With a lack of elite women’s amateur events on offer for America’s best, a group of parents got together to change the landscape.
The result: back-to-back events in Florida next month held less than 10 miles apart.
The 72-player fields will consist of U.S.-based players ranked in the top 300 of the World Amateur Golf Ranking.
“You have to give players an opportunity to get better against the best competition,” said Rick Pano, “and right now, other than Augusta (National Women’s Amateur) and the U.S. Women’s Am, what do we have? Hopefully, these will take off.”
Pano, whose daughter Alexa is currently No. 23 in the WAGR, hopes to one day see as many as 10 events under the U.S. Women’s Elite Amateur Golf Championship umbrella. Pano said there are about five or six parents working to put on these events. His role has been working to secure the courses.
To that end, Pano called up Rich Smith, chairman at Charlotte Harbor National Golf Club in North Port, Florida, and asked if they’d be interested. Charlotte Harbor hosted a Symetra Tour event last spring.
“As an ex-competitor and a PGA member, I feel bad that these great players have had nowhere to play because of COVID,” said Smith, who then reached out to Bart Cook, Director of Golf at Heron Creek Golf and Country Club, also in North Port.
Heron Creek was quick to jump on board and a much-needed women’s amateur swing was born.
“It really did work out perfectly,” said Cook of the proposed dates, “like it was meant to be.”
The 54-hole events will be held June 23-25 and June 30-July 3.
Cook noted Heron Creek’s 20-acre practice facility makes it easy to accommodate 60-plus stations where players can warm up 6 feet apart. There’s also a 1-acre short-game area that can handle another 20 people.
Cook said the facility worked hard to eliminate all touchpoints and put new sanitation practices in place months ago in the wake of the pandemic. No rakes, no bag-stands on the range, individual carts and a touch-free golf ball remover on the flagsticks.
For the tournament, there will be one volunteer stationed on every hole to remove the flagstick when needed. Two volunteers will follow each group to rake bunkers and keep score.
Scoring will be done virtually with the Golf Genius app so there will be no trading of cards. Scores will be read aloud and players will be able to view those numbers on a screen to confirm before leaving the scoring area.
Carts will be mandatory and players may have caddies. There will be no spectators outside of resident members and families, though players will be limited in the number of people allowed in their entourages.
“Travel is not easy in this country right now,” said Pano, “host housing is iffy. So having two tournaments back to back 3 miles apart from each other – the real nice part about this is both courses have opened their facilities to the competitors on the three off-days in between.”
Smith said that he and Cook asked that any proceeds from the event be used for charity. Both the Folds of Honor Foundation and CDC Foundation have been designated as beneficiaries.
“We like the fact that not only are we giving the best young players a chance to compete,” said Smith, “but we’re going to support two very good causes as a result of it.”
Players who are exempt into the field include: U.S. Women’s Open qualifiers (2018, 2019); U.S. Women’s Amateur Match Play qualifiers (2019); NCAA Division I Women’s individual champions from the past five years; NCAA Division II Women’s individual champions from the past two years; reigning women’s NCAA Divison III, NAIA, NJCAA individual champion; and top 300 players in the WAGR as of the entry deadline.
Those who do not meet the exemption criteria may apply via application. Entires must be filed by 5 p.m. EDT on June 12.
“All these parents that are involved in this start talking about this at the Junior Solheim cup last year,” said Pano. “It’s needed. Whether there was a pandemic or not this has been needed for a long time.”