Tag: Fatima Fernandez Cano

Fatima Fernandez Cano captures Epson Tour’s Carlisle Arizona Women’s Golf Classic

One day after a record 61, Fatima Fernandez Cano cruised to victory on the Epson Tour.

Fatima Fernandez Cano set a course and career low in the third round of the 2022 Carlisle Arizona Women’s Golf Classic with a 61.

Sunday, a steady 2-under 70 was enough to seal the deal at Longbow Golf Club in Mesa, Arizona, winning for the second time on the Epson Tour, the qualifying circuit known as the “Road to the LPGA”.

For the second day in a row, Fernandez Cano eagled the par-5 ninth hole. She collected three birdies but also had three bogeys Sunday but it was enough to hold off the field for a three-shot victory.

Laura Restrepo gave chase but could only manage an even-par 72 on the final day. A bogey on the last hole dropped her back into at three-way tie for second, along with Dani Holmqvist , who shot a final-round 66 to get to 14 under, and Sofia Garcia, who closed with a 68.

Kum-Kang Park, Lucy Li, Weiwei Zhang and Sophie Hausmann finished in a four-way tie for fifth at 13 under.

Defending champion Ruixin Liu could only manage a pair of even-par rounds of 72 over the weekend and finished tied for 19th. Liu has full-time status on the LPGA and said before the tournament that this would be her only Epson Tour event the season.

Fernandez Cano’s 11-under round Saturday was the best round of the week by three shots after Park closed with a 64 on Sunday.

Fernandez Cano, also a member of the LPGA, pockets $37,500 for the win.

The final round was suspended by inclement weather for almost an hour, as there were some lightning in the area.

This was the second event on the Epson Tour’s 2022 schedule. The circuit heads to Morongo Casino Resort & Spa in Beaumont, California, later this week for the IOA Championship where Fernandez Cano is the defending champion.

In January, the LPGA announced a five-year deal with Epson to make the tech company the title sponsor. Now in its 42nd season, the Epson Tour will award LPGA membership to the top 10 players on the Race for the Card money list at the end of each season.

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Fatima Fernandez Cano shoots a 61, ties mark for lowest score in Epson Tour history

The 61 is a course record, a personal best and it ties the lowest score in Epson Tour history.

Fatima Fernandez Cano birdied her first three holes Saturday at the 2022 Carlisle Arizona Women’s Golf Classic. A bogey on the fourth was the only blemish on her scorecard. She made the turn with an eagle on the ninth. Then notched another eagle and four more birdies on the back nine at Longbow Golf Club in Mesa, Arizona.

In the end, Fernandez Cano signed for an 11-under 61 in the third round, setting a course and career record. Oh, it also happened to tie the lowest score in Epson Tour history.

“It’s my lowest score ever, I think even in practice to be honest,” she said after a round that included 16 greens in regulation. “Just had it going out there. A really good day and go into tomorrow with a good mindset.”

Michaela Finn shot a 61 in the first round of the 2021 season finale.

Fernandez Cano’s theatrics also shot her to the top of the leaderboard at 15 under. She’ll sleep on the 54-hole lead by a shot over Laura Restrepo and by two over Haylee Harford. Alana Uriell and Sophie Hausmann are tied for fourth at 12 under.

Defending champion Ruixin Liu is among a group tied for 10th at 9 under.

After her front-nine 31, Fernandez Cano stepped on the gas pedal on the back nine. She birdied the 10th before consecutive pars on Nos. 11 and 12. She then holed out for eagle on the par-4 13th before tacking on three more birdies.

“She was on a different level,” her caddie James Longman said.

“I’m happy with the fact I stayed aggressive,” Fernandez Cano said. “No. 13, had a bad lie in the fairway. Luckily, we had a really good club at it and good shot from 145 yards. Then No. 15, had an eagle putt lip out and that’s when I knew this round was getting close to a number in the very low 60s.”

This is the second event on the Epson Tour’s 2022 schedule. In January, the LPGA announced a five-year deal with Epson to make the tech company the title sponsor of the “Road to the LPGA” qualifying tour, formerly known as the Symetra Tour.

Now in its 42nd season, the newly-named Epson Tour will award LPGA membership to the top 10 players on the Race for the Card money list at the end of each season.

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It’s Symetra Tour finale week and a U.S. Women’s Open berth is at stake

There’s a tournament within a tournament at the Symetra Tour Championship that could ultimately mean more than the LPGA card itself.

There’s a tournament within a tournament at this week’s season-ending Symetra Tour Championship that could ultimately mean more than the LPGA card itself.

The top five on the Symetra Tour money list at the conclusion of this week’s event earn LPGA status for 2021. It’s worth noting, however, that this group’s status will be significantly lower on the priority list than previous years, dropping from Category 9 to 19. (Category 19 is typically reserved for the Class A/Veteran International players who have been active on the tour for at least 10 consecutive years. Category 19 sits below Nos. 125-150 on the money list.)

It’s basically like an LPGA card lite.

The other carrot dangling on the horizon?

A start in the 75th U.S. Women’s Open next month. The top five on the money list also earn a spot at Champions Golf Club Dec. 10-13 in Houston. And on a tour where only 38 players have crossed the $10,000 mark in earnings – for the year – the USWO’s $5,500,000 purse is a mega-opportunity.

“Today was big for me,” said rookie Sierra Brooks of a 3-under 69 that vaulted her into a tie for third. “I knew coming into this week that there was maybe an outside chance of me winning to sneak into the top five there.

