A Curtis Cup at Merion made it a sure thing that 2022 would be special

   It was always going to be a special year, 2022, because I knew I was going to get a chance to see some of the best amateur women golfers in the world, many of whom I’ll be watching on TV playing on the LPGA Tour for years to come, teeing it up in the Curtis Cup Match at my favorite golf course in the world, the historic East Course at Merion Golf Club in the Ardmore section of Haverford Township.

   The experience exceeded my expectations.

   If you’ve read any of my posts about Merion, you know I grew up in the neighborhood four blocks below the eighth tee on the East Course, that I looped there for 12 seasons, mostly in the 1970s, that I was a forecaddie on hole No. 6 in the 1971 U.S. Open and brown-nosed my way into the playoff between Jack Nicklaus and Lee Trevino – I had the even holes – and looped for Jay Cudd, assistant pro at Scioto Country Club, in the 1981 U.S. Open.

   Through all the great experiences I had at Merion over the years, though, the 2009 Walker Cup Match when the Rickie Fowler-led U.S. team defeated Great Britain & Ireland, was right up there with my favorite Merion memories. I was able to cover that Walker Cup for the Delaware County Daily Times while in the midst of a 38-year journalism career, spent mostly covering sports of all sorts.

   It’s why I so looked forward to the 42^nd Curtis Cup when it was announced that the event was coming to Merion for the first time since 1954.

   I had started this blog when I was still working at the Daily Times. When the inevitable layoff notice came in 2015, I figured I might as well keep the blog going. In following some of the Delco kids I had covered when they were in high school, I got hooked on things like college golf and totally underrated and under-covered amateur events like the Walker Cup and the Curtis Cup.

   I was vaguely aware of the college golf scene when the Walker Cup came to Merion in 2009, but I had been closely following the college scene in the years leading up to the 2022 Curtis Cup. I was very much aware just how talented all the young women who were coming to Merion were.

   The U.S. team was filled with current college standouts, but the Great Britain & Ireland side was largely comprised of top college players as well.

   If you wanted to bring in 16 young ladies who were outstanding players, but who could also be ambassadors of the game, role models for the young boys and girls who flocked to Merion to watch them play, the committees that selected these two teams succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

   As impressed as I was by the high level of play that I saw at Merion, it was the way the women behaved when they weren’t in the lineup for a session that is my most vivid memory of the Curtis Cup.

   Megha Ganne, the Jersey girl who was either about to or just had graduated from high school, was signing autographs and asking her young fans, “Do you play golf?”

   Ganne’s future Stanford teammate, Rachel Heck, used her session off to hand out glitter like they were going to stop making the stuff. At least half the kids following the matches had an American flag in glitter on one or both of their cheeks.

   And then there was the golf.

   U.S. team captain Sarah Ingram fearlessly teamed her two youngest, least experienced players, Ganne and Amari Avery, in a four-ball match in Friday morning’s first session because she knew just how, well, fearless the youngsters were.

   You’d think a couple of teen-agers playing on an international stage on one of the most iconic courses in golf might be a little intimidated. Not these two. Ganne and Avery rolled to a 3 and 2 decision over a really strong GB&I pair of Caley McGinty and Lauren Walsh as the U.S. won two of the first session’s three matches.

   Ganne had wowed the golf world by contending in the U.S. Women’s Open a year earlier at the Olympic Club before settling for low-amateur honors. Avery of Riverside, Calif. had toyed with the idea of turning pro, but instead enrolled at Southern California and was one of the hottest players in college golf in the second half of the wraparound 2021-2022 season.

   The best stretch of pure talent I saw the whole weekend came in the second session Friday afternoon when I caught up with the Stanford pair of Rose Zhang, the No. 1 player in the Women’s World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR), and Heck.

   Zhang had just won the individual NCAA crown while leading the Cardinal to the team title at Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, Ariz. as a freshman. Heck had won the NCAA individual crown at Grayhawk a year earlier as a freshman and was also a big part of Stanford’s run to the national championship a few weeks before arriving at Merion.

   Two players of that caliber playing in an alternate-shot format would be easy, right? But think about it. Golf is the ultimate individual sport. In a foursome match, a poor shot by your partner leaves you in a precarious position completely not of your doing.

   But Zhang and Heck are not just high golf IQ women, they’re high IQ people, period. And it showed. It was like watching two golfers become one.

   When I caught up to their match, Zhang and Heck were 1-down to Florida State teammates Charlotte Heath and Amelia Williamson after six holes.

   Zhang stuck their approach to 12 feet at the seventh hole and Heck drained the birdie putt to even the match. Heck’s approach at the short, par-4 eighth hole nearly went off the back of the tiny green, but then spun back to five feet and Zhang made the birdie putt.

   Heck drilled her tee shot to an impossible pin at the par-3 ninth hole to five feet, a birdie putt Heath and Williamson ultimately conceded when they couldn’t make par. Just like that, Zhang and Heck went from 1-down to 2-up on their way to a 4 and 2 victory that capped a spectacular 5-1 day for the homestanding US of A.

   GB&I battled valiantly and seemed to be on the verge of getting back into it throughout Saturday’s two sessions, but the U.S. kept getting big putts to fall when it needed them most and still took a commanding 8.5-3.5 lead into the Sunday singles.

   Any of those matches would have been worth a follow, but I settled on Emilia Migliaccio, the once and future Wake Forest standout, against Annabell Fuller, a star at Florida who was playing in her third Curtis Cup Match for GB&I.

   Migliaccio had once seemed to be on a fast track to the LPGA Tour. But she reassessed things in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic, announcing she would remain an amateur for the foreseeable future in the days leading up to the 2021 Augusta National Women’s Amateur Championship, which she lost in a playoff.

   She had taken the 2021-’22 college season off to take an internship with The Golf Channel and a few weeks before the Curtis Cup was doing post-round interviews of her U.S. Curtis Cup teammates at the NCAA Championship at Grayhawk. Migliaccio was back at Wake Forest this fall, taking the extra year of eligibility the NCAA granted to those who saw their seasons end prematurely in 2020 in those uncertain first months of the pandemic.

   I was curious to see how Migliaccio was playing, but I had an ulterior motive. Fuller’s caddy at Merion was Nate Oxman, a long-time Merion looper who used to be one of my Central League contacts when he was the golf coach at Haverford High.

   There’s a great shot of Oxman in a really neat feature story authored by David Shefter of the USGA on all the Merion loopers who caddied, for both teams, in the Curtis Cup. If you Google “2022 Curtis Cup Match,” you can still find that story on the USGA’s home page from the event. The Merion caddies did all of us former Merion loopers proud that week.

   Migliaccio was really good that day, rolling to a 6 and 5 victory over Fuller as the U.S. swept to wins in seven of the eight singles matches. If Migliaccio remains an amateur, she just might show up on another U.S. Curtis Cup team in 2024 at Sunningdale Golf Club in Ascot, England.

   The final count was U.S. 15.5, GB&I 4.5. It said a lot more about the talent on the U.S. side than any shortcomings on the GB&I team because, trust me, you’re going to be hearing from a lot of the gals on that GB&I team in the years to come.

   It was old-home week for me at Merion as I ran into a couple of my old caddy buddies and even a few of my current caddy colleagues from Stonewall, where I have launched a second act to my caddy career in recent years.

   The golf course, lovingly restored by Gil Hanse since the 2013 U.S. Open, was its classic self. Much like the Walker Cup in 2009, Merion was much easier to navigate during a Curtis Cup Match than it had been during that 2013 U.S. Open. To get to wander around the East Course watching all those wonderful players playing all those great shots that Merion requires for free was the biggest bargain in golf in 2022.

   The Curtis Cup was one of just three big events that were staged in our area in 2022 as the U.S. Senior Open returned to Saucon Valley Country Club’s Old Course for the third time in Bethlehem a couple of weeks after the Curtis Cup and Wilmington Country Club’s South Course hosted the BMW Championship, the penultimate stop in the FedEx Cup Playoffs, in August It would be the first PGA Tour event ever held in Delaware.

   I did preview stories for Joe Burkhardt’s Tri-State Golfer for both events, meeting with Mimi Griffin, who has been doing behind-the-scenes work at USGA Championships, mostly the U.S. Open, for three decades, at Saucon Valley, as well as Tom Humphrey, the chairman of Wilmington’s BMW effort, and Jon Urbanski, the director of golf courses and grounds, at Wilmington.

   I had a nice chat with Pete Kowalski, who ran the press room for the USGA for the 2009 Walker Cup at Merion, at this year’s Curtis Cup. He had the highest regard for Griffin, with whom he’s worked many times over the years. Of the many people who help put on golf tournaments I’ve met over the years, she’s as sharp as they come.

   They had a popular winner at Saucon Valley as Ireland’s Padraig Harrington, a three-time major champion during his younger days, showed his class by taking the U.S. Senior Open crown for his first major success as a senior.

   You put on a big golf event in the Philadelphia area and the golf fans will come out in droves. It was the case in August as the people at Wilmington put on a great show with Patrick Cantlay successfully defending the BMW Championship he won at Caves Valley a year earlier with another display of precision golf at the South Course.

   Had a sense that big things might be coming in 2022 for Nick Gross when the Downingtown West junior finished alone in fourth place in the 11^th Junior Invitational at Sage Valley Golf Club in Graniteville, S.C. in March, a relatively recent addition to the junior circuit that keeps getting more prestigious with each passing year.

