Castle earned her way on to Curtis Cup team with U.S. Women's Amateur win, but GB&I is off to a strong start

    If you followed the U.S. Women’s Amateur coverage on the United States Golf Association’s website, you were well aware that the last thing on the mind of the eventual champion, Kentucky junior Jensen Castle, was playing for the United States in the Curtis Cup Match at Conwy Golf Club in Caernarvonshire, Wales.

   For the most part, in addition to winning the next hole and the next match, Castle of West Columbia, S.C. was concerned with getting together an outfit or a place to stay for the next day.

   But there the 20-year-old was late on a Sunday afternoon at Westchester Country Club in Rye, N.Y. hoisting the Robert Cox Trophy and being asked if she had ever been to Wales because her victory in the U.S. Women’s Amateur made her an automatic selection to the U.S. team.

   I never got back to the U.S. Women’s Amateur a few weeks ago after the Philadelphia area’s local interest, Jackie Rogowicz, the former Pennsbury and Penn State standout, lost in the opening round to Emma Spitz, the UCLA junior from Austria who was No. 10 in the Women’s World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR) at the time.

   But I knew the rescheduled Curtis Cup Match was coming, so I figured I could go back and recap Castle’s unlikely run to the U.S. Women’s Amateur crown as sort of a preview of the biennial – when the schedule isn’t ravaged by a global pandemic – meeting between the Stars & Stripes and Great Britain & Ireland.

   Castle was clearly overwhelmed with all the perks she had earned by winning the most prestigious title in women’s amateur golf. But one of them was the most immediate because in a couple of weeks she’d be packed onto a plane along with her semifinal victim, Rachel Heck, and the rest of the U.S. team headed across the pond to compete against Great Britain & Ireland at Conwy.

   Turns out I mistimed this post because the 41^st Curtis Cup Match is very much under way and a strong Great Britain & Ireland team got off to a rousing start Thursday, grabbing a 4-and-a-half-1-and-a-half lead after three morning four-ball matches and three afternoon foursomes matches.

   I have a little roundup of Day 1 at the end of this post, but since most of the U.S. Women’s Amateur recap was already done, I’m letting it go and then getting to the Curtis Cup stuff at the end.

   “I don’t even know where (Wales) is, but I’m excited,” Castle told the USGA website after claiming a 2 and 1 victory over Arizona junior Yu-Chiang (Vivian) Hou of Chinese Taipei in the scheduled 36-hole U.S. Women’s Amateur final. “I’ve never been out of the country so that’s really exciting. I’m just excited to represent United States. That’s always been a dream of mine.”

   In the same first round of match play during which Penn sophomore Elle Nachman stunned Rose Zhang, the No. 1 player in the Women’s WAGR then and now, and Castle’s Kentucky teammate Marissa Werzler knocked off qualifying medalist Rachel Kuehn, a Wake Forest junior, Castle continued the giant-killing trend by handing SMU senior Kennedy Pedigo, the runnerup to Kuehn in qualifying, a 3 and 2 setback.

   Werzler and Castle were the survivors of a playoff among 12 women for the final two spots in the match-play bracket after 36 holes of qualifying was completed and then proceeded to knock off the top two seeds. Pretty good women’s golf day for a men’s basketball school.

   And for Castle, well, it was just the beginning.

   She earned a 1-up decision over Sophie Linder, a teen phenom from Carthage, Tenn., in the second round, cruised past Georgia senior Jenny Bae, 4 and 2, in the round of 16 and really started gaining some momentum with a 6 and 5 dismantling of Virginia Tech senior Emily Mahar in the quarterfinals.

   Surely, though, Heck was going to be tough a customer to handle in the semifinals. Heck, one of the all-time greats on the American Junior Golf Association (AJGA) circuit, had launched her college career at Stanford in the spring by winning the NCAA individual crown at Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, Ariz.

   Surely Castle’s Cinderella run was over when Heck grabbed a 2-up lead with three holes to play by holing a chip shot from 35 feet away for birdie. But Castle never stopped coming. Heck bunkered her tee shot at the par-3 16^th hole and Castle drew within 1-down with a par.

   It still looked like Heck was headed to the final when she needed to make a four-footer for par at the 18^th hole, but she yanked the putt for a bogey and Castle had life, the match all even and headed for the 19^th hole.

   Nearly driving the short par-4 10^th hole at Westchester, Castle left herself 15 feet for birdie, although Heck was inside her on the same line. Castle calmly drained her birdie putt and when Heck’s birdie try cruelly lipped out, Castle was in the final.

   You could excuse U.S. Curtis Cup captain Sarah Ingram if she wasn’t openly rooting for Castle in the final. A really good player would get bumped if Castle earned an automatic spot on the team by winning the U.S. Women’s Amateur, but who wouldn’t want somebody who competed as hard as Castle did at Westchester on their team for a match-play event? Castle’s fierceness jumped off the television screen and, I suspect, was even more apparent in person.

