PAWLEYS ISLAND, S.C. – Not every COVID-forced work-around, at least where golf is concerned, has brought heartache. Lauren Hartlage has actually found benefits in the new normal.
Case in point: After playing her way to a two-shot lead at the Golfweek Caledonia Amateur, the fifth-year Louisville senior planned to put her feet up on the beach. Her boyfriend Nicholas Tenuta will be in the chair next to her. Tenuta spent the day playing across the street from Caledonia Golf & Fish Club at the Golfweek True Blue Amateur.
Tenuta’s opening round of 3-over 75 left him T-55.
Hartlage and Tenuta are the only players from Louisville among the 148 college-age amateurs competing on Pawleys Island this week. The Atlantic Coast Conference, however, is well-represented – to the tune of 17 players split between both fields.
Scores: Golfweek Caledonia Amateur
“It’s fun,” Hartlage said. “We’re on the beach, I get to play golf. You wish you got to play with your team but you take advantage of what you can and make the most of it.”
Last spring, COVID might as well have been synonymous with canceled when it came to college athletics. There was so little to play in the spring that Hartlage branched out. She signed up for the Colorado Women’s Open and traveled 1,000 miles from her Elizabethtown, Kentucky, home to play in a mixed field of amateurs and professionals (even some LPGA players).
The next month, she teed it up in a Women’s All-Pro Tour event in Arkansas. She played the final round with eventual winner Maria Fassi. Hartlage finished fifth.
Hartlage doesn’t have any Symetra Tour status and would be starting on a professional career about now if there was an opportunity for advancement. With no LPGA Q-School in the fall, there isn’t.
Louisville happened to be looking for another player this season.
“I was like, ‘What would you think if I stayed?’” Hartlage suggested.
Coach Whitney Young was all for it, but Hartlage knows other players haven’t been so lucky to have an open spot for the taking.
Hartlage’s round of 4-under 67 on Sunday included five birdies and just one bogey on the par-4 10th. She leads a group of players at 2 under that includes North Carolina’s Brynn Walker, Charlotte’s Ellinor Sudow, Alabama’s Caroline Curtis and Duke’s Megan Furtney.
South Carolina sophomore Smith Knaffle is one more shot back. Knaffle, a native of nearby Murrell’s Inlet, dropped a shot with at the 18th, a closing par 4 over water, but drew applause from the crowded back porch of Caledonia’s clubhouse all the same.
Knaffle annually plays the First Tee outing at Caledonia. Her dad Jim is the superintendent at International Club, roughly 25 miles up the road from Caledonia. She’s the local favorite, with a handful of rounds under her belt here.
“Not as many as you would think but enough to know what I’m doing,” said Knaffle, who was named after her maternal grandmother, Betty Smith.
Pawleys Island suffered a deluge four days ago, with eight inches of rain falling in a 12-hour period. Knaffle felt the soggy ground added a couple hundred yards to the golf course.
Unlike many players in the Caledonia field, Knaffle will have the opportunity to play this fall with her South Carolina team. The Gamecocks will compete along with the rest of the SEC in three fall events. Caledonia is serving simply as a warm-up. The first SEC event, the Blessings Collegiate Invitational in Fayetteville, Arkansas, is still three weeks away.
Knaffle made three starts with the team as a freshman. The roster included World No. 1-ranked amateur Pauline Roussin-Bouchard. Pimnipa Panthong, a three-time All-American at Kent State, has transferred in for a fifth year with the Gamecocks. Knaffle chose this roster for the challenge and has learned much from her world-beating teammates.
“For me, it’s just not being so hard on myself,” she said, “and letting myself be free and play.”
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