   But the kid took the world of amateur golf by storm in the summer, culminating with an astounding run to the quarterfinals of the U.S. Amateur at The Ridgewood Country Club in Paramus, N.J. just before he turned 16 in August.

   Gross had reached the second round of match play in the U.S. Junior Amateur at the Bandon Dunes Resort on the rugged Oregon coastline in July, a pretty nice accomplishment in its own right.

   It was in wrapping up a really strong showing for Gross in the Boys Junior PGA Championship at Cog Hill Golf & Country Club in suburban Chicago, where he contended all week before finishing in third place, that I realized he had snuck in a U.S. Amateur qualifier before heading to Bandon Dunes and had earned a spot in the field at Ridgewood.

   As good as Gross was in getting to the quarterfinals at Ridgewood, I’m not so sure that his very best work in 2022 came in the U.S. Amateur qualifier at Canoe Brook Country Club’s North Course in Summit, N.J., where he was the runnerup with a 7-under 137 total.

   Do you have any idea how competitive a U.S. Amateur qualifier for what essentially is a home U.S. Amateur can be? I covered the U.S. Amateur qualifier at Rolling Green Golf Club and Llanerch Country Club for the 2005 U.S. Amateur at Merion. The competition was as fierce as anything I’ve ever seen.

   I’m sure anybody who’s anybody in amateur golf circles in New Jersey was at Canoe Brook that day and the 15-year-old kid from Downingtown beat all of them but one.

   Then Gross gets to Ridgewood and survives a 15-man playoff for the final 11 spots in the match-play bracket, then he beats Cohen Trolio of West Point, Miss., the teen phenom when he reached the semifinals of the 2019 U.S. Amateur at Pinehurst, 3 and 1, in the opening round of match play, then he beats Chris Francoeur, who starred collegiately at Rhode Island and Louisville, 3 and 2, in the second round and then he beats Luke Potter of Encinitas, Calif., who was wrapping up a stellar junior career, 4 and 3, in the round of 16 and … boom … he’s in the quarterfinals of the U.S. Amateur.

   I know how good Gross is and I was surprised. I can’t imagine what the rest of the golf world was thinking.

   The ride ended at the hands of Dylan Menante, who is wrapping up his college career by taking his fifth season at North Carolina after helping Pepperdine capture a national championship in 2021 at Grayhawk and reach the semifinals last spring.

   Menante of Carlsbad, Calif., No. 8 in the World Amateur Ranking (WAGR) at the time, defeated Gross, 4 and 3, before taking the eventual champion, Sam Bennett, the Texas A&M standout from Madisonville, Texas, to the 18^th hole and suffering a 1-up setback in the semifinals.

   A couple of months later, there was Gross firing a breathtaking 8-under 64 at Turtle Creek Golf Course in the final round of the District One Class AAA Championship to beat a strong field by nine shots with a remarkable 14-under 130 total.

   Gross was mostly focused on the district team competition and his 64 did lead Downingtown West to the first District One Class AAA title in program history as the Whippets finished four shots clear of Spring-Ford.

   Gross might have finally hit the wall a couple of weeks later as he settled for a third-place finish in defense of his PIAA Class AAA title, the state tournament returning to Penn State for the first time in more than two decades.

   By the time Gross finished in 10^th place in the Rolex Tournament of Championships, the marquee event on the American Junior Golf Association (AJGA) circuit, at TPC San Antonio’s Canyons Course in late November, he had announced that he had made a verbal commitment to join the program at Southeastern Conference power Alabama in the summer of 2024.

   There is a lot to look forward to in 2023 for Gross. The run to the quarterfinals at Ridgewood exempts him from local qualifying for the U.S. Open in the spring and he’s exempt from qualifying for the U.S. Junior Amateur at the Daniel Island Club in Charleston, S.C. in July and for the U.S. Amateur at Cherry Hills Country Club, the William Flynn classic in Cherry Hills Village, Colo. in August.

   A couple of players from Philadelphia’s Pennsylvania suburbs did come home from Penn State with state championship medals in October.

   Lower Merion senior Sydney Yermish culminated her brilliant scholastic career by repeating as the winner of the PIAA Class AAA Championship, albeit over a different golf course, the White Course at Penn State. She had won the 2021 crown at the Heritage Hills Golf Resort in York County and had lost in a playoff at Heritage Hills as a freshman in 2019.

   Phoenixville freshman Kayley Roberts finished three shots behind Yermish in second place. A day later, Kayley Roberts and big sister Kate, a junior, led the way as the Phantoms captured the PIAA Class AAA team crown. I don’t think we’ve heard the last from the Roberts siblings.

   A couple of weeks earlier, Yermish had won the District One Class AAA crown for a third time at Turtle Creek by three shots over a trio of players that included Kate Roberts.

   Yermish heads for a Michigan program that has suddenly joined the Purdues, the Northwesterns and the Michigan States as a Big Ten power next summer with three district and two state crowns on her resume, right up there with anybody who has come out of District One in the last 20 years or so.

   Devon Prep junior Nick Ciocca captured the gold medal in the PIAA Class AA Championship, winning by a shot at Penn State’s Blue Course. Ciocca, a product of the junior program at Aronimink Golf Club, teed it up in the Boys Junior PGA Championship at Cog Hill, but failed to survive the 36-hole cut.

   Ciocca will join Calen Sanderson, the 2020 PIAA Class AAA champion as a senior at Holy Ghost Prep, at Notre Dame, a rising power in the extremely competitive Atlantic Coast Conference, in the summer of 2024.

   The Philadelphia area had a strong group at Cog Hill as Gross and Ciocca were joined by Norristown’s Josh Ryan, who won the Golf Association of Philadelphia’s Junior Boys’ crown for a third straight summer at Bala Golf Club and was GAP’s Junior Player of the Year for a second time in three years. Like Ciocca, Ryan came up just short of making the 36-hole cut at Cog Hill.

   Ryan’s college career at Division I power Liberty is off to a strong start as he had a couple of solid showings in the last two tournaments on the fall schedule of the Flames’ wraparound 2022-’23 season.

   Shot of the year? That’s an easy one.

   Malvern Prep freshman Davis Conaway arrived at Llanerch’s enticingly short par-4 18^th hole trailing Germantown Academy junior Ajeet Bagga by a shot in the battle for the title in the Bert Linton individual Inter-Ac League Championship.

   Conaway would say he had heard the 18^th at Llanerch, a wonderful layout that hosted the PGA Championship in 1958, was driveable, but that it wasn’t necessarily the smart shot. But he’s 14 and he needed a birdie and it was 276 yards with a little wind behind. Out came the driver.

   Even if it wasn’t a tournament that he was trying to win, it would have been a brilliant strike by Conaway. The ball never left the flag as the sun broke through for the first time on a day that had been foggy and showery up to that point. The ball cleared the front bunker and settled on the tiny green, 20 feet from the pin.

   Conaway, who had helped the Friars win their first Inter-Ac League crown in seven years, calmly put the driver back in his bag, retrieved his putter and took the putter cover off. Long walk with a putter indeed.

   Bagga, who had been the Inter-Ac’s best player during the league’s six invitationals that comprise the regular-season schedule, laid back with an iron and stuck his approach to 12 feet.

   Conaway’s eagle try slipped five feet past the tricky pin, but Bagga’s birdie try got away from him on the low side. Conaway buried his birdie putt and when Bagga ever-so-slightly pulled his four-footer for par, Conaway was the Bert Linton winner.

   I was headed for the media center next to the driving range at Merion during the Curtis Cup while a clinic for junior girls was under way, the little girls, say in the 7- to 8-year old range, whaling away with drivers.

   After I had walked past, I heard a frustrated voice utter, “this is impossible.” But in 2022 I saw what is possible when a young player puts his or her mind to it on the golf course. Let’s leave it at almost impossible and just keep trying and see what 2023 has in store.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Martin, Joyce head group of Philly Junior Tour Player of the Year winners for 2022

   La Salle junior Ethan Martin had quite a season on the Philadelphia Section PGA Junior Tour.

   Martin beat players of all ages to capture the Philly Junior Tour Championship in August at Chester Valley Golf Club and was again the overall winner against all age groups in a two-day event at Hickory Valley Golf Club’s Ambassador and Presidential courses in June.

   Those two wins were part of a year of excellence that enabled Martin, a Lansdale resident, to sweep to a pair of top honors in the 13-to-15 age group in 2022, winning Player of the Year and capturing the Sam Penecale Scoring Average Award.

   I was hoping to get my hands on a summary of the different award winners’ accomplishments in 2022, but none was available. So, I just checked the T Mac Tees Off database, which contains results from the vast majority of the various Philly Junior Tour events in 2022.

   I tried to find as many tournament victories as I could for the Player of the Year and Sam Penecale Scoring Average Award winners, but it’s possible I missed one here or there, and Dane Mohap, the coed 12-and-under Player of the Year and San Penecale Scoring Average Award winner, won way too many tournaments to list all of his victories. Suffice it to say, all of the players in this post were the best of the best on the Philly Junior Tour in 2022.

   The Philly Junior Tour is almost designed to send its best players to the next level, whether that’s American Junior Golf Association (AJGA) or Golf Association of Philadelphia (GAP) or Pennsylvania Golf Association (PAGA) junior, or even open, events.

