Experience goes a long way, especially at the ANWA.
Statistical milestones are common across sports and entertainment. Major League Baseball has its 3,000-hit club. The National Football League has the 500 club for passing yards in a game. Saturday Night Live has the five-timers club for hosts.
This year at the 2022 Augusta National Women’s Amateur, there’s a unique group that’s just as exclusive as the event’s namesake. Meet the ANWA three-timers club.
Of the 72 players in the field for the biggest women’s amateur event on the golf schedule, nine have competed in the two previous events: Florida junior Annabell Fuller, last year’s runner-up Emilia Migliaccio, 17-year-old Alexa Pano, Duke junior Erica Shepherd, Oregon State senior Ellie Slama, UCLA junior Emma Spitz, Florida State senior Beatrice Wallin, as well as Stanford junior Angelina Ye and freshman Rose Zhang.
Shepherd, Spitz, Wallin and Zhang are the only players to make the cut in each of the previous two events.
“I guess I haven’t looked at it that way before, but it’s awesome, and any course knowledge you can bring into this place, it’s a really tough track, I think it will benefit me,” said Shepherd of her advantage as an ANWA three-timer. “This course, Champions Retreat, is a gem in itself. I think that with the new greens and everything, there’s a lot to account for. I’m just trying to still be a learner out here.”
At last year’s event, Shepherd was flirting with the cut line and thought to herself that she wasn’t going to advance to the weekend. But the Indiana native dug deep and fought back to qualify for the final round, where she improved on her T-23 finish in 2019 with a T-16 in 2021 after COVID-19 cancelled the tournament in 2020.
“It’s such a special event, don’t stress out too much about the golf and needing to make the cut because we all want to do that, I want to do that,” advised Migliaccio, who lost in a playoff to 2021 champion Tsubasa Kajitani. “But you’ll really play well if you just cherish everything about the tournament.”
Easier said than done.
“It is really hard. I think the key is to stay in the moment and not get too high or too low,” said Shepherd of the challenges to not look ahead to the potential trip down Magnolia Lane on Saturday, which could require a playoff to break any ties to determine the 30 who will play the final round at Augusta National. “Obviously, everyone is just grinding to get into the low 30. It’s a hard low 30, and 30 only. So it’s definitely a big goal for this week and for everyone here.”
“I really want to be in the same position I was last year, but if I want to be in that position, I can’t focus on that,” echoed the always-bubbly Migliaccio, who played with Shepherd and her fellow Blue Devil, Phoebe Brinker, during Tuesday’s practice round. “So just really trying to focus on each hole. I mean, Nelly Korda always says, ‘one shot at a time,’ and it’s so key because if you just get too ahead of yourself, even on one hole, like already thinking about where you want to be on the green, well, if you haven’t hit your tee shot, that’s going to determine how you’re going to play the next one.”
“But I think anyone who’s played the course before is going to have an advantage,” continued Migliaccio, “and I think that’s a pretty equal advantage. Like if you’ve played it before, played it two times, like it’s going to help.”
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – After Stanford won its regional by 30 shots, head coach Anne Walker did everything she could to help her team hit the reset button. Dominant victories can take an emotional toll. She encouraged her players to put their clubs away for several days. Take time to decompress.
Stanford currently holds a 20-stroke lead over Duke at the NCAA Championship at Grayhawk heading into the final round of stroke play. Just like regionals, Rachel Heck and Angelina Ye sit 1-2 in the individual race. Brooke Seay added a 69 and is tied for fifth.
Ye bogeyed her first five holes this week but is now 5 under for the championship, five back from Heck. She carded a career-best 7-under 65 on Sunday, tying Andrea Lee for lowest round in NCAA Championship history for the program.
Angelina Ye’s 65 tied Andrea Lee’s school record for lowest round at NCAAs. (Stanford/Darren Reese)
The top eight teams advance to match play after Monday’s final round. Stanford won the 2015 NCAA Championship at The Concession, the first year the women switched formats to match play. They’ve advanced to the final eight every year since.
Heck is the top-ranked player in the country having won five tournaments this semester, including the Pac-12 Championship and regionals. What will it be like having a teammate chase her tomorrow?
“I’ll be playing behind her,” said Heck. “I’m hoping I get to watch her make putts and wave back at her, because that’s what we do. We’re teammates.”
A similar situation played out at regionals on Stanford’s home course. There was a backup on the 18th tee in the final round and Ye and Heck were tied.
“We were tied at regionals and I ended up coming out on top,” said Heck. (Angelina) gave me a huge hug and was super pumped for me. If she goes and fires another 7 under I’ll be stoked for her.”
