Terms and conditions

Terms and Conditions of www.http://tmacteesoff.blogspot.com/ Below are the Terms and Conditions for use of www.http://tmacteesoff.blogspot.com/. Please read these carefully. If you need to contact us regarding any aspect of the following terms of use of our website, please contact us on the following email address - tmacgolf13@gmail.com. By accessing the content of www.http://tmacteesoff.blogspot.com/ ( hereafter referred to as website ) you agree to the terms and conditions set out herein and also accept our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree to any of the terms and conditions you should not continue to use the Website and leave immediately. You agree that you shall not use the website for any illegal purposes, and that you will respect all applicable laws and regulations. You agree not to use the website in a way that may impair the performance, corrupt or manipulate the content or information available on the website or reduce the overall functionality of the website. You agree not to compromise the security of the website or attempt to gain access to secured areas of the website or attempt to access any sensitive information you may believe exist on the website or server where it is hosted. You agree to be fully responsible for any claim, expense, losses, liability, costs including legal fees incurred by us arising from any infringement of the terms and conditions in this agreement and to which you will have agreed if you continue to use the website. The reproduction, distribution in any method whether online or offline is strictly prohibited. The work on the website and the images, logos, text and other such information is the property of www.http://tmacteesoff.blogspot.com/ ( unless otherwise stated ). Disclaimer Though we strive to be completely accurate in the information that is presented on our site, and attempt to keep it as up to date as possible, in some cases, some of the information you find on the website may be slightly outdated. www.http://tmacteesoff.blogspot.com/ reserves the right to make any modifications or corrections to the information you find on the website at any time without notice. Change to the Terms and Conditions of Use We reserve the right to make changes and to revise the above mentioned Terms and Conditions of use. Last Revised: 03-17-2017