   But not everybody has the option of branching out and the Philly Junior Tour schedule gives players plenty of opportunities to compete at all kinds of golf courses throughout the region. It’s fun, just by rounding up all the events, to watch them keep getting better and better.

   That was certainly the case for Martin in 2022. His victory at Indian Spring Golf Course in Marlton, N.J. in April was a preview of things to come.

   Martin’s victory at Skippack Golf Club in June saw his game in top form heading down the road in Montgomery County for the two-day event at Hickory Valley. The Philly Junior Tour two-day events produce an overall winner in the 13-to-18 age group in addition to breaking out the usual Junior Tour divisions.

   Martin captured the overall title, beating a strong field of junior players from all over the region over two rounds.

   Martin claimed another victory in the 13-to-15 division at Ramblewood Country Club in Mt. Laurel Township, N.J. in July.

   Martin was at his best in again in beating the entire field of 13-to-18 players in the Philly Junior Tour Championship with a sparkling 1-over-par 71 at Chester Valley, a classic layout that once hosted the top senior pros in a regular stop on what is now known at the PGA Tour Champions in its early years.

   Martin put together a solid average of 74.08 to claim the Sam Penecale Scoring Average Award in the 13-to-15 division.

   Sam Penecale was the long-time head pro at Whitemarsh Valley Country Club and one of the Philadelphia Section’s top players who made giving junior players as many competitive opportunities as possible one of his priorities.

   Martin had qualified as an individual for the PIAA Class AAA Championship as a sophomore in 2021. He was unable to match that feat this fall, but he did help La Salle win Catholic League and District 12 team crowns and teed it up with the Explorers in the PIAA Class AAA team competition at Penn State in October. La Salle finished in fourth place.

   Quakertown junior Nick Joyce was the Player of the Year in the 16-to-18 division.

   Joyce was particularly strong in the early part of the Philly Junior Tour’s 2022 schedule, starting with an impressive victory in a two-day event at Seaview Golf Club’s Pines Course in Galloway Township, N.J. in March.

   Joyce added a victory in another of the Philly Junior Tour’s two-day events, this one at Turtle Creek Golf Course in June. Turtle Creek hosts the District One Championship in the fall, so the Philly Junior Tour two-day event in June always draws one of the most competitive fields since players in the Philadelphia suburbs want to get a look at the Turtle in case they earn a trip there for districts in the fall.

   In between his wins at Seaview and at Turtle Creek, Joyce topped the field in the 16-to-18 division at Landis Creek Golf Club in Limerick, at Out Door Country Club in York in May and at Indian Valley Country Club in Telford in June.

   Martin and Joyce both represented the Philly Junior Tour in the Jon M. Pritsch Cup, a Ryder Cup style series of matches against the top players from the New Jersey Section PGA in August at Spring Brook Country Club in Morristown, N.J. The Jersey kids retained the Pritsch Cup with a 12-6 victory.

   The Sam Penecale Scoring Average Award winner in the 16-to-18 division went to Justin Forman of Sewell, N.J., whose consistency was evident in his average of 75.50.

   Forman went low in taking top honors among the older guys at Medford Lakes Country Club in Medford, N.J. with a 2-over 73 in July and again when he matched par with a 70 at Indian Spring Golf Course in Evesham, N.J. to claim a Philly Junior Tour win in August.

   Forman finished three shots behind Martin in the Philly Junior Tour Championship at Chester Valley with a 4-over 74, capturing first place in the 16-to-18 division in a playoff.

   West Chester Rustin junior Sophia DeSantis was the winner of both Player of the Year and the Sam Penecale Scoring Average Award in the girls 16-to-18 division.

   DeSantis got her season off to a strong start by topping the field of older girls in the Philly Junior Tour stop at Out Door in May.

   She followed that up by earning runnerup honors in the 16-to-18 division in the two-day Precision Pro Golf event at Penn State and finishing third in the overall scoring.

   When her high school season wrapped up in October, DeSantis went back to work on the Philly Junior Tour, earning victories in the 16-to-18 division at Garrisons Lake Golf Club in Smyrna, Del. in October and then sweeping to wins on the final weekend of the season at the Jersey Shore last month at Avalon Golf Club and Cape May National Golf Club.

   DeSantis took the Sam Penecale Scoring Average Award with an average of 85.18 for the season.

   In searching around a little, DeSantis’ name appeared on the Daily Local News All-Area Girls Golf first team. DeSantis finished in fourth place in a very competitive field in the Ches-Mont League Championship at Applecross Country Club.

   Like DeSantis, Katherine Liu of Moorestown, N.J. was both the Player of the Year and the winner of the Sam Penecale Scoring Average Award in the 13-to-15 division.

   Liu played a lot of golf on the Philly Junior Tour in 2022 and she won a lot.

   She topped the 13-to-15 division field at Centerton Golf Club in Pittsgrove, N.J. in April, won at Indian Valley in June at Medford Lakes and Ramblewood in July and was a back-to-back winner at Paxon Hollow and Indian Spring in August.

   Liu finished in fourth place among the younger girls and sixth overall with a solid 84 in the Philly Junior Tour Championship at Chester Valley.

   Liu then added a third win in August in the 13-to-15 division at Philmont before wrapping up a busy month by representing the Philly Junior Tour in the Pritsch Cup at Spring Brook.

   Liu’s season was nowhere near over, however. She won the 13-to-15 division at Bala Golf Club in September, topped her age group at Linfield National in October and bested the field of younger girls on that final weekend last month at Avalon.

   Liu won the Sam Penecale Scoring Average Award with a solid 85.00 average and that included a ton of Philly Junior Tour starts.

   Then there was Mohap, the youngster from Nazareth who dominated a very competitive coed 12-and-division.

   When he shared first place with Ian Rotto of Kennett Square, each carding a 1-over 36 at Spring Hollow Golf Club in Spring City in October, the Philly Junior Tour release said it was 23^rd time that Mohap had bested the field of nine-holers.

   On the final weekend of October, Mohap added two more victories, earning a sweep of events at Berkleigh Country Club and Lebanon Country Club. So, figure Mohap had in the neighborhood of 25 wins. It was a lot of wins, whatever it was.

   What makes Mohap’s year even more impressive was that it was achieved in probably the Philly Junior Tour’s most competitive age group. Rotto really had it going late in the year and regularly challenged Mohap’s dominance.

   Early in the year, Mohap’s fellow Nazareth entries, Alex DiGiacinto and Holden Sparks, could routinely be found on the nine-holers’ leaderboard. If Mohap, DiGiacinto and Sparks all end up on the same high school team in a few years, look out.

   Mohap’s consistency was rewarded with the Sam Penecale Scoring Average Award as he averaged 39.41 for the season.

   In 2018, the Philly Junior Tour’s coed 12-and-under division Player of the Year was Nick Gross of Downingtown. Last summer, Gross was playing in the quarterfinals of the U.S. Amateur at The Ridgewood Country Club in Paramus, N.J., having not quite reached his 16^th birthday.

   I’m not saying that any of 2022’s nine-holers are going to be in the quarterfinals of the 2026 U.S. Amateur – scheduled to be played at Merion Golf Club’s historic East Course in the Ardmore section of Haverford Township, by the way. But Gross has shown what’s possible when a kid gets turned on to the game at a young age.

   The beauty of the Philly Junior Tour is that these kids are out there playing real golf. They’re counting all the shots, they’re holing all the putts. They’re learning that every shot matters when you’re playing competitive golf.

   They’re also learning to enjoy playing a game that some of them will still be playing in 2072.

   This is always a good time of the year to give a shout-out to all the people who got all these kids to the first tee for their starting times. Some parents spent some serious time behind the wheel getting their kids and, I’m sure some of their kids’ friends, to golf courses in every corner of the region, from Lebanon to the Jersey Shore from Scranton to Rehoboth Beach, Del.

   A much-deserved shout-out as well to the Philly Junior Tour’s title sponsor, the Valley Forge Tourism & Convention Board. The VFTCB is a tireless supporter of golf, particularly in Montgomery County, but its sponsorship of the Philly Junior Tour is an investment in helping to ensure there will be plenty of golfers who want to play all of the golf courses in the region for years to come.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Former Strath Haven standout Smith has a solid showing in Women's Dixie Amateur

   By a lot of measures, Grace Smith’s scholastic career at Strath Haven was a tremendous success.

   The highlight was her sophomore year in the fall of 2019 when, along with older brother Kevin, who was a senior, the Panthers captured the first Central League crown in the program’s history and followed that up by claiming the District One Class AAA team crown, another program first.

   Grace Smith, who had only really started playing competitively in the summer before her freshman season at Strath Haven, also earned a trip to the PIAA Class AAA Championship as an individual and finished in ninth place among the best big-school girls in the state at the Heritage Hills Golf Resort in York County.

   It would be Smith’s final appearance at the state tournament.

   With the world still reeling from the onset of the coronavirus pandemic the previous spring, Smith never got a chance to compete in the postseason in 2020 as the Central League, with school districts in the league unable to come together on a game plan, was unable to put together a District One qualifier in time to get its players eligible to compete.

   The league did stage a championship tournament the week after the state tournament was completed and Smith carded a solid 78 at Downingtown Country Club and helped the Panthers claim a one-time tournament team title.

   Smith’s senior season at Strath Haven saw the Panthers again claim a Central League title, although individually it was a disappointing senior year as she was unable to advance out of the District One Class AAA Championship at Turtle Creek Golf Course.