Because Stanford didn’t get to compete in the fall due to COVID-19 and, for a while even the spring looked iffy, Heck says there’s a deep level of gratitude on the team. She’s better at staying patient in the moment now too. Heck credits ROTC with helping give her a greater perspective.
Walker said she’s most impressed with Heck’s demeanor on the course this week, her composure. She walked off the par-5 18th with a smile on Sunday despite a watery bogey.
“Getting mad isn’t going to help anything,” Heck said matter-of-factly.
Back on Friday in the first round, Walker approached Ye after her fifth bogey, armed with a pep talk: ‘Here’s the deal, you’re going to make five birdies in the next 72 holes.
With the NCAA postseason approaching, Cardinal players thrilled to be back on campus after a year of COVID-19 craziness.
PALO ALTO, California – On the last day of her senior year, Rachel Heck sat outside the gates of St. Agnes Academy in Memphis, Tennessee, with friends – spaced out, of course – and shed some tears. Heck had been in school with more than a dozen of her 99 classmates since age 3. They’d parted ways for Spring Break on a Friday, thinking nothing of it, and never returned.
“The last day you run down the hallway and slam all the lockers,” said Heck. “There were so many traditions that we just didn’t get to do.”
As if that weren’t bad enough, the fall semester of college golf at Stanford was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While other conferences forged on, the Pac 12 did not compete. A lost Heck found herself sending out S.O.S. messages in the Zoom chat of CS106A, an intro to computer science class. One morning she got up at 8 a.m. to work on an assignment in her Memphis bedroom and by 3 p.m. had gotten nowhere.
“I had nothing on my screen and just started bawling,” said Heck. “I’m supposed to be on campus. I’m supposed to have resources.”
Mercifully, fellow Cardinal students came to her aid. She eventually found a local tutor.
Heck can laugh about it now. Sitting outdoors at a long table at Osteria Toscana in Palo Alto, many things have started to feel familiar again. Osteria is a frequent haunt for the Cardinal, a nice place to bring recruits on campus visits. Four Stanford teammates have gathered here on a pleasant spring evening to talk about recent detours and silver linings. Any mention of hardship is usually laced with humor.
There’s great perspective here.
Left to right: Angelina Ye, Aline Krauter, Rachel Heck and Ziwi Yang
Now three months into life as a college student-athlete, Heck, one of the hottest players in college golf, is still getting to know her teammates. The entire team lives in the same dorm on the same hall due to COVID-19 protocols. Running into each other throughout the day at the bathroom sink or dining hall has helped make up for the time spent apart.
After months of nothing, it’s now pedal-to-the-floor action at Stanford Golf Course. Two weeks after hosting the Pac 12 Championships (won by USC and Heck), the 17th-ranked Cardinal play host to NCAA regional action May 10-12, with 17 teams trying to advance to the NCAA Championship. The top six teams will move on to Greyhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, Arizona, beginning May 21.
Other regional sites include Baton Rouge (LSU); Columbus, Ohio (OSU); and Simpsonville, Kentucky (Louisville).
With last year’s season canceled in March – wiping out conference and NCAA tournament action – junior Aline Krauter is the only member of the Cardinal lineup who has any postseason experience.
Krauter left campus last spring pretty quickly because her parents worried that she wouldn’t be able to get back into Germany. The planes and airports were eerily quiet. She admittedly was thrown off from the start, having not lived at home with mom and dad for an extended period since she left for boarding school in Florida at age 15.
Krauter’s family got acquainted with their backyard garden during quarantine, a welcome addition to their daily routine. When golf courses were closed, the German national team was able to practice at St. Leon-Rot, site of the 2015 Solheim Cup. She took advantage when she could.
Even though much in her life was canceled over the past year, good things happened too: Krauter met a new boyfriend after things started to open back up. She won the Women’s British Amateur at West Lancashire. The victory earned her a spot in the ANA Inspiration, where the international relations major realized her game was indeed big enough for the next level.
“I wasn’t sure coming in if I was going to hit the ball high enough to land it soft enough on the greens,” said Krauter. “I didn’t know if I hit it far enough. That doubt went away during the practice rounds and tournament.”
Sophomore Angelina Ye first came to visit Stanford at age 9. She was living in Shanghai at the time and playing in a nearby tournament. In the first grade, Ye wrote in an essay that she wanted to be No. 1 in the world so that she could buy her own plane to avoid having to purchase plane tickets.
“I was 7,” she said, laughing. “Cut me some slack.”