Saturday, January 18, 2020

Pano puts her match-play prowess on display with repeat win in Jones/Doherty

   Alexa Pano might be only a 15-year-old, but the South Florida teen phenom is an old soul on the golf course.
   Pano of Lake Worth, Fla. was the youngest of 12 players invited to audition for a spot on the United States Curtis Cup team last month at Loblolly in Hobe Sound, Fla. The U.S. will take on Great Britain & Ireland when the Curtis Cup Match tees off June 12 at the Conwy Golf Club in Caernarvonshire, Wales.
   Most of the players invited to the practice session at Loblolly are college standouts who will get to put their games on display for U.S. captain Sarah Ingram throughout the spring portion of the college season before the USGA International Team Selection Committee chooses the U.S. team in April.
   Pano won’t have that option, but she knew she could make a splash this month in some of the Orange Blossom Tour events. And no tournament in that unofficial series of South Florida events was more important to Pano’s Curtis Cup hopes than this week’s Ione D. Jones/Doherty Women’s Amateur Championship at Coral Ridge Country Club in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
   It was actually the 88th edition of the Doherty Women’s Amateur Championship and the 35th Ione D. Jones Women’s Senior Amateur Championship, but it has come to be known as the Jones/Doherty. Most importantly, it’s a match-play event, just like the Curtis Cup.
   And while match play can be something of a foreign concept to most 15-year-old golfers, Pano is not one of them. Pano won the Jones/Doherty for the second straight year and the third time in four years – she lost in the final to the pride of Eastern High and South Jersey, Meghan Stasi, three years ago – with a 4 and 3 victory Friday over Courtney McKim, a tough mid-amateur from Raleigh, N.C. who was a member of Alabama’s 2012 national championship team, in windy and occasionally rainy conditions.
   McKim, who reached the quarterfinals in the U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur Championship at the Champions Golf Club’s Cypress Creek Course in 2017, probably thought she was going to walk off the ninth green with a 1-up lead when Pano’s tee shot on the par-4 hole bounced right into an unplayable lie in a bush on the right side of the hole.
   After taking her drop, Pano promptly ripped a 3-wood 225 yards to four feet. She would make the par putt and, when McKim couldn’t get her par-saver to fall, it was Pano who took a 1-up lead to the 10th tee. It’s the kind of match-play turnaround on which the outcome of so many matches hinge. I’m guessing Ingram will hear about it, if she didn’t witness it.
   I’ve been following the fortunes of Pano since she claimed her first American Junior Golf Association (AJGA) victory as a 12-year-old in the PDQ / Philadelphia Runner Junior at Saucon Valley Country Club’s Weyhill Course in 2016.
   Earlier that month, while still an 11-year-old, Pano failed to qualify for match play in the U.S. Women’s Amateur at Rolling Green Golf Club. She’s made the match-play bracket in the three ensuing U.S. Women’s Ams.
   I still think Pano’s finest hour was her epic final day in the U.S. Girls’ Junior Amateur Championship two summers ago at Poppy Hills Golf Course on northern California’s Monterey Peninsula. Fog wreaked havoc with the schedule all week, so, after edging Lucy Li on the 18th hole in a morning semifinal, Pano proceeded to fall to Yealimi Noh on the 33rd hole of the scheduled 36-hole final. All in the same day. A year-and-a-half later, Li and Noh are professional golfers, Li on the Symetra Tour and Noh on the LPGA Tour.
   For the second straight January, Pano was the runnerup to Florida State’s Amanda Doherty in the South Atlantic Women’s Amateur Championship, The Sally, a 72-hole stroke-play event that wrapped up last Saturday at Oceanside Country Club in Ormond Beach, Fla.
   With her past success at Coral Ridge, Pano felt confident enough to pass on a Sunday practice round and showed up Monday for the match-play qualifying round. Pano was right to feel confident at the 6,173-yard, par-72 Robert Trent Jones design.
   “It feels pretty good,” Pano said in release from Coral Ridge following Friday’s final. “I always feel happy when I’m playing in this golf tournament. To start off the year with a win is a great start.”
   Pano carded a 4-over 76 in some persistent South Florida winds in Monday’s qualifying round to finish in a tie for sixth. Medalist honors were shared by Noelle Maertz of Clark, N.J., the reigning New Jersey State Golf Association Women’s Mid-Amateur champion who played college golf at Wagner, and Maisie Filler, a senior at Oxbridge Academy who will join the Florida Gators program at the end of the summer, both of whom carded a solid 2-over 74.
   Pano knocked off Alexis Hios of Rye, N.Y., 3 and 2, in Tuesday’s opening round of match play.
Pano was a 12-year-old phenom when she captured her first Jones/Doherty in 2016 and found herself taking on 12-year-old Amy Zweig of McKinney, Texas in Wednesday’s quarterfinals and the kid gave Pano a battle before falling, 3 and 1.
   The match was even when Pano hit it to a foot at the eighth hole and tapped in for a birdie, won the ninth hole with a par, knocked it four feet away at the 10th hole and won the hole with a birdie and pitched it two feet at the par-5 11th hole for another birdie and a fourth straight win that gave her a 4-up lead.
