Lara Tennant is now the 11th player in history to win a USGA event three straight times.
For the third time in a row, Lara Tennant outlasted all competition and won the U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur Championship at The Lakewood Club (Dogwood Course) in Point Clear, Alabama.
She also won in 2018 and 2019; the 2020 event was canceled due to COVID-19.
Tennant was the No. 1 seed going into the tournament, and took down seven time USGA champion Ellen Port in the final, 2 and 1. The match started Wednesday, but was delayed until Thursday morning due to heavy rain. One of the par 4s played as a par 3 in response to course conditions.
“I love that trophy; it’s so beautiful, and it’s been at my house for quite a while, because of COVID and winning the two previous years, so I’ve gotten kind of attached to it,” said Tennant, 54, at the post-match ceremony. “It’ll go in the front entry, where it’s been now for three years, as a beautiful reminder of how lucky I am.”
Tennant is now the 11th player in history to win a USGA event three straight times. The last time Tennant lost a match in the U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur was all the way back in 2017, in the round of 64.
The next two U.S. Senior Women’s Amateurs will be played at Anchorage (Alaska) Golf Course (July 30-Aug. 4, 2022) and Troon Country Club in Scottsdale, Ariz. (Sept. 30-Oct. 4, 2023).
Ellen Port became the first female to put her name on the Metropolitan Senior Amateur trophy in her native St. Louis.
Three years ago, Ellen Port marked Curtis Cup week by traveling to the matches in Quaker Ridge Golf Club in Scarsdale, New York, along with several other players and captains. They cheered, told stories and even played a little golf. Four years before that, she was captaining the American squad in her hometown of St. Louis. That team, which included current LPGA players like Mariah Stackhouse and Emma Talley, marched to victory under Port.
The 59-year-old tends to have that inspiring effect.
But as eight of America’s best female amateurs are overseas at Conwy Golf Club in Wales this week, the former captain (and two-time Curtis Cupper herself) remained at home in St. Louis doing big things of her own. On Wednesday, Port became the first woman to win the Metropolitan Senior Amateur Championship, a two-day senior men’s championship played at Sunset Country Club.
“That’s a beautiful trophy, and like I said in my speech, that trophy doesn’t know if it’s a man or a woman holding it, it just knows it’s someone who loves golf,” Port told the Met Golf Association.
— Metropolitan Amateur Golf Association (@MetAmateurGA) August 26, 2021
Port, a seven-time USGA individual champion, is a member at Sunset and acknowledged to the Met Golf Association after the round that sometimes that kind of familiarity can present an obstacle. Port certainly didn’t overthink it, and the way in which she won is particularly impressive.
She was even par after the first of two rounds and trailed by five. A bogey-free, 5-under 67 on the final day put her in a playoff with Joe Malench. The pair played four extra holes – Nos. 10, 13, 14 and 15 – and each parred all four. On the par-3 15th, Port poured in a 20-foot birdie putt from above the hole.
“We went quite a few holes and I knew one of us was going to make a putt, and I was really tickled to make that right to left breaker on 15,” she said.
— Metropolitan Amateur Golf Association (@MetAmateurGA) August 25, 2021
According to the Met Golf Association, Port’s 5-under total was the third-lowest total score in tournament history. She also tied for the championship lead in birdies with nine.
Earlier this summer, Port acquired quite a bit of national attention when she made a run at the U.S. Senior Women’s Open title. Through two rounds, she was tied for third and only three shots behind eventual champion Annika Sorenstam.
Port, who made match play at the U.S. Women’s Amateur in 2018 when she was 56, ultimately finished T20 at the Senior Women’s Open (tied for low-amateur honors with Martha Leach). She got emotional mid-tournament talking about contending in that championship.
“Yeah, I am shocked, to be honest with you, that I stayed in the present as much as I did and kept things simple,” she said of contending early. “I have a lot of thoughts go through my mind normally in a given hour, so I just tried to really – I trained and I trusted, and that’s really the two Ts I’ll put on my golf ball.
“I’ve trained the best I could at this juncture, and now it’s time to trust it.”
The Missouri Golf Association recognized its top performers of the 2020 season.
After an impressive 2020 season, the Missouri Golf Association named Skip Berkmeyer its Town & Country MGA Player of the Year. This is his sixth year winning the award.
Berkmeyer took home the gold in two competitions this year, the first being the Jefferson City CC Four Ball in May with his partner, Hunter Parrish. The second was the MGA Stroke Play Championship in July, marking his third time winning the event. A field of 156 amateurs competed in a 72-hole stroke-play event at Norwood Hills CC in St. Louis. Berkmeyer won by four shots, posting rounds of 68-71-69-63 for a total of 271.
