The NCAA Division I women’s golf regionals should be teeing
off Monday, the college postseason starting to shift into high gear after a
month of conference championships.
Of course, it’s not happening in the ill-fated year that is
2020, thanks to the coronavirus.
A year ago, I had 49 posts in the month of April. This year
I had two. It’s usually a busy time on the golf schedule. In addition to the
college postseason, we’ve already missed the U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball
Championship and the PGA National Professional Championship.
There should be a dozen or so Philadelphia Section PGA
Junior Tour events already in the books for 2020. A year ago, the Golf
Association of Philadelphia’s major championship season for seniors had already
begun with an emotional Warner Cup victory for eventual GAP Senior Player of
the Year Oscar Mestre, the Overbrook Golf Club standout.
Mestre and his Overbrook buddies should in the midst of battling
for a Playoff berth in the top division of GAP’s BMW Team Matches. Players with
high hopes should be teeing it up in local qualifiers for the U.S. Open.
It’s always so busy at this time of the year that I’m not
sure I’ve ever really devoted a post to the winners of Division I college
golf’s biggest awards, the Fred Haskins for the guys and the Golfweek
Annika Award for the gals. I guess I always figured I could refer to the winners during the
month-long celebration of college golf that is the NCAA Tournament.
But this year’s different. There will be no team champions
in college golf, so it’s only fitting to salute two of the country’s top
individuals, Pepperdine’s Sahith Theegala, the Wave’s fifth-year senior from
Chino Hills, Calif., and Furman’s Natalie Srinivasan, a senior from
Spartanburg, S.C., the respective deserving winners of the Fred Haskins Award
and the Golfweek Annika Award.
The awards, both of which are presented by Stifel, were
announced in a broadcast by The Golf Channel Friday evening. It was the 50th
time the Haskins has been handed out. The first winner in 1971 – and the second
and third winner, for that matter – was Texas’ Ben Crenshaw.
I hadn’t been paying that much attention to Pepperdine
during the fall portion of the wraparound 2019-2020 season. With Theegala
pulling out a one-shot victory over Southern California’s Leon D’Souza in the
individual chase, the host Wave claimed a 17-shot win in the Southwestern Invitational
at the North Ranch Country Club in Westlake Village, Calif. as the spring
portion of the season dawned.
Theegala had donned a Kobe Bryant jersey for the final hole
at North Ranch to honor his boyhood hero who had died in a tragic helicopter
accident the previous Sunday. A video surfaced of Theegala draining a clutch
putt on the 18th green to preserve the victory, doing his hero Kobe
proud. It wasn’t a long putt, but it wasn’t a gimme either and it was to win
the tournament.
By the time Pepperdine claimed a two-shot victory over Texas
in The Amer Ari Invitational at Waikoloa Kings’ Course in Waikola, Hawaii, Golfstat
had elevated the Wave to No. 1 in its rankings.
Theegala finished in a tie for sixth in The Amer Ari, three
shots behind the individual winner, William Mouw, one of Pepperdine’s super-talented
freshmen.
Pepperdine remained No. 1 in the Golfstat rankings
and its tie for fifth place in the Southern Highlands Collegiate at Southern
Highlands in Las Vegas turned out to be its final tournament of the season.
Theegala finished in a tie for fourth place, two shots behind the winner, Texas
sophomore Parker Coody.
Theegala had risen to No. 3 in the World Amateur Golf
Ranking (WAGR) and Pepperdine had remained No. 1 in the Golfstat rankings
when the college season came to an abrupt end in mid-March.
In eight tournaments in the 2019-’20 season, Theegala had
two wins and six top-10 finishes. He finished in the top 20 in all eight events
against some top competition and he broke par in 17 of his 24 rounds. Theegala’s
69.04 scoring average for the season and his career scoring average of 70.61
are both Pepperdine records. His 74 career rounds under par also established a
program record. He finished tied for the top spot in Pepperdine history for
wins with four and top-20 finishes with 36.
“Words cannot even begin to describe it, honestly, it still
hasn’t set in,” Theegala said during The Golf Channel broadcast. “Just to think
that my name belongs with some of the other names on the list like Tiger and
Phil and the other greats is just unbelievable to think about. It’s an
incredible honor.”
With Theegala’s talent and experience at the top of the
lineup and a group that went at least eight deep, including those precocious
freshmen, Pepperdine had the look of a team that was gearing up for a big
postseason run. Theegala’s individual honor will have to stand as a symbol of one
of the great seasons in the program’s history.
The Annika Award has only been around since 2014, but
Srinivasan joins an impressive list of winners. Brad Faxon won the Haskins
Award as a Paladin in 1993, which means Furman joins UCLA as the only programs
that can boast winners of both awards.
Srinivasan was really coming on strong in the spring portion
of the 2019-’20 season. She claimed a four-shot victory over teammate Anna
Morgan in the individual chase in the Moon Golf Invitational hosted by Louisville
at Duran Golf Club in Melbourne, Fla.
Srinivasan then closed out her season by finishing in a tie
for second in the Darius Rucker Intercollegiate, one of the top events in
women’s college golf each spring hosted by South Carolina at the Long Cove Club’s Pete Dye Course on
Hilton Head Island, S.C. Srinivasan and four others finished just a shot behind
individual champion Emilia Migliaccio, Wake Forest’s standout junior.
Srinivasan’s showing in the Darius Rucker enabled her to
inch past Texas junior Kaitlyn Papp as the third highest American in the
Women’s WAGR at No. 14. The top three Americans on that list were to be
automatic qualifiers for the U.S. Curtis Cup team, which was scheduled to take
on a Great Britain & Ireland side in June at Conwy Golf Club in
Caernarvonshire, Wales.
The 2020 Curtis Cup has been postponed until 2021 and
Srinivasan and the other seniors who were candidates for the U.S. team -- who
were already delaying the start of their pro careers to tee it up in Wales this
year -- might not be able to wait another year, no matter how much they yearned
to represent the Red, White & Blue in the Curtis Cup.
Srinivasan’s victory in the Moon Golf Invitational was her
third of the 2019-’20 season as she had rattled off back-to-back wins in the
fall in the Glass City Invitational and in the Lady Paladin Invitational hosted
by Furman.
Srinivasan compiled a 70.8 scoring average in 18 rounds this
season, a single-season record at Furman and her career scoring average of 72.6
in in 118 rounds is a record for a program that has produced World Golf Hall of
Fame members Betsy King and Beth Daniel and Dottie Pepper, among others.
“It is such an honor to be named the winner of this year’s
Annika Award,” Srinivasan said on The Golf Channel broadcast. “This is
something I have only dreamed of receiving. The award means so much since it is
voted on by my peers and I am grateful to have that opportunity.
“I would like to thank my family, my teammates and my
coaches, especially my head coach, Jeff Hull. I would not be the player I am
today without them.”
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