s national championship team, Steven Fisk, the runnerup to Wolff for
the NCAA individual title as a senior at Georgia Southern, and Alex Smalley,
who completed an outstanding college career at Duke last spring.
Two more members of GB&I’s Walker Cup side, Wake Forest
sophomore Alex Fitzpatrick of England, and Irishman Conor Purcell, at 26 one of the veterans of captain Craig Watson's team, appear on the Men's Amateur second team.
Among the honorable mention selections were four more
members of the GB&I team at Royal Liverpool, Scotland’s Sandy Scott and Englishmen
Tom Sloman, Tom Plumb and Harry Hall, who completed an outstanding college
career at UNLV last spring.
Another player who also already owns a PGA Tour victory,
Collin Morikawa, who capped his brilliant college career at California by
claiming the Pac-12 individual title, also appears on the honorable mention
list.
Hagestad, who has risen to No. 4 in WAGR, heads the 11-man
Men’s Mid-Amateur first team. When he won the 2016 U.S. Mid-Amateur title in an
epic final at Stonewall, Hagestad, a Southern California native, promised he
would proudly represent mid-amateur golf and he has done just that.
Hagestad was the “old guy” on the U.S. Walker Cup team and
I’m sure his veteran presence was huge for Crosby’s U.S. team. Hagestad was the
lone holdover from the talented U.S. squad that rolled to a Walker Cup win in
2017 at Los Angeles Country Club.
I thought it was an inspired move by Crosby to pair Hagestad
with his young gun, Bhatia, in the foursome matches and their victory Sunday
morning was a springboard to the huge rally in the Sunday singles.
Hagestad went straight from Royal Liverpool to Colorado Golf
Club and altitude in suburban Denver for the U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship. For
the second straight year, Hagestad fell in the semifinals, this time a
hard-fought 2-up decision to 25-year-old Australian Lukas Michel, who would go
on to become the first international player to claim a U.S. Mid-Am title.
Michel was joined on the Men’s Mid-Am first team by his
opponent in the U.S. Mid-Am final, Joseph Deraney, a reinstated amateur and
former Mississippi State standout. Deraney, who captured the Canadian
Mid-Amateur title for the second time earlier in the summer, had a 2-up lead
with 10 holes to play before falling, 2 and 1, to Michel.
Also appearing on the Men’s Mid-Am first team was Scott
Harvey, the winner of the 2014 U.S. Mid-Amateur title at Saucon Valley Country
Club who let a 4-up lead with five holes to play slip away in his loss on the
37th hole to Hagestad in that memorable 2016 final at Stonewall.
Harvey teamed with his buddy Todd Mitchell to claim the U.S.
Amateur Four-Ball Championship last spring at Bandon Dunes’ Old Macdonald
Course in Oregon.
Ireland’s Caolan Rafferty, another member of GB&I’s
Walker Cup side, also appeared on the Men’s Mid-Am first team. Michel’s fellow
Aussie, Richard Heath, winner of the European Mid-Am crown, also made the first
team.
Another easy first-team selection was Canadian Garret Rank,
who works his golf game around his job as an NHL official. Rank became the
first mid-am to win the Western Amateur since 1997 and the first Canadian
winner since 1977 with his victory at Point O’ Woods Golf & Country Club in
Benton Harbor, Mich.
Rounding out the Men’s Mid-Am first team were Matt Parziale,
the Brockton, Mass. firefighter who won the 2017 U.S. Mid-Amateur title and reached
the Crump Cup semifinals this year, American Brad Nurski, Rank’s fellow
Canadian Joey Savoie and Argentinian Anders Schonbaum, who reached the
quarterfinals in the U.S. Mid-Am at Colorado Golf Club. Parziale was the choice
by Global Golf Post as 2018’s male Amateur of the Year.
An interesting name popped up on the second-team list in
Merion Golf Club’s Tug Maude, a Haverford School standout once upon a time.
Maude made a successful return to competitive golf by capturing the Walter J.
Travis Invitational at Garden City Golf Club on Long Island with a 3 and 2
victory over Saucon Valley Country Club’s Matt Mattare in the final last
spring.