A three-time winner of both the Missouri Amateur Championship and Mid-Amateur Championship, Berkmeyer placed in both in 2020. He made it to the semifinals in the amateur and tied for fourth in the mid-amateur.
The MGA also named six other players of the year in individual categories.
Wayne Fredrick, 58, is the Springfield MGA Senior Player of the Year. Fredrick and his partner, Brian Haskell, won the Men’s Senior Four-Ball Championship at Bogey Hills CC in St. Charles.
In the Missouri Amateur Championship, Fredrick shot 73-75 on a 36-hole course, qualifying him for the round of 64 before he was eliminated. Fredrick was just shy of winning the Senior Amateur Championship in September, tying for second after hitting 70 and 73.
The St. Louis MGA Senior Player of the Year is Ellen Port, who finished tied for ninth in the Women’s Amateur Championship with a three-round total of 216. Port’s finish earned her third place in the Mid-Amateur (25+) Championship division.
The 59-year-old’s strongest finish was a 7-under total at the MGA Senior Amateur in Sedalia, Missouri. It was Port’s first time competing in the event, as she would usually compete in the USGA Women’s Senior Amateur. That event was canceled due to health concerns with COVID-19.
Port has been inducted in both the MGA Hall of Fame and the St. Louis Hall of Fame.
Jessie Meek, who played collegiately for the University of Missouri, is the 2020 Columbia MGA Player of the Year. She won her second MGA major title at the 2020 Mid-Amateur Championship in Camdenton. Meek shot 4-under par to beat the 2019 champion, Michelle Butler.
Meek finished third in the amateur division.
Two junior players were also honored by the MGA. Taryn Overstreet, who attends Drury University as a member of its golf team, was named Jackson MGA Junior Player of the Year. Overstreet started a strong competition year with a win at the Junior Match Play Championship, beating her younger sister, Ella, in the final round of play. She went on to win all four of her matches at the 52nd Annual Junior Four State Team Championship.
Overstreet closed her year at the MGA Junior Amateur Championship in Warrensburg, Missouri. She won after posting 72-74 for a total of 146.
Dawson Meek is the Ozark MGA Junior Player of the Year after competing in his final junior matches this year. He joined the University of Missouri golf team this fall.
Dawson Meek won the MGA Junior Match Play in Warrensburg after having qualified for the 113th MGA Amateur Championship. He finished his season tied for 15th at the men’s stroke-play event at Norwood Hills CC.
Here’s everything you need to know – including a few more players to watch – for the 2020 U.S. Women’s Amateur.
Eleven months ago, Rachel Kuehn was riding the bench as the Wake Forest women’s golf team made its 2019-20 debut. The freshman from Asheville, North Carolina, didn’t qualify for the event.
“She came into my office and asked ‘What do I need to do, coach?’” said head coach Kim Lewellen. “I said, ‘You’ve got to make it where I can’t not take you.’”
Kuehn did just that, winning her college debut wire-to-wire at the 2019 ANNIKA Intercollegiate – arguably the most competitive regular-season tournament in women’s college golf – and has since made a name for herself as one of the nation’s best amateur players.
“It showed me I can compete on a national stage and that I can compete with the best players in the country. It was more of a confidence thing than anything,” said Kuehn of her debut victory. “Now that I’ve been able to put myself in that situation a couple times in the past year, it’s done wonders for my confidence and game.”
This week, just outside the Washington, D.C., she’ll have a chance to officially claim the title of nation’s best as Woodmont Country Club in Rockville, Maryland, plays host to the U.S. Women’s Amateur Aug. 3-9, with Kuehn and defending champion Gabi Ruffels highlighting the loaded field. Kuehn enters the week in impressive form, winning her last two events: the prestigious North & South Women’s Amateur at Pinehurst and the Ladies National Golf Association Amateur.
Kuehn’s pandemic-shortened freshman campaign featured the win at the ANNIKA and two more top-10s in just five events. She didn’t finish worse than 17th and led the Demon Deacons with a 71.23 scoring average.
“We have a really competitive team. Any five of us can travel on any day and we can have a chance to compete for a win,” said Kuehn. “So it’s definitely motivating to know I have to be able to go out there and play my best just to even qualify, let alone play well in the tournaments.”
On the bag this week will be her older brother, Corrie, who played golf at Rhodes College in Memphis and previously caddied for his sister at the U.S. Girls’ Junior three years ago.
“He keeps me really loose on the course,” said Rachel. “He keeps my mind off golf when I’m walking between shots and when I get to my ball he’s like, ‘Alright time to buckle down and focus.’ And he is really good at helping that transition and keeping me loose and not so nervous.”
