It was a week to remember when U.S. Women's Mid-Amateur came to the 'Udder Course' at Stonewall

 

   WARWICK TOWNSHIP – It was in the second half of 2021 when rumors started floating around Stonewall that the United States Golf Association was considering using the North Course, the younger of Tom Doak’s twin gems in northwest Chester County, to hold a U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur Championship.

   I first mentioned the possibility at the end of a long post that recapped the men’s and women’s Mid-Ams that year. I thought it would be extremely cool if it happened. Well, it did and it was.

   When the USGA used the North Course for the first 18 holes of the epic 37-hole final of the U.S. Mid-Amateur won by Stewart Hagestad over Scott Harvey in 2016, it let you know that the organization considered the North a championship caliber golf course. It was more than just the weaker of two courses used in qualifying just because the USGA needed two courses to stage 36 holes of qualifying.

   And the North Course, whipped into the best shape I’ve seen it in since I started hanging out at the ’Wall in 2016 by Dan Dale and his crew, again proved that point in eight days of practice rounds, stroke-play qualifying for match play and match play itself.

   It was a chance for the "Udder Course" to shine and shine it did.

   There was some dicey late-summer weather to negotiate and the distraction of a search for an escaped murderer in the vicinity to work around, but the partners at Stonewall and the volunteers who flocked to the far reaches of Chester County to help out – the Philadelphia area takes a back seat to no place when the call goes out for volunteers for a golf tournament – made for an excellent championship.

   As a golf fan, I’ve always been fascinated by a playoff to get into the match-play bracket at a big championship, whether it’s the BMW Philadelphia Amateur Championship or a USGA match-play event. But I’ve witnessed very few of them. If you’re covering an event like that, as I often was during my years in the newspaper business, the playoff to get into match play is something you pick up from the results.

   Such a playoff usually occurs as the sun is setting or, worse, as the sun is rising in the morning following 36 holes of qualifying.

   I was on the bag for Tara Joy-Connelly, the wife of J.P. Connelly, the head pro at The Kittansett Club on the Massachusetts cape and son of longtime Huntingdon Valley Country Club head pro and former president of the PGA of America Jack Connelly, in the U.S. Women’s Mid-Am at Stonewall’s North Course.

   The worst of the weekend weather came early Sunday, the second day of qualifying for match play, delaying the start of play by two hours. After a disappointing opening round of 6-over 77, Joy-Connelly’s scheduled starting time of 12:30 became a 2:30 tee time.

   The forecast was for more rain late in the day and it sure looked like something was brewing as we headed for the back nine at the North Course. At one point, it had that Gothic novel look and the wind suddenly started kicking up from the north-northwest, the prevailing wind at Stonewall, although it had been pretty quiet and from the opposite direction for most of the hot and humid weekend.

   With a bogey at the 14^th hole, Joy-Connelly was at 12-over. She correctly sensed that 11-over might end up being the number needed to get into match play. Trust me, you’re not checking your phone at that point to see where you stand. The only thing you’re worried about is the next shot.

   When you look at the 50-year-old Joy-Connelly, all of about 5-foot-5, she doesn’t shout great golfer at you. But she really is. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anyone consistently attack the flag with approaches the way she did at Stonewall.

   The speed of the greens at the North Course seemed to be a mystery to many of the players in the U.S. Women’s Mid-Am. Joy-Connelly pretty much had the speed down by the end of our first practice round.

   With four holes to go and darkness and probably rain approaching fast, Joy-Connelly played her best golf, getting birdie looks at each of those last four holes. Her 22-footer at the par-3 17^th hole – she had hit it to the only spot on the green that gave you a realistic chance to make a putt – came up just a half a roll short of going in.

   It took Joy-Connelly all of about five minutes after signing her scorecard – the rain was finally falling and the horn sounded suspending play because of darkness – to figure out that 12-over would probably get her in a playoff.

   The rest of the field had to finish their second rounds early on a Monday morning while Joy-Connelly prepared for a playoff on the range at the Old Course. By about 8 a.m. the word came down, eight players vying for the last two spots in match play, later amended to 8-for-3. Joy-Connelly still had a chance to make the match-play bracket.

   You could think back on any number of missed opportunities that would have given you the extra shot that would have got you in. But when you travel to a U.S. Women’s Mid-Am and battle through two rounds of stroke play and they tell you you’ve still got a shot to make the match-play bracket, that’s all that matters.

   Joy-Connelly would be in the second of the two foursomes, a group that would include 57-year-old Sarah LeBrun Ingram, the captain for the last two winning U.S. Curtis Cup teams at Conwy Golf Club in Caernarvonshire, Wales and at the historic East Course at Merion Golf Club last summer and a three-time U.S. Women’s Mid-Am champion.

   After 36 holes of stroke play, Joy-Connelly was standing on the tee at the North’s 170-yard, par-3 ninth hole with a 5-iron in her hands with the only shot that mattered. The pressure was as suffocating as the late-summer humidity that hung in the air. And she just drilled it, about 20 feet from the hole.

   Up ahead, it looked like two of the four players in the first group had made bogey and two had made par. Birdie would definitely get you in. Par would probably keep you in the hunt.