   Filler of Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. proved to be another tough customer in perfect conditions in Thursday’s semifinals, but Pano pulled out a 2 and 1 victory.
   Pano was 1-down through 11 holes when she squared the match with a par at the 12th hole. Filler’s tee shot on the par-3 hole was bunkered and her par-saving putt lipped out. A par at the par-5 13th hole for Pano put her ahead to stay.
   The road to the final for McKim, who runs the corporate real estate division of a medical company, began with a 1-up victory over Nonie Marler of Canada. That earned McKim a date in the quarterfinals with Stasi, a four-time U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur champion.
   Coral Ridge has a special place in the heart of Stasi, who won the Women’s Golf Association of Philadelphia’s Match Play Championship seven straight times as Meghan Bolger while playing out of Tavistock Country Club. It was while playing in the Doherty/Jones that she met her future husband, Danny Stasi, a Coral Ridge member who owns Shuck n Dive, a popular Cajun-style restaurant in Fort Lauderdale.
   Stasi has also won the Jones/Doherty twice, the second time two years ago when she beat Pano in the title match.
   McKim, though, was up to the challenge, pulling out a 1-up victory over Stasi. McKim reached the final with a 3 and 2 victory over Chelsea Dantonio of East Aurora, N.Y. in Thursday’s semifinals. Dantonio, who wrapped up a solid college career at Winthrop last spring, had knocked off Maertz, the qualifying co-medalist, 4 and 3, in the quarterfinals.
   McKim, however, had to settle for a runnerup finish after running into a determined Pano, No. 22 in the Women’s World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR), in the final. Pano is determined to prove she belongs on that U.S. team when it departs for Wales in June.
   Hios, Pano’s victim in the opening round of match play, came back to capture the Amateur Division consolation bracket, an 18-hole stroke-play event, with a 79.
   The Jones/Doherty Senior Championship title went to Canadian Judith Kyrinis, who captured the 2017 U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur crown at Waverley Country Club in Portland, Ore. Kyrinis rallied from 3-down to send the match to extra holes and defeated Corey Weworski of Carlsbad, Calif. on the 19th hole in the title match.
   Kyrinis sent the match to the 19th hole by dropping a 15-foot birdie putt on the 18th hole that enabled her to draw even with Weworski, a perennial contender in the U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur. Kyrinis then holed another 15-footer for birdie on the 19th hole to win the match.
   After earning medalist honors in qualifying with a 1-over 73, Kyrinis, who reached the round of 16 in last summer’s U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur at Cedar Rapids Country Club in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, earned a 2-up victory over Janet Moore of Centennial, Colo. in Tuesday’s opening round of match play.
   Kyrinis rolled to a 4 and 3 decision over Susan West of Tuscaloosa, Ala. in the quarterfinals and then reached the final with a 6 and 5 semifinal victory over Kathy Glennon of Naples, Fla.
   Glennon, who reached match play in last summer’s U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur at Cedar Rapids, had to go 20 holes in win her quarterfinal match against Canadian Terrill Samuel, who had fallen in the Jones/Doherty Senior final each of the last three years. Samuel lost to her fellow Canadian Kyrinis in the U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur final in 2017 at Waverley in the first all-Canadian final in USGA history.
   Weworski, who lost to eventual champion Lara Tennant in the quarterfinals of the 2018 U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur at the Orchid Island Golf & Beach Resort in Vero Beach, Fla., reached the semifinals with a 6 and 5 victory over Sherry Herman of Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., the 2009 U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur champion, in the quarterfinals.
   Weworski reached the final with a 2 and 1 victory over Martha Leach of Hebron, Ky. in Thursday’s other semifinal.
   Leach, the qualifying medalist in last summer’s U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur at Cedar Rapids, edged Beatrice De Arenas of Guatemala, 1-up, in the quarterfinals.
   Therese Quinn of Jacksonville, Fla. captured the Senior First Flight crown with a 2-up victory over Natalia McNicholas. Mimi Hoffman of Springfield, Va. won the Senior Second Flight title, also claiming a 2-up decision over Mo Sheehan of Grayslake, Ill.
   Andrea Kraus captured top honors in the Senior Third Flight, a 36-hole stroke-play event, with rounds of 82 and 81 for a 163 total.
   Merion Golf Club’s Liz Haines, the runnerup in the 1994 U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur Championship, capped a busy few weeks on the Orange Blossom Tour by finishing fifth in the Senior Third Flight with rounds of 86 and 88 and a 174 total.
   Haines, in her early 70s, teed it up in the Former Forty-Nine Division of the Harder Hall Invitational a couple of weeks ago in Sebring, Fla., and played four rounds in The Sally at Oceanside Country Club in Ormand Beach, Fla. before heading to Coral Ridge for the Jones/Doherty. Looks like somebody is planning to keep playing some competitive golf in 2020.










No comments:

Post a Comment