It was first individual event for Maude in six years,
although he and former Haverford School teammate John Sawin did reach the
second round of match play in the 2018 U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship at
Jupiter Hills in Tequesta, Fla.
Also earning second-team honors was Michael Muehr, who
captured the Crump Cup title at Pine Valley Golf Club. Muehr was one of the three
co-medalists in qualifying for the 2016 U.S. Mid-Am at Stonewall.
Jason Schultz, a former PGA Tour pro from Allen, Texas, gave
U.S. Mid-Am finalist Deraney all he wanted before falling in a 1-up decision in
the semifinals.
Another interesting name on the second team was that of
Louisiana Mid-Amateur champion Derek Busby, who teamed with Hagestad to make
match play in the U.S. Four-Ball at Bandon Dunes. Brad Tilley, winner of the
state Mid-Am crown in New York, the Westchester Mid-Am and the Met Mid-Am, also
earned second-team honors.
The Men’s Senior Amateur first team is headed by the
finalists in the U.S. Senior Amateur at Old Chatham Golf Club in Durham, N.C.,
where Bob Royak, a 57-year-old from Alpharetta, Ga., edged Roger Newsom, a
55-year-old ophthalmologist from Virginia Beach, Va., 1-up.
American Craig Davis went across the pond and captured the
R&A Senior Amateur with fellow American Gene Elliott earning runnerup
honors at North Berwick. Elliott also won the Canadian Senior Amateur title and
was the winner of the Senior division in the Crump Cup.
Ken Kinkopf, winner of the North & South Senior Amateur
Championship at Pinehurst, and Mike McCoy, who reached the round of 16 at Old
Chatham, were also first-team selections.
Rounding out the first team were Americans Doug Hanzel,
Steve Harwell and Lewis Stephenson, Ian Attoe of England and Peter Sheehan of
Ireland.
Reading’s Lutz slipped all the way to the honorable mention
list, but, at 64, the guy had a pretty good year, finishing in a tie for seventh
in the R&A Senior Amateur at North Berwick and qualifying for match play in
the U.S. Senior Amateur, which he won in 2015, at Old Chatham before falling in
the first round of match play.
The really big story, though, is that Lutz had his streak of
nine straight Golf Association of Philadelphia Senior Amateur Player of the
Year awards snapped as Overbrook Golf Club’s Oscar Mestre finally knocked Lutz
off the pedestal.
The 52-year-old Tennant, the female Amateur of the Year, was
good enough to play collegiately at Arizona, but never really considered
turning pro. She had six children, including a set of twins, in five years and
only dabbled in competitive golf, teeing it up in the occasional Oregon State
Amateur, although she twice qualified for the U.S. Amateur.
Tennant admitted to Eubanks that she never really got
passionate about competing until she was about to turn 50 with the U.S. Senior
Women’s Amateur coming to her home course in Portland, Waverley Country Club,
in 2017.
Tennant was the qualifying medalist at Waverley, but
promptly flamed out in the first round of match play. She hasn’t lost a U.S.
Senior Women’s Amateur match since.
Last summer, it was, oddly, a rematch in the U.S. Senior
Women’s Amateur final at Cedar Rapids with Tennant beating Australian Sue
Wooster by the same 3 and 2 decision she won by a year earlier at the Orchid
Island Golf & Beach Club in Vero Beach, Fla.
One other similarity to 2018 was Tennant’s caddy, her 79-year-old
dad George Mack, who had always insisted that golf be a part of the family.
A few weeks after her victory at Cedar Rapids, Tennant
hopped across the pond and won the British Women’s Senior Amateur crown,
prevailing on the third hole of a three-way playoff at Royal St. David’s in
Wales.
The Women’s Senior Amateur first team has a lot of the
contenders from Cedar Rapids, including American Patricia Ehrhart, who fell to
Tennant in the semifinals, and American Caryn Wilson, who was edged by Wooster,
1-up, in the other semifinal.
One of the more intriguing story lines at Cedar Rapids was
Ireland’s Laura Webb, who was making her first trip to the United States. Webb,
who enjoyed herself thoroughly, reached the quarterfinals before she, too, was
edged by Wooster, 1-up.