   So, while her last two years might not have gone the way she might have hoped individually, Smith’s last three years have to be considered the golden age of the Strath Haven golf program and she was right in the middle of all of it.

   Smith had interest from several Division I programs and finally settled on Stetson in DeLand, Fla., just north of Orlando. The Hatters compete in the competitive ASUN and the program, in a state filled with some of the biggest names in Division I college golf, is not exactly high-powered.

   Smith landed in first-year head coach Teresa Brown’s starting lineup right away this fall. And while many players around the country will have to settle for working on a simulator during the midseason pause in the wraparound 2022-2023 season, Smith will be able to play plenty of golf outdoors, in the sunshine.

   That’s exactly what Smith was doing in the Dixie Women’s Amateur, which wrapped up Sunday at Palm Aire Country Club’s Cypress Course in Sarasota on Florida’s West Coast.

   Smith finished up with a 1-over-par 72 over the par-71 Palm Aire Course in Sunday’s final round to land among the group tied for 36^th place with a 13-over 297 total against a field filled with talented college players and top junior players fleeing to Florida for a competitive opportunity.

   Smith was really solid in Sunday’s final round as she followed up a birdie at the fourth hole with a bogey at six and then rattled off 11 straight pars before a bogey at the last.

   Smith had opened with back-to-back 5-over 76s in the first two rounds before posting a solid 2-over 73 in Saturday’s third round, a loop that again featured a strong finish as she made eight straight pars on her way to the clubhouse.

   Not sure if the Dixie Women’s Amateur is considered a part of the unofficial Orange Blossom Tour of winter events for amateur women, but there are several other big events to come in the next month, including next week’s Citrus Golf Trail Ladies Invitational in Sebring, Fla., the successor to the venerable Harder Hall Women’s Invitational.

   The Dixie Women’s Amateur title went to Emma Schimpf, a sophomore at the College of Charleston who prevailed on the third hole of a playoff with Katie Li of Basking Ridge, N.J., who will join the program at Atlantic Coast Conference power Duke next summer.

   Schimpf was the runnerup to teammate Viktoria Hund in the individual chase in last spring’s Colonial Athletic Association Championship at The Reserve Club at St. James Plantation in Southport, N.C., helping the Cougars capture the team title. College of Charleston represented the CAA in the NCAA’s Tallahassee Regional.

   Schimpf closed with a rush, making four birdies on the last 10 holes on Palm Aire’s Cypress Course to finish with a 3-under 68 in the final round that gave her a 9-under 275 total. Schimpf had opened with a sparkling 4-under 67 before adding back-to-back 1-under 70s in the second and third rounds.

   Li, a semifinalist in the U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship at Columbia Country Club in Chevy Chase, Md. in 2021, got it to 10-under with a birdie at the 16^th hole, her seventh birdie of the round, but made a bogey at the last as she matched Schimpf’s final round of 3-under 68 to join Schimpf at 9-under.

   Schimpf and Li played the eighth hole three times in the playoff before Schimpf finally claimed the title with a bogey the third time around.

   Ohio State freshman Kary Hollenbaugh led Schimpf and Li by two shots heading into the final round, but closed with a 1-under 71 to share third place with Alice Ziyi Zhao, a talented junior player from Irvine, Calif. via China, both ending up a shot out of the playoff at 8-under 276.

   Hollenbaugh of New Albany, Ohio earned herself a spot in the starting lineup for head coach Lisa Strom’s Buckeyes during the fall of her freshman season.

   Zhao made a huge splash in last summer’s U.S. Women’s Amateur Championship at Chambers Bay in University Place, Wash. as she earned co-medalist honors in qualifying for match play at age 13. Yeah, she’s a Class of 2027 kid, basically an eighth-grader. She gave eventual champion Saki Baba of Japan all she wanted before falling, 3 and 1, in the second round of match play at Chambers Bay.

   Zhao trailed Hollenbaugh by three shots heading into the final round before closing with a solid 1-under 71.

   Another interesting name that showed up in the Dixie Women’s Amateur results was that of Brooke Oberparleiter of Jupiter, Fla. Oberparleiter has family in South Jersey and has had a couple of strong showings in the American Junior Golf Association (AJGA) stop at DuPont Country Club near Wilmington, Del., winning the title in 2021 and finishing in third place last summer.

   Oberparleiter, who will join the program at Kentucky next summer, struggled to a 79 in the final round to finish alone in 61^st place with a 304 total.

   The Men’s Dixie Amateur was held simultaneously at Eagle Trace Golf Club in Coral Springs, Fla. and Jeremy Sisson, a junior at Nebraska from Skaneateles, N.Y., was a wire-to-wire winner.

   Sisson had started his college career at Arkansas in the ill-fated 2019-2020 season and has resurfaced at Nebraska. Eagle Trace played pretty tough all weekend and a steady 1-under 71 over the par-72 layout by Sisson in Sunday’s final round enabled him to capture the title with a 4-under 284 total.

   After opening with a bogey at the first hole, Sisson made birdies at five and eight. A bogey at the 10^th hole dropped him back to 3-under for the championship, but he bounced back with a birdie at 15 that gave him a one-shot victory.

   Sisson got the jump on the field with a 3-under 69 in the opening round and matched par with back-to-back 72s in the middle two rounds to maintain his hold on the lead.

   Tristan Wieland, a junior player out of Jupiter, Fla., closed with an impressive 1-under 71 in Sunday’s final round to earn runnerup honors with a 3-under 283 total.

   Wieland is a Class of ’25 kid, the equivalent of a high school sophomore. He matched par in each of the first two rounds with a pair of 72s and got into contention with a 2-under 70 in Saturday’s third round.

   Jose Vega, a mid-amateur from Doral, Fla., matched par in the final round with a 72 to take third place with a 2-under 286 total, a shot behind Wieland.

   Canadian Angelo Giantsopoulos, coming off a really solid career at Drexel, closed with a 2-under 70 in Sunday’s final round to sneak into the top 10 as he finished in a tie for 10^th place with a 6-over 294 total.

   Giantsopoulos, who was the individual co-champion while leading the Dragons to the team crown in the City 6 Championship in the fall of 2021 at Llanerch Country Club, showed some rust with back-to-back 76s in the first two rounds at Eagle Trace before matching par in the third round with a 72.

   Makes me wonder if Giantsopoulos is considering dipping his toe into the pro ranks in 2023. It would not be the first time that a recent college graduate used the Dixie Men’s Amateur as a springboard to professional golf.

   Nice showing by Penn-Trafford junior Nick Turowski, who made it to the PIAA Class AAA Championship for a second straight time this fall.

   Turowski was stuck on 4-over 76 in the first, third and fourth rounds, but got it in red figures with a 1-under 71 in the second round and landed in a tie for 21^st place with an 11-over 299 total. Turowski plans to join the West Virginia program in the summer of 2024.

   Anthony Cordaro, who had a pair of top-10 finishes in the PIAA Class AAA Championship during a standout scholastic career at Fox Chapel and played his college golf at Lehigh, finished in the group tied for 26^th place with a 301 total.

   Cordaro opened with a 2-under 70 that had him among the leaders following the first round. Cordaro added a 77 in the second round and a 79 in the third round before finishing up with a 3-over 75.

   Karl Frisk, a three-time PIAA Class AAA qualifier during a standout scholastic career at Spring Grove and a sophomore at South Carolina Aiken, closed with a solid 1-under 71 to finish in the group tied for 38^th place with a 304 total.

   Frisk opened with a 3-over 75, but struggled in the middle two rounds with back-to-back 79s.

   David Hurly, a senior at Lehigh, was somewhat overlooked as part of some absolutely loaded Haverford School teams that dominated the Inter-Ac League a few years ago. Hurly claimed medalist honors in the Pennsylvania Independent Schools Athletic Association Championship as a junior in 2017 at White Manor Country Club.

   Hurly showed up on the Dixie Men’s Amateur leaderboard after matching par in the opening round with a 72. Hurly, a product of the junior program at Aronimink Golf Club, struggled after that as he had a pair of 82s in the second and fourth rounds around a 5-over 77 in Saturday’s third round to finish alone in 60^th place with a 313 total.

   Still, Hurly easily survived the 54-hole cut, which fell at 22-over 238.

   A week earlier at Eagle Trace, Greg Sanders made his trek from Anchorage, Alaska worthwhile as he captured the Dixie Senior Amateur crown with a 3-under 213 total.

   The 58-year-old Sanders, a 10-time Alaska Amateur champion, struggled a little in the opening round with a 2-over 74, but got it going after that, carding a solid 3-under 69 in the second round before closing with a 70. The Dixie Senior Amateur wrapped up Dec. 11^th.

   That gave Sanders a two-shot victory over Greg Davies of West Bloomfield, Mich., who finished with a 1-under 215 total.

   Davies had a three-shot advantage on Sanders going into the final round after Davies added a 3-under 69 in the second round to his opening-round 71. But Davies couldn’t get it going in the final round as he posted a 3-over 75 that allowed Sanders to overtake him.

   Jason Lina of Alpharetta, Ga. claimed the top spot in the Dixie Mid-Master Amateur in a playoff with Kristoffer Marshall of Scottsdale, Ariz.

   Lina recorded a 2-under 70 in the final round that enabled him to wipe out a five-shot advantage Marshall, the 2021 Arizona Amateur champion, had on him and catch Marshall at even-par 216. Lina then finished off the playoff on the first hole of sudden death.