“Goofy 1 and Goofy 2 when they’re together,” chimed in their mother, Brenda, an All-American golfer and five-time winner as a senior for the Demon Deacons in the 1980s.
The Siblings Kuehn will have their work cut out for them this week. Here’s everything you need to know – including a few more players to watch – for the 2020 U.S. Women’s Amateur.
Marissa Wenzler is about to tee it up for the fourth consecutive week. The Kentucky sophomore’s past month was dotted with close calls and finally, at last week’s Ladies National Golf Association Amateur, a breakthrough.
It all started with the North & South Women’s Amateur at Pinehurst. Wenzler played all the way to the Round of 16. It was the same story the next week at the Women’s Western Amateur.
There was extra incentive to make a deep run at those events this year, considering the USGA reserved spots in the Women’s Amateur for the top two finishers. By the time the LNGA Amateur rolled around, she had forgotten that exemption even existed. A friend reminded her by text.
“You might be in it,” she said, “you might be in contention.”
Indeed, Wenzler rose from outside the top 10 after 36 holes to a tie for second, earning one of the final two spots in the championship along with Kennedy Pedigo.
In her freshman season at Kentucky, Wenzler had three top-20 finishes in six starts. The Wildcats won two of their first three events. I
Wenzler attributes part of her recent success, however, to the late-spring quarantine period that followed. Among other things, older brother Ryan Wenzler – who has played on the Mackenzie and Latinoamerica tours – gave her a putting tip that helped her putt more freely. Ryan will be on the bag for her at Woodmont.
The recent success is more mental than physical, Marissa Wenzler says, but the physical counts for something too.
“I already kind of know what the ball is doing,” she said. “I know what needed work, I know what’s going well. That’s been a huge advantage. I feel like the more I play, the better I get.”
U.S. captain Ellen Port with Mariah Stackhouse (right) and Emma Talley during the morning four-ball match of the 2014 Curtis Cup.
A legend returns
A USGA amateur championship field can be sorted in many ways. Ellen Port’s name falls into a number of categories: oldest competitors, Curtis Cup participants (or in her case, captain), most U.S. Women’s Amateur appearances and perhaps most impressively, past USGA champions. Port has won seven of these things – three U.S. Senior Women’s Amateurs and four U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateurs and she keeps showing up.
Port, who captained the U.S. Curtis Cup team to victory in her native St. Louis in 2014, earned an exemption into this week’s U.S. Women’s Amateur courtesy of her 2016 U.S. Women’s Senior Amateur win. It will be her 23rd start in the event, and while that sounds like record-breaking stuff, the 58-year-old would have a long way to go to catch legends like Carole Semple Thompson with 41 appearances and Anne Sandor with 37.
But Port’s name is worth watching because she very likely could make it past the stroke-play threshold on Tuesday and show up on the match-play bracket. She did in 2018 at the Golf Club of Tennessee, becoming the oldest player to make match play at the Women’s Amateur since Sandor did it in 1994. Port was only 22 days younger than Sandor was when she made the bracket.
She lost in the first round that year to Dylan Kim.
The average age of the field at Woodmont Country Club is 20.5 years old. Port is one of two players, along with four-time U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur champion Meghan Stasi, over 40.
Gabriela Ruffels with her caddie, Justin Silverstein, during the final round at the 2019 U.S. Women’s Amateur. (Photo: USGA/Steven Gibbons)
The field
In total, there are 132 players in this year’s field.
Average age: 20.5
States represented: 30
California (19), Texas (14), Florida (8) and North Carolina (7) lead the way.
Countries represented: 20
Unites States (92); Spain (4); Canada, Paraguay and Thailand (3); Australia, Columbia, Denmark, Germany, Guatemala, Mexico, People’s Republic of China and South Africa (2); Argentina, Finland, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Norway and the Philippines each have one.
Top 50 players in the World Amateur Golf Ranking: 20
Emilia Migliaccio (3), Rose Zhang (8), Gabriela Ruffels (9), Kaitlyn Papp (12), Sofia Garcia (15), Auston Kim (20), Siyun Liu (22), Kiira Riihijarvi (23), Allisen Corpuz (24), Alexa Pano (27), Pimnipa Panthong (28), Megan Schofill (29), Lei Ye (30), Gina Kim (33), Alyaa Abdulghany (34), Aneka Seumanutafa (35), Amanda Sambach (45), Carla Tejedo (47), Kaleigh Telfer (48), Lauren Hartlage (49).
Colleges with most active players: Duke (6); USC (6); Stanford (5); Arkansas and Wake Forest (4); Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Michigan State and Texas (3).