Canada’s Mary Ann Hayward was a quarterfinalist at Cedar
Rapids and made the Women’s Senior Amateur first team along with fellow
Canadian Judith Kyrinis, the 2017 U.S. Women’s Senior Amateur champion at Waverley
who reached the round of 16 at Cedar Rapids.
It wouldn’t be a Women’s Senior Amateur first team if Ellen
Port of St. Louis didn’t appear on it. Port, a three-time U.S. Women’s Senior
Amateur and four-time U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur winner, reached the round of 16
at Cedar Rapids before falling, 1-up, to Wooster.
Rounding out the first-team selections were Macarena
Campomanes, winner of the European Senior Ladies’ Championship from Spain,
Belgium’s Sylvie Van Molle and American Corey Weworski.
The biggest addition to the calendar when it comes to
women’s amateur golf in 2019 was certainly the inaugural Augusta National
Women’s Amateur Championship and the 1-2 finishers, Wake Forest senior Jennifer
Kupcho and Arkansas senior Maria Fassi, represented women’s golf about as well
as they possibly could, both as players and as people.
Both Kupcho and Fassi could have begun their professional
careers in January after earning their LPGA cards in the inaugural LPGA
Q-Series a year ago, but both played out the spring campaigns of their senior
seasons. The lure of the inaugural Augusta National Women’s Amateur probably
had a little to do with it.
Kupcho led the Demon Deacons to the Final Match in the NCAA
Championship at The Blessings before Wake Forest fell to ACC rival Duke. And
Mexico’s Fassi, playing on her home course, capped her college career by
claiming the NCAA individual title. They are already on their way as pros, but
are richly deserving to be included on Global Golf Post’s Women’s
Amateur first team.
It was a pretty good year for Southern California junior
Gabriela Ruffels, the Australian who buried a slick, downhill 10-foot birdie
putt on the 36th hole to defeat Switzerland’s Albane Valenzuela, a
Pac-12 rival of Ruffels’ at Stanford, 1-up, in a thrilling U.S. Women’s Amateur
final at Old Waverly Golf Club in West Point, Miss.
Ruffels, No. 16 in the Women’s World Amateur Golf Ranking
(WAGR), had tuned up for the U.S. Women’s Amateur by claiming a victory in the
North & South Women’s Amateur Championship at Pinehurst. She led Southern
Cal to a Pac-12 championship, a win in the NCAA Cle Elum Regional and into
match play in the NCAA Championship at The Blessings, where the Trojans fell to
Pac-12 rival Arizona in the quarterfinals.
Valenzuela’s loss in the U.S. Women’s Amateur final was her
second in three years – she was a beaten finalist in 2017 at San Diego Country
Club -- but she has been nothing short of brilliant in her amateur career. She
led the Cardinal into match play at The Blessings for third time in her college
career after finishing sixth in the individual standings.
After earning her LPGA Tour card by finishing in a tie for
sixth in the LPGA Q-Series at Pinehurst earlier this fall, Valenzuela announced
that she will forgo the spring portion of her senior season and begin her
professional career. She will be an asset to the LPGA Tour.
Ruffels and Valenzuela both have college teammates on the
Women’s Amateur first team, Jennifer Chang at Southern Cal and Andrea Lee at
Stanford.
Chang was the individual champion in the NCAA Cle Elum
Regional and played the weekend after making the cut at the U.S. Women’s Open
at the Country Club of Charleston last spring. Chang let it be known before
finishing in a tie for ninth in the LPGA Q-Series that she was turning pro in
January, so she won’t be back for the spring portion of her junior season.
Lee, No. 3 in the Women’s WAGR, reached the semifinals at
Old Waverly before falling to Ruffels. Like her teammate Valenzuela, Lee can
turn pro in January after finishing in a tie for 30th place in the
LPGA Q-Series, but she hasn’t decided yet whether to return for the spring
portion of her senior season. She has been nothing but excellent throughout her
amateur career.