   Lina matched par in the opening round with a 72 before adding a 2-over 74 in the second round. After opening with a 2-under 70, Marshall added a solid 1-under 71 in the second round before closing with a 3-over 75.

   Terry Tyson of Perrysburg, Ohio won the Dixie Super Senior Amateur crown by two shots over the defending champion, Stephen Fox of Pinehurst, N.C.

   Tyson matched par in the first and third rounds with 72s around a 2-over 74 in the second round for a 2-over 218 total. Tyson had four birdies on his scorecard in the final round.

   Fox added a 2-over 74 in the second round to his opening-round 76 before closing strong with a 2-under 70 that left him two shots behind Tyson in second place with a 4-over 220 total.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pano joins her three fellow 2018 U.S. Girls' Junior semifinalists on the LPGA Tour after strong finish at Q-Series

    It hasn’t quite been five years since the U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship was contested at Poppy Hills Golf Course on a foggy Monterey Peninsula.

   For the United States Golf Association team that ran the event, it was a weather nightmare. The marine layer kept rolling in off the Pacific Ocean any time it wanted, creating all sorts of delays. So, the USGA did what it always does in situations like that: When it was clear enough to play, the players would play.

   What shone through all that fog was some wonderful play from some really young kids.

   A Saturday that was originally scheduled to be the 36-hole final dawned clear, but with all the delays, the U.S. Girls’ Junior had only reached the semifinals. It would be the eventual champion Yealimi Noh against Gina Kim and Lucy Li against Alexa Pano. The plan was to play the semifinals, then play the first 18 holes of the scheduled 36-hole final in the afternoon and finish the match the following day.

   Noh turned 17 the following week and had announced her intention to turn pro the following year. Kim, who was headed for Duke, was the oldest member of the four semifinalists, having turned 18 earlier in the year.

   Li was 15, although the people at Rolling Green Golf Club were still trying to figure out how the then 13-year-old had shot rounds of 67 and 68 on their William Flynn gem in qualifying for match play in the 2016 U.S. Women’s Amateur. Pano was 13.

   Noh defeated Park, 3 and 2, in the one semifinal and Pano dropped an eight-footer for birdie on the 18^th hole to claim a 1-up victory over Li.

   Noh and Pano told tournament officials if the fog didn’t roll in, how about just play as long as we can go and see if we can finish the title match? So, they played.

   By the time Noh of Concord, Calif. completed a 4 and 3 victory to claim the title, she had played 49 holes and Pano had played 51 holes.

   All of this came to mind because Pano, a grizzled veteran at 18, came on strong in the final two rounds of the LPGA’s Q-Series at Highland Oaks Golf Course in Dothan, Ala. over the weekend to finish in a tie for 21^st place and earn her LPGA Tour card for 2023.

   It’s not quite a high enough finish to get Pano of Lake Worth, Fla. into every tournament, but she’ll be eligible to play a lot and she can fill in any holes in her schedule on the Epson Tour.

   Noh has already banked more than $1.3 million in three seasons on the LPGA Tour and played on the U.S. team that fell to Europe in a hard-fought edition of the Solheim Cup in 2021 at The Inverness Club in Toledo, Ohio.

   Li, like Noh a Cali girl from Redwood Shores, and Kim, who grew up in Chapel Hill, N.C., both earned LPGA Tour cards for 2023 by finishing in third place and eighth place, respectively, in the Epson Tour’s Ascensus Race for the Card in 2022.

   Pano, who remained an amateur long enough to play in the Augusta National Women’s Amateur Championship one more time in April, came up just short of earning an LPGA Tour card on the Epson Tour as she finished just outside the top 10 in earnings at No. 13.

   So, the Q-Series, eight rounds over two weeks on three courses on the Alabama portion of the Robert Trent Jones Trail, was Pano’s last shot to join the other semifinalists at Poppy Hills on the LPGA Tour in 2023.

   What might have been Pano’s most pressure-filled round was the final round of Week 1 as her 1-over 73 over the Crossings Course at Magnolia Grove Golf Course in Mobile, Ala. enabled her to survive the 72-hole cut to the low 70 and ties on the number at 2-under 284.

   Pano moved up the leaderboard with a 4-under 68 in the first round at the par-72 Highland Oaks layout, but struggled a little in the sixth round with a 1-under 71.

   But the kid who didn’t think twice about playing 51 holes in one day in pursuit of a U.S. Girls’ Junior crown grinded out an impressive 4-under 68 in Saturday’s seventh round. It was a supremely professional round of golf as she made birdies at the second, fourth, seventh and eighth holes and rattled off 10 straight pars to complete the round.

   Pano came out of the gate firing in Sunday’s final round, making birdies at the third, fifth, sixth, ninth and 10^th holes to get it to 16-under. She answered her only bogey of the day at the 13^th hole with a birdie at 14 for a 5-under 67 that enabled her to finish with a 16-under 558 total over eight grueling rounds with her immediate professional future on the line.

   Kim had followed up her run to the U.S. Girls’ Junior semifinals at Poppy Hills by helping Duke capture the NCAA Championship at The Blessings Golf Club in Fayetteville, Ark. and earning low-amateur honors in the U.S. Women’s Open at the Country Club of Charleston in South Carolina in the spring of 2019.

   It’s easy to forget that all these young kids had their budding golf careers suddenly interrupted in a big way in the spring of 2020 when the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic shut the game down for a while. It’s easy to forget how uncertain everything was during those spring lockdowns.

   But all four of them, Noh, Pano, Li and Kim kept their heads down and kept playing, kept pursuing their dream to play on the LPGA Tour. And next year they’ll all be there, pretty much right on schedule.

   Medalist honors in eight rounds of Q-Series went to 21-year-old South Korean Hae Run Ryu, who went 67, 66 and 68 in her last three rounds at Highland Oaks for a 29-under 545 total that was two shots clear of runnerup Bailey Tardy.

   Tardy played on a really young U.S. Curtis Cup team back in 2016 following her freshman year at Georgia. She was in the top 10 in the Women’s World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR). That U.S. team took it on the chin from a Great Britain & Ireland team that included Ireland’s Leona Maguire playing in front of an adoring Irish crowd at Dun Laoghaire Golf Club in suburban Dublin.

   It probably never occurred to Tardy back then that she wouldn’t make it to the LPGA Tour until 2023, but all those close calls, all those weeks grinding it out on the Epson Tour against a new wave of talented  players year after year was perfect preparation for a weekend in December in Dothan, Ala.

   After putting herself in position to earn an LPGA Tour card with 5-under 67 in Saturday’s seventh round, Tardy put an exclamation point on her Q-Series experience with a sparkling seven-birdie, no-bogey 7-under 65 in the final round.

   Not only had she finally graduated to the LPGA Tour, Tardy did so with high honors, her 27-under 547 total earning her runnerup honors behind Ryu.

   It was two more shots back to Valery Plata of Colombia and Michigan State and Aline Krauter of Germany and Stanford in a tie for third place, each landing on 25-under 549.

   Plata was there playing in the fog at Poppy Hills in the summer of 2018, falling in the U.S. Girls’ Junior quarterfinals, 7 and 5, to Pano, the eventual runnerup. In the pandemic summer of 2020, Plata reached the semifinals of the U.S. Women’s Amateur at Woodmont Country Club in Rockville, Md. before falling, 2 and 1, to Australian Gabriela Ruffels, the eventual runnerup.

   Plata had taken a fifth year at Michigan State, but had to leave the Spartans behind and turn pro to compete in Q-Series. After opening Week 2 at Highland Oaks with a 5-under 67, Plata proved she belongs in the big leagues of women’s golf by rattling off three straight 3-under 69s.

   In a team filled with young talent, Krauter was a veteran presence for Stanford, going 3-0 in match play at Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, Ariz. last spring to help the Cardinal claim the NCAA crown. Probably not all that surprising since Krauter, in the pandemic summer of 2020, captured the Women’s Amateur Championship with a 1-up victory over England’s Annabell Fuller at West Lancashire.

   Krauter probably did all she needed to do to earn her LPGA Tour card when she announced her presence at Highland Oaks with a breathtaking 10-birdie, no-bogey 10-under 62 in the opening round of Week 2 of Q-Series.

   I had chronicled the journey of Samantha Wagner, the Easton native who starred at Florida, in a post I did at the halfway point of Q-Series as she emerged from four rounds at Magnolia Grove in a tie for sixth place and in real good shape to punch her ticket to the LPGA Tour.

   Wagner was treading water for two rounds at Highland Oaks, opening with a 1-under 71 and matching par in the sixth round with a 72. I was starting to worry that I might have jinxed her.

   Wagner made her first double bogey of Q-Series on the second hole of the seventh round. Then, leaning on all her experience from her years on the Epson Tour, Wagner righted the ship, going 12-under for her final 34 holes.

   Wagner rebounded from that early double bogey in Saturday’s seventh round with six birdies in a solid 4-under 68, then closed with a six-birdie, no-bogey 6-under 66 as she finished in a tie for sixth place over the 144-hole test with a 23-under 551 total.

   The leader at the halfway point of Q-School, former Louisville standout Lauren Hartlage of Elizabethtown, Ky., couldn’t quite keep up the pace she set at Magnolia Grove. But Hartlage’s final round of 1-over 73 enabled her to book her return to the LPGA Tour with a 20-under 554 total that left her in a tie for ninth place.