   That fierceness was on display in the title match as Castle was 2-down after the morning 18 holes of the scheduled 36-hole final. Castle was taking on two-fifths of the Arizona golf team that reached the semifinals of the NCAA Championship at Grayhawk as Vivian Hou’s big sister, Yu-Sung Hou, was on the bag for her sis.

   But Castle didn’t completely come out of nowhere. She, Werzler and Laney Frye, who also qualified for the match-play bracket at Westchester, were part of a Kentucky team that qualified for the NCAA Championship by finishing in fourth place as a 10 seed in the Columbus Regional in the spring.

   Castle came roaring out of the break in the match by winning three of the first four holes with birdies, to turn her 2-down deficit into a 1-up advantage. When Castle won the 26^th hole with a par, she was 2-up. She widened her lead to 3-up by winning the 29^th hole with a par.

   Hou, who came to Westchester at No. 21 in the Women’s WAGR, battled back, winning the 30^th hole by getting it up-and down at the par-5 hole for a birdie and then draining a birdie putt at the 31^st hole to creep within 1-down. Hou missed an eight-footer for par at the 33^rd hole to fall 2-down again, but came right back, drilling her tee shot at the par-3 34^th hole to four feet and making the birdie putt to again get within 1-down with two holes to play.

   But Castle, as she had all week long, had the answer, rolling in a nine-footer for birdie on the 35^th for the dagger. Castle arrived at Westchester at No. 248 in the Women’s WAGR. When the Curtis Cup Match teed off Thursday in North Wales, she had risen to No. 146.

   Ingram has a strong hand at Conwy, led by Zhang and Heck, Nos. 1 and 2 respectively in the Women’s WAGR. They will be teammates at Stanford when they return from North Wales, a pretty scary prospect for the rest of Division I college golf.

   Zhang of Irvine, Calif., Heck of Memphis, Tenn. and Allisen Corpuz of Kapolei, Hawaii, No. 9 in the Women’s WAGR, were automatic selections to the U.S. team due to their standing as the top three Americans in the Women’s WAGR. Not exactly sure what Corpuz’s plans are, but if the five-year Southern California standout has aspirations to be a pro, she probably delayed them to be part of this Curtis Cup Match.

   A couple of days after Castle was added to the roster with her victory at Westchester, the USGA’s International Team Selection Committee added Kuehn, No. 23 in the latest Women’s WAGR, her Wake Forest teammate Emilia Migliaccio, ranked 15^th, Duke senior Gina Kim, ranked 17^th, and Arkansas’ Brooke Matthews, ranked 35^th.

   As I mentioned, this is no pushover Great Britain & Ireland team, which it showed with its strong start Thursday.

   Florida junior Annabell Fuller, No. 27 in the Women’s WAGR, and Florida State sophomore Charlotte Heath, No. 53 in the Women’s WAGR, opened the proceedings Thursday by rolling to a 4 and 3 decision over the Wake Forest teammates, Kuehn and Migliaccio, in a four-ball match. Emily Toy and Caley McGinty, who transferred from Kent State to Oklahoma State this summer, claimed a 3 and 1 victory over Duke's Kim and Matthews.

   Ingram paired the soon-to-be Stanford teammates Zhang and Heck, but that powerful tandem needed a win by Zhang on the 18^th hole to salvage a half-point against Louise Duncan and teen phenom Hannah Darling.

   Castle made her first appearance in an afternoon foursome match and she and Kim suffered a 2 and 1 setback at the hands of Lauren Walsh, a teammate of Kuehn and Migliaccio at Wake Forest, and McGinty.

   GB&I captain Elaine Ratcliffe paired Fuller and Darling in the afternoon and the talented teens edged Heck and Migliaccio, 1-up.

   Zhang teamed with Corpuz in the afternoon and the pair earned the lone full point of the day for the United States with a 1-up victory over Toy and Annabel Wilson.

   The good news is that the U.S. has two more days and the talent to stage a comeback. It won’t be easy. A Curtis Cup Match in Great Britain & Ireland is a big deal, much moreso than it is when it’s staged in our country. It’s always a bit of a shock to the system for players new to international play to realize the fans are rooting against you, pretty loudly and passionately. The best sound the U.S. team might hear this weekend is the sound of silence.

   The really good news for Castle is that the USGA will be taking care of her outfits for the rest of the weekend.

   If you’re an early riser or you’re up late, it looks like The Golf Channel coverage of Day 2 gets under way at 2:30 a.m. East Coast time. I guarantee you will be entertained. Think of it as an appetizer for the Solheim Cup and Ryder Cup battles on the horizon.