   After a shaky tee shot, Ingram converted a brilliant up-and-down, making a clutch eight-footer for par. Joy-Connelly two-putted for par. It was down to 5-for-3.

   With the pin at the short par-4 10^th hole in the back left corner, Joy-Connelly’s approach settled on the front of the green. The USGA website would call it 70 feet, but that was only half the problem. The putt would have to go through the swale in the middle of the green and not be going too fast when it came out the other end when it would start breaking sharply right to left.

   We agreed on a spot several feet right of the hole and then Joy-Connelly, her feel for the speed of the greens still spot-on, rolled about as good a putt as you can possibly imagine to within three feet of the cup.

   Joy-Connelly, Ingram and Johnstown native Kristin Wolfe made pars and earned spots in match play.

   They all knew they were going to draw one of the three co-medalists in qualifying, but that didn’t matter. What mattered is that they had a match that afternoon.

   Oh yeah, and my mug ended up on the lead page of the USGA website for a couple of hours, an image that included Ingram, as accomplished an amateur player as you’ll find in this country. That’s why you get psyched when you know a U.S. Women’s Am is coming to town because you know you’ll be watching some of the greats of the game.

   And I got to experience being in the cauldron of a playoff with a player like Ingram. Think I’ll save some of my observations of some of the veteran players I came across at Stonewall for my end-of-the-year post. Nothing that happens in the next couple of months will top a U.S. Women’s Mid-Am at Stonewall.

   One of the co-medalists was Jackie Rogowicz, a player I had watched in high school a decade earlier when I was covering Brynn Walker, a two-time state champion at Radnor, for the Delaware County Daily Times.

   Regular readers of this blog are well aware that I have kept up with Rogowicz’s career through her time at Penn State and in the years that followed.

   Rogowicz, a scholastic standout at Pennsbury, was as solid as I knew she would be, claiming a 5 and 4 victory over Joy-Connelly, the beginning of Rogowicz’s run to the semifinals at Stonewall.

   After a brief rain delay, Joy-Connelly finally saw a birdie putt find the hole at the short par-4 11^th hole, her first birdie in 49 holes. A lot of really good players would have let the frustration of a birdie-less string like that get to them, but Joy-Connelly stayed patient, kept her head down and just kept playing.

   The other two survivors of the playoff, Ingram and Wolfe, knocked off their higher-seeded first-round opponents.

   Ingram stunned Courtney Dow, a former Texas A&M standout from Frisco, Texas, 3 and 2. All Dow had done was blitz the North Course with a spectacular 7-under 64 in the opening round of stroke play.

   Wolfe, a field staff representative for the Mid-Atlantic region for the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America, ousted the third qualifying co-medalist, former Virginia Tech standout Jessica Spicer, in 19 holes. Wolfe was a scholastic standout back in the day at Westmont-Hilltop before playing college golf at Penn State.

   Wolfe would win another match before falling to Kelsey Chugg, the 2017 U.S. Women’s Mid-Am champion who would end being a beaten finalist at Stonewall, in the round of 16.

   It’s why you keep battling to get into the match-play bracket because once you’re in match play, anything can and does happen.

   With Joy-Connelly knocked out, I swapped my caddy bib for a clipboard and watched some golf.

   In advance of the U.S. Women’s Mid-Am, I mentioned that Rogowicz and Isabella DiLisio, a state champion at Mount St. Joseph in 2013 who went on to star at Notre Dame, players I had seen as high school standouts a decade earlier, were likely to contend at Stonewall.

   I watched a lot of DiLisio’s round-of-16 loss to ageless 59-year-old Canadian Judith Kyrinis in a 1-up thriller.

   The next day I saw Rogowicz take Chugg to the 18^th hole in a tense, taught semifinal match before also suffering a 1-up setback.

   I did posts on both matches, but suffice it to say, DiLisio and Rogowicz were as good as I thought they would be and figure to contend in the U.S. Women’s Mid-Am as long as they want to.

   The next day, the U.S. Women’s Mid-Am’s eight-day run at Stonewall came to an end when Kim Dinh of Midland, Mich., with Mark Dalton, a regular Stonewall looper on the bag, rallied on the back nine to pull out a 2-up victory over Chugg to give the left-hander the title.

   Anyone who wondered why the USGA would choose the North Course at Stonewall to put on a U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur got all their answers.

   I heard of very few complaints from the players about the golf course. And, as I mentioned earlier, the response from the partners at Stonewall was tremendous. If the USGA was going to put on a national championship at Stonewall, the partners were going to put the club’s best foot forward.

   Probably the most eye-opening aspect of the whole week for many of those who came out to the North Course for the U.S. Women’s Mid-Am was just how good the players are. They found out something I’ve always known: These women can really play.

   As I was preparing to write this post, I looked at some of the qualifiers for the U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur, which tees off Saturday at Troon Country Club in Scottsdale, Ariz. And there was one Tara Joy-Connelly, a senior “rookie,” taking medalist honors in a qualifier at Ligonier Country Club in western Pennsylvania.

   Take a guess who I’ll be rooting for in Scottsdale.