 

 

 

 

 

Wagner in a good place after strong first week in LPGA's Q-Series in Alabama

    It’s been five-and-a-half years since Samantha Wagner holed a 60-foot birdie putt on the 18^th hole at Hidden Creek Golf Club in Egg Harbor Township, N.J. to claim medalist honors in a U.S. Open qualifier.

   Wagner, an Easton native who moved to Florida as an 11-year-old, was coming off her junior year at Florida, having helped the Gators earn a spot in the match-play bracket in the NCAA Championship at Rich Harvest Farms in Sugar Grove, Ill.

   The decision was made that Wagner would leave her college career behind and make her appearance in the U.S. Women’s Open at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J. her professional debut.

   I’m sure Wagner was well aware the road ahead was filled with hurdles and potholes. Pretty sure she has spent most of the last five seasons learning the ropes of professional golf on the Epson Tour, which was the Symetra Tour until this year.

   Wagner finished 31^st on the Epson Tour money list in 2022 with $45,551 in earnings in 20 starts.

   It has all led Wagner to the halfway point of the 2022 LPGA Q-Series, the eight-round marathon that, at the end, awards LPGA Tour cards to 45 players, the first 20 of those places earning more guaranteed starting spots than to those after those first 20.

   Wagner put together a very professional 4-under-par 68 over the par-72 Crossings Course at Magnolia Grove Golf Course in Mobile, Ala. in Sunday’s final round of the first 72 holes of Q-Series and headed to Dothan, Ala. and Highland Oaks Golf Course for the final four rounds of Q-Series among a group of five players tied for sixth place at 12-under 274.

   Wagner’s been at this long enough to know that absolutely nothing is guaranteed, but a year ago she failed to advance on the Robert Trent Jones Trail to Highland Oaks for the final four rounds of Q-Series, so this is progress.

   Wagner played four rounds at Magnolia Grove the way a professional plays golf. She probably thought she had a grasp of that concept in the summer of 2017 when this journey began. Now, she understands it completely.

   Wagner’s final round at the Crossings Course was her third bogey-free round of the weekend. She patiently made pars on the first 12 holes, then made birdies at the 13^th, 14^th, 16^th and 18^th holes.

   Wagner opened Q-Series with back-to-back birdies at the ninth and 10^th holes and had 16 pars on her scorecard in a 2-under 69 at the Falls Course, which seemed to play a little tougher than the Crossings did.

   A second round of 5-under 67 at the Crossings Course was also bogey free as Wagner made birdies at the fourth, 10^th and 15^th holes and an eagle at the par-5 16^th. Wagner offset two bogeys in the third round at the Falls Course with three birdies, still getting it in red figures at 1-under 70.

   The leader heading to Highland Oaks for the final 72 holes of Q-Series, which gets under way Thursday, is Lauren Hartlage, who was a five-year standout at Louisville from Elizabethtown, Ky.

   Hartlage capped four rounds in the 60s at Magnolia Grove with a 4-under 68 Sunday at the Crossings Course that gave her a 14-under 272 total for the weekend.

   Hartlage emerged from Q-Series with an LPGA Tour card a year ago, but had to return to Qualifying School after finishing 130^th on the LPGA money list with $71,944 in earnings in her rookie season.

   Hartlage opened with a sparkling 6-under 66 at the Crossings Course and added back-to-back 2-under 69s at the Falls Course before her closing 68 back at the Crossings Course.

   Spain’s Luna Sobron Galmes closed the weekend with a scintillating 8-under 64 at the Crossings Course to head a group of four players tied for second place at the halfway mark of Q-Series at 13-under 273. Galmes offset a lone bogey with nine birdies, six of them on a 6-under 30 on the incoming nine at the Crossings Course.

   Germany’s Polly Mack, who completed an outstanding college career at Alabama in the spring, was also in the group at 13-under.

   Mack played in 11 events on the Epson Tour once her college season ended, finishing 32^nd on the developmental tour’s money list. Mack made a big move in the third round at Magnolia Grove when she signed for a sizzling 6-under 65 at the Falls Course. She closed out her week with a 3-under 69 at the Crossings Course.

   Belgium’s Manon De Roey, who played college golf at New Mexico, was never far from the top of the leaderboard after opening the week with a sparkling 7-under 64 at the Falls Course. De Roey cooled off a little with a 3-under 69 in the second round at the Crossings Course, added a 1-under 70 at the Falls Course in the third round and closed with a 2-under 70 at the Crossings Course to join the foursome tied for second place at 273.

   Rounding out the quartet tied for second place at 13-under was Riley Rennell, a Tennessee native who is trying to graduate out of the Epson Tour. Rennell got off to a great start at Magnolia Grove, opening with a 5-under 66 at the Falls Course and adding a 6-under 67 at the Crossings Course in the second round.

   Rennell posted a 2-under 69 at the Falls Course in the third round before closing with a 1-under 71 at the Crossings Course. Rennell was 41^st on the Epson Tour money list with $36,499 in earnings in 16 starts in 2022.

   One of the more interesting names at Q-Series is that of Florida teen Alexa Pano. It only seems like Pano has been around forever because she was one of the youngsters featured in “The Short Game,” the documentary produced by Hollywood power couple Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel a decade ago that focused on the game’s youngest players competing in the U.S. Kids Golf World Championships at the Pinehurst Resort in North Carolina.

   Pano first showed up on my radar when she earned her first American Junior Golf Association (AJGA) victory as a 12-year-old in the PDQ / Philadelphia Runner Junior, which, at the time, was the Philadelphia area atop on the AJGA circuit at Saucon Valley Country Club’s Weyhill Course.

   Although Pano claims she considered college golf when she was 13- and 14-years old, in the last couple of years, she was always leaning toward turning pro. A solid showing in Q-Series a year ago gave her status on the Epson Tour for 2022, although Pano wanted one more shot to make the 36-hole cut in the Augusta National Women’s Amateur Championship. Pano accomplished that goal and got in a competitive round at one of the cathedrals of golf where she had competed in the Drive, Chip & Putt National Finals.

   Pano, who turned 18 in August, nearly qualified for the LPGA Tour via the Epson’s Tour Ascensus Race for the Card. The top 10 finishers in the season-long Ascensus Race for the Card automatically earn an LPGA Tour card for the following season. Pano finished 13^th in the Ascensus Race for the Card in 18 starts.

   Pano was not at her best in Week 1 of Q-Series, but she just got inside the cut to the low 70 and ties, finishing in the group tied for 66^th place with a 2-under 284 to advance to Highland Oaks on the number.

   After matching par with a 71 at the Falls Course in the opening round, Pano carded a 2-under 70 in the second round at the Crossings Course and a 1-under 71 in third round at the Falls Course before closing with a 1-over 73 at the Crossings Course.

   Even if Pano does not quite get out of Q-Series with an LPGA Tour card, it will be just be a matter of time before the kid is playing in the major leagues of women’s professional golf.

   There were a couple of interesting names among the large group at 1-under 285 that failed to advance to the second week of Q-Series by one frustrating shot.

   One was that of two-time U.S. Women’s Amateur champion and former Alabama standout Kristen Gillman. She appeared to be well on her way to professional success when Gillman made 22 cuts in 26 starts and nearly a half-million dollars as a rookie in 2019.

   But Gillman lost her way in 2022. Gillman struggled in the first two rounds at Magnolia Grove, opening with a 2-over 73 at the Falls Course and adding a 3-over 75 in the second round at the Crossings Course. Gillman rallied with a 3-under 69 at the Crossings Course in the third round and a 3-under 68 at the Falls Course in Sunday’s fourth round, but came up just short of advancing to Week 2.

   Gillman will likely regroup and head for the Epson Tour and the road back to the big leagues.

   Rachel Rohanna, the 2007 PIAA champion as a junior at Waynesburg and a college standout at Ohio State, has bounced between the LPGA Tour and the Epson Tour for a long time and has carved out a pretty decent career as a professional.

   A fourth round of 2-under 70 at the Crossings Course Sunday left Rohanna in the group at 1-under, just outside the cut line to advance to Week 2.

   A Google search reveals that Rohanna took over as the head coach at Division III Waynesburg in 2021. I doubt that spells an end to her playing days as she has proven time and time again that she can compete on the Epson Tour.

 

Global Golf Post's All-Amateur teams highlighted by Players of the Year Strawn, Lindblad

    I first became a fan of Global Golf Post, a digital golf publication, when it named Reading’s Chip Lutz the best male amateur golf in the world in 2016 as part of its annual All-Amateur teams presentation.

   Lutz, who had saved the best golf of his life for after age 55, had spent the last few years as easily the best senior amateur golfer in the world, a globe-trotting force of nature. He had already won the Royal & Ancient’s Senior Amateur Championship a couple of times and twice won the national senior amateur crown in Canada before he finally nailed down a U.S. Senior Amateur crown in 2015 at Hidden Creek Country Club at the Jersey Shore.

   Lutz was certainly worthy of the honor, it was just nice to see that a golf publication had noticed what a tremendous run a guy from Berks County, a 60-something senior golfer, had been on.

   For those of us who used to get a magazine – you may have heard of them, they were printed on paper, lots of pretty pictures – every week that wrapped up the previous week in golf, Global Golf Post fills that role in the digital age. Just let them know you’re interested and you’ll get a weekly roundup of golf news from all around the world, pros and amateurs, men and women, you name it, in your e-mail inbox first thing every Monday morning.