Kupcho’s Wake Forest teammate, Emilia Migliaccio, also
appears on the Women’s Amateur first team after helping the Demon Deacons reach
the Final Match at The Blessings and then winning two gold medals for the
United States in the Pan American Games in Lima, Peru in the women’s individual
competition and as part of the mixed team champion. Migliacccio is No. 11 in
the Women’s WAGR.
Atthaya Thitikul of Thailand is No. 1 in the Women’s WAGR.
She made her biggest splash on the world stage when she finished in a tie for
29th place in the AIG Women’s British Open at Woburn Golf Club in
England last summer.
Rounding out the first-team selections were Germany’s Leonie
Harm, who won the American Athletic Conference title as a senior at Houston
last spring and is No. 7 in the Women’s WAGR, former Clemson standout Alice
Hewson, winner of the European Ladies’ Amateur Championship last summer, UCLA
freshman Emma Spitz of Austria and No. 17 in the Women’s WAGR and Japan’s Yuka
Yasuda, who finished in a tie for third in the Augusta National Women’s
Amateur.
Two players who have recently announced their intention to
turn pro, former Florida standout Sierra Brooks and teen phenom Lucy Li,
headline a talented Women’s Amateur second team.
Brooks’ career has taken a few twists and turns since she
was the runnerup in the 2015 U.S. Women’s Amateur at Portland Country Club. She
left Wake Forest after an injury-plagued freshman season in 2017, resurfaced at
Florida and quickly regained her footing. Brooks was the runnerup to Fassi in
the NCAA individual chase last spring at The Blessings.
Brooks finished in a tie for 62nd place in the
LPGA Q-Series at Pinehurst and thus did not earn playing privileges in the big
leagues, the LPGA Tour. But she has decided to forgo the spring portion of her
senior season and play on the Symetra Tour full-time.
The 17-year-old Li will certainly bring some star power to
the Symetra Tour. I’ve been intrigued by the kid from California ever since she
showed up at Rolling Green Golf Club for the 2016 U.S. Women’s Amateur as a
13-year-old and fired rounds of 67 and 68 on the tough William Flynn design and
finished second in qualifying for match play.
Li was pretty quiet last summer after pulling out of the
Augusta National Women’s Amateur with an unspecified injury, although she did
reach the quarterfinals of the U.S. Women’s Amateur at Old Waverly.
Li earned Symetra Tour status by reaching Stage II of the
LPGA Qualifying School and she’s planning to play in the LPGA’s developmental
circuit. Technically, Li is ineligible to play on the LPGA Tour until she turns
18, although that standard has been successfully challenged a couple of times.
A couple of teammates on Duke’s national championship team,
sophomore Gina Kim, No. 26 in the Women’s WAGR, and junior Jaravee Boonchant, a
native of Thailand and No. 21 in the Women’s WAGR, also appear on the second
team. Kim contended for a long time in last spring’s U.S. Women’s Open at the
Country Club of Charleston before settling for a tie for 12th place
and low-amateur honors.
A couple of teammates on a Kent State team that won the team
title in the NCAA East Lansing Regional last spring, senior Pimnipa Panthong of
Thailand and No. 12 in the Women’s WAGR and senior Karoline Stormo of Norway
and No. 24 in the Women’s WAGR, also appear on the second team. Panthong was
the runnerup in the individual chase at East Lansing.
Florida State sophomore Frida Kinhult of Sweden, South
Carolina freshman Pauline Roussin-Bouchard of France and Texas junior Kaitlyn
Papp are three more players with lofty Women’s WAGR spots on the second team.
Kinhult is No. 4, Roussin-Bouchard is No. 5 and Papp is No. 13. Papp and the
Longhorns are ranked No. 1 by Golfstat as the 2019-2020 NCAA Division I
takes its midseason break.
England’s Emily Toy, who captured the Women’s Amateur
Championship at Royal County Down in Northern Ireland last summer, also earned
a second-team nod.
Among the honorable-mention picks were 15-year-old phenom
Alexa Pano, the Floridian who is No. 31 in the Women’s WAGR, and Ohio State
sophomore Aneka Seumanutafa, the Emmitsburg, Md. native who is No. 45 in the
Women’s WAGR and helped the Buckeyes claim the Big 10 crown last spring.