Ye played in her first China LPGA event at age 12 and finished third. At 13, she played in in the Blue Bay LPGA event on Hainan Island. Not once has she imagined herself sitting behind a desk. Even so, her parents instilled in Ye the importance of an education. The decision to go to Stanford, she said, shocked a lot of people in golf back home in China.
“I think I’m the only one who’s playing at this level and at my age who has not turned pro yet,” said Ye. Most elite junior players stop attending school on a regular basis before high school. They were technically enrolled, she said, but mostly just took the final exams.
“When I got my acceptance letter it was a big deal back home,” said Ye. “I’m really happy that they see this as an option now.”
Ye, who enrolled in the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida, during high school, returned there when the pandemic hit to stay with her mother and brother. Her instructors, Sean Foley and Mark Sweeney, were nearby, and courses only closed in the area for about a week.
Ye’s family has since moved about 25 minutes away from the Palo Alto campus. When the fall season was canceled, she could still go up to Stanford to practice.
Angelina Ye during a match between San Jose State, CAL and Stanford University at Stanford Golf Course on February 27, 2021 in Stanford, California.
Ziwi Yang, known as “Emily,” was the only member of Stanford’s team who stayed on campus all of last year.
The Beijing native was inspired to go to Stanford by the likes of Tiger Woods, Reese Witherspoon and Hannah Montana. An essay she wrote for Golf Digest China about her freshman year helped solidify Ye’s decision to follow in her footsteps.
Yang won’t be in the lineup at regionals. She has no plans to play professionally either, though she did consider it at one time. When the pandemic canceled Yang’s summer internship with the United Nations in Geneva, she got a position doing COVID-19 research at the Hoover Institution.
With the golf course, dining and workout facilities closed early on, Yang, who only had a couple of friends still on campus, took up running. Nothing made the ambitious Yang sweat more, though, than getting called on during a Zoom class for international law.
“I voluntarily took this class,” she said with a laugh. “I don’t know why.”
Last November, Yang was awarded the Rhodes Scholarship and will study 19th century history at the University of Oxford in England starting in the fall. She chose this particular subject area largely because the research will take her to Vienna, Paris, Istanbul, Germany and possibly St. Petersburg.
Talk of future travel and the fast-approaching NCAA postseason over hearty Italian food helped soothe disappointments from the past year. There’s much to look forward to at Stanford and beyond.
Five amateurs have chosen to compete in the ANA Inspiration the first week of April, which overlaps the Augusta National Women’s Amateur.
The top female amateurs face a difficult decision when it comes to the first week of April. Many will play the second annual Augusta National Women’s Amateur, but the opposite event offers a career opportunity, too.
Ultimately, five amateurs have committed to play the ANA Inspiration, the first LPGA major of the season, on a sponsor exemption.
The tournament traditionally invites a handful of amateurs to compete in the event, and announced that lineup on Wednesday. Rose Zhang (Stanford commit), Kaitlyn Papp (Texas), Gabriela Ruffels (Southern California), Olivia Mehaffey (Arizona State) and Angelina Ye (Stanford) will all compete April 2-5 at Mission Hills Country Club in Rancho Mirage, California, among a strong LPGA field.
One more amateur will have the opportunity to play her way into the field the weekend before the event at the ANA Junior Inspiration, an AJGA sanctioned 54-hole invitational with a 48-woman field.
“This is one of our favorite traditions at ANA Inspiration,” said Shigeru Hattori, ANA Senior Vice President of the Americas. “The tradition is crucial to growing the sport and fostering the dreams of young female golfers around the world. We’re proud to help each amateur invitee’s dream take flight as they play with the ladies of the LPGA Tour this April.”
Zhang, ranked No. 1 in the Golfweek Junior Rankings, is the only junior in the event so far. Zhang won the ANA Junior Inspiration in 2018, qualifying for the 2018 ANA Inspiration, where she made the cut and finished a credible T-60.
Ruffels is the reigning U.S. Amateur champion and a junior at USC. Ye, a freshman at Stanford is also a USGA champion, having won the U.S. Girls’ Junior in July. Olivia Mehaffey, a senior at Arizona State, has twice represented Great Britain and Ireland at the Curtis Cup. Papp, the final amateur, is ranked No. 13 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking and last year finished fifth at the ANWA.
All five women were eligible for the ANWA based on either world ranking or another exemption category.
“I am so happy to receive an invitation to play in the 2020 ANA Inspiration. I didn’t hesitate for a second as I really wanted to test my game with the professionals,” said Zhang. “My experience in the 2018 ANA Inspiration was absolutely amazing and I can’t wait to have a second chance after everything I learned when I played in 2018.”