   Global Golf Post did its 2022 All-Amateur issue a couple of weeks ago and it was, as always, noteworthy on a number of levels.

   It seems like it’s been a couple of years since I mentioned the Global Golf Post All-Amateur teams. It might have been too difficult an assignment in 2020 when the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic forced the cancellation of all of the United States Golf Association’s amateur events with the exception of the U.S. Amateur and the U.S. Women’s Amateur. Not to mention the sudden end to the wraparound 2019-2020 college golf season just when it was about to get good.

   Last year was a bit of a blur in the world of golf with so many events that had been postponed in 2020 having been rescheduled for 2021, there were very few breaks in the schedule.

   The Global Golf Post All-Amateur edition has featured a couple of different formats over the years. This time around, it featured Men’s and Women’s Amateur teams, Men’s and Women’s Mid-Amateur teams and Men’s and Women’s Senior Amateur teams with second-team selections where warranted.

   It was an attempt to streamline the teams a little this year, but the overall goal remains as it always has been: To identify and recognize the top amateur players in game.

   I might have been a little more interested than in recent years for a couple of reasons. I got a chance to watch half of the Women’s Amateur first-team selections in action in June when the Curtis Cup Match was staged at my favorite golf course, Merion Golf Club’s East Course.

   I don’t get out much, so it was a real treat to watch these future stars perform on one of the game’s grandest stages in an event filled with the kind of history and tradition that warms the hearts of old-schoolers like me.

   I was pretty interested in the Women’s Mid-Amateur teams, too. Hopefully, I’ll get a chance to watch some of them in action in September when the 2023 U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur Championship is staged at Stonewall’s North Course, the younger of Tom Doak’s twin gems in the northwest corner of Chester County.

   As a Stonewall looper, I’m looking forward to seeing this increasingly competitive age group of women golfers take on the “Udder Course” – if you know anything about Stonewall, you know the partners there are always celebrating the property’s roots as a dairy farm.

   As usual, Global Golf Post singled out two of the amateur players as its Male and Female Player of the Year and, much like 2016 when Lutz was the selection as the Male Player of the Year, Global Golf Post again settled on a senior amateur, Rusty Strawn, winner of the 2022 U.S. Senior Amateur at The Kittansett Club along Buzzards Bay in eastern Massachusetts out of McDonough, Ga., as its Male Player of the Year.

   The Female Player of the Year went to LSU senior Ingrid Lindblad of Sweden. Kind of tough to deny Rose Zhang, the No. 1 player in the Women’s World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR), but if you don’t start an argument or two with your All-Amateur teams, what’s the point of putting them out there?

   Strawn is the subject of a nice profile by Sean Fairholm while Steve Eubanks chronicles the accomplishments in 2022 of Lindblad, even while conceding it was a really close call between the LSU star and Zhang.

   The 59-year-old Strawn is a guy a lot like Lutz in that he put his family and the family business he runs ahead of competitive golf for decades.

   With those priorities in order, Strawn refocused on his golf game and it all came together in 2022. In addition to his victory over fellow Georgian Doug Hanzel of Savannah in the U.S. Senior Amateur at Kittansett, Strawn had wins in the Canadian Senior Amateur, the Trans-Miss Senior Championship, the Florida Azalea Amateur and the Society of Seniors Dale Morey Championship.

   I was curious to see if Jeff Frazier, the Mechanicsburg resident who crashed an otherwise all-Georgia party in the U.S. Senior Amateur semifinals at Kittansett, would be included in any of the Senior Amateur selections, but he was not.

   Frazier, for whom I’ve looped in several playings of the Fall Scramble at Stonewall, gave Hanzel, a past champion and a legendary senior amateur player, all he wanted before Hanzel pulled out a 1-up victory in the semifinals at Kittansett.

   Frazier, recently named the Golf Association of Philadelphia’s Senior Player of the Year for 2022, is exempt from qualifying for next year’s U.S. Senior Amateur and hopefully will fit the trip to The Martis Camp Club in Truckee, Calif., into his schedule.

   Hanzel and the third member of the group of U.S. Senior Amateur semifinalists from Georgia, Bob Royak  of Alpharetta, joined Strawn on the Senior Amateur first team.

   A couple of familiar names on the senior amateur circuit, Mike McCoy of West Des Moines, Iowa, and Matthew Sughrue of Arlington, Va., also appear on the Senior Amateur first team. McCoy was a runaway winner of the R&A Senior Amateur Championship at Royal Dornoch and will captain the U.S. Walker Cup team against Great Britain & Ireland in September at the home of golf, the Old Course at St. Andrews.

   Two more players in the final eight of the U.S. Senior Amateur at Kittansett, Englishman Stephen Jensen and Miles McConnell of Tampa, Fla. also made the Senior first team. Jensen suffered a hard-fought 1-up loss to Frazier in the quarterfinals while McConnell fell to Strawn, the eventual champion, 5 and 3.

   Rounding out the Senior Amateur first team were Robert Funk of Canyon Lakes, Calif., Kevin Vandenberg of Naples, Fla. and Jensen’s fellow Englishman Robert Kellock.

   Much of the argument made by Eubanks for naming Lindblad, No. 2 in the Women’s WAGR, the Female Player of the Year is based on her performance in the U.S. Women’s Open at the Pine Needles Lodge & Golf Club in Southern Pines, N.C. There’s something to be said for having your best stuff on the biggest state in women’s golf.

   Playing with every Swedish woman’s golf idol, Annika Sorenstam, Lindblad roared out of the gate with a stunning 6-under-par 65 at Pine Needles, a single-round record for an amateur in the U.S. Women’s Open. Lindblad ultimately earned low-amateur honors, finishing in a tie for 11^th place with a 1-under 283 total.

   Lindblad was also at her best in sharing second place on one of the cathedrals of the game in the Augusta National Women’s Amateur Championship. She led the Bayou Tigers to the title in the Southeastern Conference Championship, the first in program history.

   Lindblad finished in a tie for third place, five shots behind individual champion Zhang in the NCAA Championship at Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, Ariz.

   A lot of people seemed to expect Lindblad to turn pro at some point in 2022, but she’s made it clear she’s going to play out here senior year at LSU.

   When Zhang of Irvine, Calif. showed up at Merion for the Curtis Cup, she had already won the NCAA individual crown and led Stanford the team title to cap her freshman season. She, too, made the cut at Pine Needles, finishing in a tie for 40^th place.

   Zhang was joined on the Global Golf Post Women’s Amateur first team by her Stanford teammate, Rachel Heck of Memphis, Tenn. and winner of the NCAA individual crown in Grayhawk as a freshman in 2021. Heck is No. 4 in the Women’s WAGR.

   Got a chance to watch Zhang and Heck take control of an alternate-shot foursome match at Merion. Really good players don’t always click in alternate shot, but those two were like a well-oiled machine. You get this feeling that the reason they’re so good at golf is because they’re good at so many other things, not the least of which is the demanding academics at Stanford.

   Two other members of the winning U.S. Curtis Cup team, Southern California sophomore Amari Avery of Riverside, Calif. and No. 7 in the Women’s WAGR, and Wake Forest senior Rachel Kuehn of Asheville, N.C. and No. 8 in the Women’s WAGR, also made Women’s Amateur first team.

   After only half a season of college golf, Avery was one of the stars of captain Sarah Ingraham’s winning U.S. side. Like Zhang and Heck, Kuehn was part of a second winning U.S. Curtis Cup team in a ninth-month span and her appearance at Merion came after she had led the Demon Deacons to the Atlantic Coast Conference Championship.

   A fifth player on the Women’s Amateur first team I got a chance to watch play at Merion was a member of the Great Britain & Ireland team, South Carolina junior Hannah Darling, the Scotswoman who is No. 6 in the Women’s WAGR.

   A couple of junior players were deserving of spots on the Women’s Amateur first team, Anna Davis, the left-hander from Spring Valley, Calif. who was the stunning winner of the Augusta National Women’s Amateur Championship, Bailey Shoemaker of Dade City, Fla.

   Davis, No. 9 in the Women’s WAGR, announced at last month’s Rolex Tournament of Champions, the marquee event on the American Junior Golf Association (AJGA) circuit, that she will join the program at Auburn in the summer of 2024, but with five made cuts in seven LPGA appearances in the wake of her spectacular performance at Augusta, Davis may still opt to skip college golf and turn pro.

   All Shoemaker, No. 58 in the Women’s WAGR, did in 2022 was make the cut in the U.S. Women’s Open at Pine Needles and make a run to the semifinals of the U.S. Women’s Amateur Championship at Chambers Bay in University Place, Wash. She will join the program at Alabama next summer.

   Japanese teen Saki Baba, No. 3 in the Women’s WAGR, was a dominating 11 and 9 winner over Monet Chun, a Michigan Wolverine from Canada, in the final at Chambers Bay after handing Shoemaker a 7 and 6 setback in the semifinals. Like Shoemaker, Baba played the weekend in the U.S. Women’s Open at Pine Needles.

   Rounding out the Women’s Amateur first team was Emma Spitz, the native of Austria who helped lead UCLA into match play in last spring’s NCAA Championship at Grayhawk. Spitz has since turned pro, but, as Global Golf Post pointed out, she always seemed be in the mix in the biggest amateur events the last couple of years.