Global Golf Post doesn’t give a lot of weight to
junior results, but I might have added a couple of lines on the honorable
mention list to include Megha Ganne, the Jersey girl who, at 15, stormed to the
semifinals of the U.S. Women’s Amateur at Old Waverly, and Rose Zhang, who partnered
with Migliaccio, Wu and Hagestad on the gold-medal winning U.S. mixed team in
the Pan-Am Games.
The Women’s Mid-Amateur first team is led by U.S. Women’s
Mid-Amateur champion Ina Kim-Schaad, a former Northwestern standout who put the
sticks away for a decade or so to work in the corporate world.
The U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur was played at Forest Highlands
Golf Club’s Meadow Course in Flagstaff, Ariz. as summer was coming to an end,
but a couple of transplanted New York City residents, Kim-Schaad and Talia
Campbell, only a couple of years removed from a standout career at Notre Dame,
met for the title with Kim-Schaad claiming a 3 and 2 victory.
Of the 11 players on the Women’s Mid-Amateur first team,
seven were among the eight quarterfinalists at Forest Highlands, including
Kim-Schaad and Campbell.
One of the great women’s mid-am players since the advent of
the category, four-time U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur champion Meghan Stasi, reached
the semifinals last summer at Forest Highlands before suffering a 4 and 2
setback at the hands of Kim-Schaad.
The 41-year-old Stasi was Meghan Bolger when the Eastern
High product won the Women’s Golf Association of Philadelphia Match-Play
Championship seven straight years. She met her husband, Danny Stasi, the owner-chef
of Shuck n Dive, a Fort Lauderdale Cajun restaurant, while playing in the
Jones/Doherty Women’s Amateur Championship, a stop on South Florida’s Orange
Blossom Tour of winter events held at Coral Ridge Country Club, where Danny
Stasi was a member.
It was an interesting quarterfinal when Stasi took on Katie
Miller, a three-time Pennsylvania Women’s Amateur from Jeannette. The
34-year-old Miller, a three-time PIAA champion at Hempfield Area and a former
North Carolina standout, has become a pretty solid mid-am player in her own
right, although she couldn’t solve Stasi, who rolled to a 5 and 4 victory.
Stasi and Miller both landed on the Women’s Mid-Amateur
first team and deservedly so.
Lauren Greenlief, the 2015 U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur
champion, was edged, 1-up, by Campbell in the other semifinal at Forest
Highlands. Greenlief and Miller teamed up to qualify for the match-play bracket
in last spring’s U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball Championship at Timuquana
Country Club in Jacksonville, Fla.
The defending U.S. Women’s Mid-Am champ at Forest Highlands,
Shannon Johnson, and Michelle Butler lost to Kim-Schaad in the round of 16 and
in the quarterfinals, respectively. Megan Buck lost to Kim-Schaad in the
quarterfinals.
The qualifying medalist at Forest Highlands, two-time U.S.
Mid-Amateur champion Julia Potter-Bobb, also made the first team.
Rounding out the Women’s Mid-Amateur first team were
Gretchen Johnson, who reached the round of 16 in the U.S. Women’s Mid-Am, and European
Mid-Amateur Ladies champion Myrtie Eikenaar of The Netherlands, the lone
international player on the team.
Heading the second-team selections was Dawn Woodard, who has
partnered with Stasi in each of the first five editions of the U.S. Women’s
Four-Ball.
There is a lesson in people like Tennant, Global Golf
Post’s female Player of the Year, and Kim-Schaad, Stasi and Miller in the
mid-am ranks. The end of your college career doesn’t necessarily have to mean
the end of your career as a competitive golfer.
You can have six kids in five years like Tennant and figure
you’ll never play another big golf match, ever, and find yourself, at age 52, a
two-time U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur champion. Or use your business acumen and
spend a decade in the boardroom like Kim-Schaad and become a U.S. Women’s
Mid-Amateur champion at age 35.
Hey, they don’t call it the game for a lifetime for nothing.
