Recent Pennsbury graduate Jade Gu added a 6-over-par 76 Tuesday to her opening-round 73 to earn a spot in the match-play bracket as qualifying in the U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship wrapped at Columbia Country Club in Chevy Chase, Md.
Only the top 64 players following two rounds of stroke play advanced to match play, which gets under way Wednesday. And Gu, in her first appearance in the U.S. Girls’ Junior, got one of those spots. Gu plays out of Yardley Country Club.
Gu, who earned her spot in the field at Columbia by surviving a playoff in a Golf Association of Philadelphia-administered local qualifier at the Steel Club last month, struggled a little down the stretch in Tuesday’s second round, but got the job done.
Gu, who lost in a playoff to Michelle Cox in the Pennsylvania Junior Girls’ Championship at Lebanon Country Club last month, got off to a good start with a birdie at the second hole. After three straight bogeys at the fourth, fifth and sixth holes, Gu made a birdie on the seventh hole to get it back to 1-over for the round.
Gu bounced back from a triple bogey at the 12th hole with a birdie at 13 before finishing up with a double bogey at 16 and a bogey at 18. Gu’s 9-over 149 total left her in a tie for 46th place.
Gu will take on Maria Jose Marin Negrete of Colombia in the opening round of match play. Marin Negrete matched par in Tuesday’s second round with a 70 after opening with a 72 to finish in a tie for sixth place in qualifying with a solid 2-over 142 total.
Recent Tower Hill graduate Rylie Heflin could never quite solve the Columbia layout as she posted a second straight 77 for a 154 total that missed match play by three shots. There was a playoff among nine players tied at 11-over 151 for the final four spots in the match-play bracket.
Heflin, a Kennett Square resident, also emerged from the qualifier at the Steel Club. Heflin will join the program at Atlantic Coast Conference powerhouse Duke later this summer.
Rose Zhang of Irvine, Calif. showed why she is No. 1 in the Women’s World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR) as she fashioned a brilliant 8-under 62 that gave her medalist honors with a 9-under 132 total. Her 62 tied the record for a single round in qualifying held by three other players. It was last accomplished by Lucy Li in the opening round of qualifying in 2018 at the Poppy Hills Golf Course on northern California’s Monterey Peninsula.
Zhang, who will join the program at Pac-12 power Stanford later this summer, had opened with a 1-under 69 in Monday’s first round.
Zhang won the U.S. Women’s Amateur Championship a year ago in a dramatic 38-hole final against Aussie Gabriela Ruffels at Woodmont Country Club in Rockville, Md. Golf in Maryland seems to agree with the Californian.
Starting off the 11th tee, Zhang was patient in the early going, settling for four straight pars. But when she chipped in for birdie at the 15th hole, the floodgates were opened. She made a long putt for par at the 16th hole and then rattled off four straight birdies at 18, one, two and three and suddenly was 5-under for her round.
Birdies at the fifth and eighth holes got her to 7-under before she finished with a flourish, dropping in a 20-footer for birdie at the 10th, a hole that played the toughest in two days of stroke play, to get it to 8-under.
Cindy Kou, a native of China whose U.S. base is Whittier, Calif., was the only other player to finish under par for two days as she added a 2-under 68 to her opening-round 66 for a 6-under 134 total that left her three shots behind Zhang.
Kou, who has 11 American Junior Golf Association (AJGA) wins on her resume, had grabbed the opening-round lead with her 66. Kou will be a Pac-12 rival of Zhang when she joins the Southern California program later this summer.
A Marylander, three-time Class AAAA state champion Bailey Davis of White Plains and North Point High School, matched par for the second straight day and finished alone in third place with an even-par 140 total. Davis will join the program at Tennessee of the Southeastern Conference later this summer.
Kiera Bartholomew, a Wake Forest, N.C. resident who launched her junior at career at Indian Valley Country Club in Telford, added a 2-over 72 to her opening-round 69 to finish in a tie for fourth place with Reagan Zibilski of Springfield, Mo. at 1-over 141.
Bartholomew was coming of a tie for fourth place in last week’s Junior North & South Amateur at the Pinehurst Resort in Pinehurst Village, N.C.
Zibilski was just 15 when she earned a trip to the 2019 U.S. Women’s Open at the Country Club of Charleston. After matching par in the opening round with a 70, Zibilski posted a 1-over 71 to join Bartholomew at 1-over.
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