   The two finalists from last summer’s U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur Championship at Fiddlesticks Country Club’s Long Mean Course in Fort Myers, Fla., champion Krissy Carman, mother of a bouncing 2-year-old boy from Eugene, Ore., and Aliea Clark, a former UCLA standout who is pursuing advanced degrees in film and business in New York City, head Global Golf Post’s list of Women’s Mid-Amateur first-team All-Amateur selections.

   Here's hoping both will be back when the U.S. Mid-Am is contested at Stonewall’s North Course next summer.

   It was the second straight year Clark battled her way to the final only to be denied the title as she fell to Blakesly Brock of Chattanooga, Tenn. in the title match in 2021 at the Berkeley Hall Club’s North Course in Bluffton, S.C.

   It wouldn’t be a Women’s Mid-Amateur first team without the presence of Meghan Stasi, the South Jersey native who resides in Oakland Park, Fla. It’s been a while since Stasi won the last of her four U.S. Mid-Am crowns, but she remains a tough out in the championship she once owned, reaching the quarterfinals at Fiddlesticks.

   She was known as Meghan Bolger when she won the Women’s Golf Association of Philadelphia’s Match Play Championship seven straight times from 1998 to 2005. The WGAP lured Stasi for a trip home when it staged its Match Play Championship at Tavistock Country Club, her home course as a kid, last summer and didn’t Stasi win the thing.

   Stasi openly roots for the next generation of mid-am ladies, those recent college stars and reinstated amateurs who have moved on to jobs and motherhood, to come out and compete for national mid-am honors.

   A couple of the Philadelphia area’s rising mid-am standouts, Isabella DiLisio and Jackie Rogowicz, both playing out of Philadelphia Cricket Club, made deep runs at Fiddlesticks, DiLisio taking Clark to the 18^th hole before falling, 1-up, in a tight semifinal battle.

   A couple more strong showings next summer at Stonewall’s North Course might land DiLisio and Rogowicz, the reigning Pennsylvania Women’s Amateur champion, on the Global Golf Post Women’s Mid-Amateur first team a year from now.

   Another Oregonian, Gretchen Johnson of Portland, a perennial contender in the U.S. Women’s Mid-Am, reached the round of 16 at Fiddlesticks and earned a spot on the Women’s Mid-Amateur first team.

   The only other Americans on the Women’s Mid-Amateur first team were a third Oregonian, Amanda Jacobs of Portland, who, like Johnson, reached the round of 16 at Fiddlesticks, and Allison Gonring of Cincinnati, Ohio.

    Rounding out the Women’s Mid-Amateur first team was an array of talented foreigners, including Ane Urchegui Garcia of Spain, Stephanie Gelleni, a Venezuelan who played college golf at Pepperdine, Helene Malvy of France and Celine Manche of Belgium.

   At head of the Men’s Mid-Amateur first team was Stewart Hagestad of Newport Beach, Calif., who has been the face of mid-am golf since winning the first of his two U.S. Mid-Amateur crowns at Stonewall in 2016.

   At No. 9 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR), Hagestad reached the round of 16 in defense of the second U.S. Mid-Am title he won in 2021 at Sankaty Head Golf Club on Nantucket Island in last summer’s staging of the U.S. Mid-Am at Erin Hills.

   Hagestad has been invited to a practice session for the 2023 Walker Cup Match, which will be held at the Old Course at St. Andrews, this month in Jupiter, Fla. He has been a member of three straight winning U.S. sides at Los Angeles Country Club, his home course growing up, in 2017, at Royal Liverpool in Hoylake, England in 2019 and at the iconic Seminole Golf Club in Juno Beach, Fla. in the spring of 2021.

   Another Men’s Mid-Amateur first-team selection, Evan Beck of Virginia Beach, Va. and No. 64, will join Hagestad in the Walker Cup practice session this month in Jupiter. Beck was a repeat winner of the Eastern Amateur last summer.

   Jersey guy Mark Costanza of Morristown also made the Men’s Mid-Am first team. The runnerup to Hagestad in the U.S. Mid-Amateur at Sankaty Head, Costanza reached the round of 16 last summer at Erin Hills.

   The two Irish pals who traveled to Erin Hills together and then ended up meeting for the championship, Matthew McClean, the champion with a 3 and 1 victory in the final, and Hugh Foley, were obvious choices to make Global Golf Post’s Men’s Mid-Amateur first team.

   Other Americans on the Men’s Mid-Am first team were Bradford Tilley of Easton, Conn., winner of the Met Amateur last summer, and Joe Deraney of Beldon, Miss.

   Rounding out the foreign contingent on the Men’s Mid-Am first team were Henry Bolton of Australia, Sam Jones of New Zealand and James Leow of Singapore.

   Scott Harvey of Kernersville, N.C., the runnerup to Hagestad at Stonewall and the 2014 U.S. Mid-Amateur champion at Saucon Valley Country Club, headed the Men’s Mid-Am second-team selections. Harvey defeated Costanza in the round of 16 to reach the quarterfinals of last summer’s U.S. Mid-Am Championship at Erin Hills.

   The Global Golf Post Men’s Amateur first team features three players who will be joining Hagestad and Beck in auditioning for U.S. Walker Cup captain McCoy this month in Jupiter, including reigning NCAA individual champion Gordon Sargent, a sophomore at Vanderbilt from Birmingham, Ala. and No. 3 in the WAGR, Stanford’s Michael Thorbjornsen, a junior from Wellesley, Mass. and No. 4 in the WAGR and North Carolina graduate student Dylan Menante of Carlsbad, Calif. and No. 6 in the WAGR.

   Pretty sure accepting the invitation to Jupiter requires a bit of a commitment to remain an amateur through the summer.

   It was Menante who ended the Cinderella run of Downingtown West junior Nick Gross in the quarterfinals of last summer’s U.S. Amateur Championship at The Ridgewood Country Club in Paramus, N.J.

   Menante, who was in the starting lineup for Pepperdine in its run to the national championship in 2021 at Grayhawk and again when the Waves reached the semifinals last spring in defense of their title before transferring to North Carolina, lost to fellow Men’s Amateur first-teamer Sam Bennett, 1-up, in a hard-fought semifinal at Ridgewood. 

   Bennett, a fifth-year player at Texas A&M from Madisonville, Texas and No. 2 in the WAGR, claimed a 1-up victory over Ben Carr to put his name on the Havemeyer Trophy at Ridgewood.

   Menante’s new North Carolina teammate, Austin Greaser, a senior from Vandalia, Ohio and No. 5 in the WAGR, also made the elite Men’s Amateur first team. Greaser, the beaten finalist in the 2021 U.S. Amateur at iconic Oakmont Country Club, and Bennett both made the cut and played weekend in last summer’s U.S. Open at The Country Club in Brookline, Mass.

   Greaser also won the tough test that is the Western Amateur at North Shore Country Club in Glenview, Ill.

   Of course, the No. 1 player in the WAGR, Texas Tech senior Ludvig Aberg of Sweden, made the Men’s Amateur first team. The Big 12 Conference individual champion, Aberg helped the Red Raiders reach the match-play bracket in the NCAA Championship at Grayhawk.

   Looks like Men’s Amateur first-team selection Eugenio Chacarra, a standout at Oklahoma State from Spain, has turned pro as has Italy’s Filipro Celli, the low amateur in The Open Championship last summer at St. Andrews.

   Rounding out the Men’s Amateur first-team selections was Taiga Semikawa, who turned pro after becoming the first amateur to win the Japan Open in nearly a century in October.

   The U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur became the first USGA championship conducted in Alaska, so perhaps it was appropriate that Shelly Stouffer became the fourth Canadian to capture the title at Anchorage Golf Course in Anchorage, Alaska in the biggest event in the world for the senior set.

   Global Golf Post’s Women’s Senior Amateur first team was headed by Stouffer, who added a victory iin the Canadian Women’s Mid-Amateur Championship and made the cut and played the weekend in the U.S. Women’s Open at NCR Country Club’s South Course in Kettering, Ohio.

   It was a pretty good year to be Canadian and a senior in 2022 as Stouffer was joined on the Women’s Senior Amateur first team by countrywomen Judith Kyrnis, the 2017 U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur champion who also made the cut in the U.S. Senior Women’s Open at NCR, and Terrill Samuel, winner of the R&A’s Senior Women’s Amateur Championship at Royal Dornoch.

   Lara Tennant of Portland, Ore. finally saw her run of three straight U.S. Women’s Senior Amateur crowns halted in the round of 16 at Anchorage, but was still an easy choice to make the Women’s Senior Amateur first team.

   The ageless Ellen Port of St. Louis, owner of four U.S. Women’s Mid-Am and three U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur crowns, also appeared on the Women’s Senior Amateur first team. Port and Tennant both finished among the top 30 in the U.S. Senior Women’s Open at NCR.

   Kathy Hartwiger made the Senior Women’s Amateur first team on the strength of a run to the semifinals of the U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur at Anchorage and a victory in the North and South Senior Women’s Amateur Championship only a couple of months after relocating to the Pinehurst Resort in North Carolina from Alabama.

   For the third time in the last five years, Australia’s Sue Wooster settled for runnerup honors in the U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur Championship after falling to Stouffer in the final at Anchorage. Still, Wooster, who lost twice in the final to Tennant, proved she belonged on the Senior Women’s Amateur first team.

   A trio of foreign players, Macarena Campomanes of Spain, Laura Webb of Ireland and Sylvie Van Molle of Belgium, rounded out the Senior Women’s Amateur first team.