“I needed a day like today to have a good run at it for the last two days.”

This week’s Symetra Tour Championship at River Run Country Club in Davidson, North Carolina, offers a first-place check of $26,250. At the start of the tournament, 34 players had a chance to finish in the top five. Money leader Fatima Fernandez Cano hopes to hang on to one of those spots from her hotel room in Charlotte, North Carolina, where she’s currently quarantined after testing positive for COVID-19 for a second time this season

Ana Belac, Kim Kaufman, Bailey Tardy and Peiyun Chien round out the top five, with Chien checking in at $36,570. (Kaufman’s LPGA status is already better than what’s on offer from the Symetra Tour. But that USWO start would be big.)

Charlotte native Laura Wearn sits tied with Sweden’s Frida Kinhult at the midway point at 5-under 139. Wearn came into the week 10th on the money list and must finish solo seventh or better to have a chance. She’s sleeping in her own bed this week, 45 minutes from the course, and trying her best not to think about what’s at stake.

“I’ve just done a good job of staying in the moment,” she said of her second-round 67.

A strong finish at Champions Golf Club could go a long way toward eliminating the financial strain of a Symetra season that included only 10 starts. The original purse for the Symetra Tour finale was slated to be $250,000 but has since dropped to $175,000. A tour official said purses this year were fluid up until the start of the event, “as economics allowed.”

“At the end of the day, what the purse is is completely out of my control,” said Wearn. “If it’s $175,000 and that means we get another tournament in, that’s fantastic.”

It’s worth noting too that the purse for the LPGA’s season-ending CME Group Tour Championship will also be down from last year’s $5 million payout to $3 million.

No tour was spared.

Kinhult has competed in one ANA Inspiration and two Women’s British Opens but hopes to make her first start in the U.S. Women’s Open next month alongside several of her former Swedish national teammates.

“I know the only thing I can do to try to make that happen is to get the win,” she said.

There’s actually a third carrot on the line for Kinhult: If she wins an event, her family promised she’d get a TrackMan.

To get that done, Kinhult will need to keep working on an area that 2020 has forced her to address.

“I like to have control over everything,” she said, “which has really been tested this year.”

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Fatima Fernandez Cano, Symetra Tour money leader, misses tour finale after second positive COVID test

Fatima Fernandez Cano hopes to remain in the top 5 on the Symetra Tour money list despite being in quarantine. That means a lot for 2021.

The Symetra Tour’s season finale is happening this week at River Run Country Club in Davidson, North Carolina, but the top-ranked player on the season-long money list isn’t there. Instead, she’s hunkered over an e-reader in a hotel room roughly 20 miles away in Charlotte, North Carolina.

So continues the year of COVID.

Fatima Fernandez Cano, a 25-year-old from Spain, has now tested positive for the virus two times. In mid-July, she had to sit out of the Symetra Tour’s Firekeepers Casino Hotel Championship, the first event on the tour’s restart, because of a positive test. Now, Cano is missing the season finale.

“Before our first event back post-quarantine, I tested positive as well,” Cano said. “That time I didn’t have any symptoms or anything. The way protocol worked back then, it wouldn’t matter whether I got retested right away or anything like that, I had to quarantine for 10 days anyways, unfortunately.

“So I did that and then of course this time around, I do have some symptoms so there was no chance for me to play at all.”

Cano reports a loss of smell and taste this time that she didn’t experience this summer. She thinks the first positive test was likely a false positive. Cano hasn’t experienced any other symptoms this week.

When Cano found out on Nov. 1 that she had tested positive again, she was driving from Pinehurst (where she finished T-32 at last week’s Carolina Golf Classic) to this week’s stop in Davidson. She was supposed to stay with a host family for this week’s tournament, but the tour found her a hotel instead. She’ll remain there for seven days from her positive test date of Oct. 30.

“I actually did some grocery shopping online and they drop it off at my hotel,” she said. “Ordering food online and stuff like that. They literally just drop it off at my door, which is great. It’s super easy.”

Early week, she was taking book recommendations by Twitter, having spent her first day in isolation doing nothing but watching TV and movies.

“I kind of decided that would not be very good for me,” she said. “I’m putting a limit on how much TV I can watch and just start reading.”

Fortunately, Cano’s hotel room is plenty big. She also has yoga and at-home workouts she can do.

None of it is ideal, but Cano recognizes it’s a situation out of her control.

“Honestly, I was actually very happy that I am or was leading the money list, having to miss one event due to this circumstance that is out of my control. I was pretty proud of the way I came back,” she said.

At stake at this week’s Tour Championship? LPGA status for 2021 as well as a spot in the 2020 U.S. Women’s Open for the top 5 players on the season-ending money list.

Cano leads that list with $48,069 for eight events, and is $12,471 ahead of Lucy Li, who sits in the No. 6 position. For now, Cano is hoping not to be bumped out of the top 5.

“My goal was to finish the season No. 1,” she said. “That was something I was working toward.”

Cano, a Spaniard who competed for Troy University from 2013-17, has never had LPGA status. She’s trying not to get too excited about that prospect yet for fear of the jinx.

At the end of the 2019 Symetra Tour season, Cano was 24th on the money list. She attributes this year’s better play to work in the gym, which allowed her to gain some distance. She also feels more confident over putts.

“COVID in a way taught me how much I love competing, how much I love being out there,” she said. “Not having that tour life, that competition for four or five months that we didn’t have it, it made me appreciate it more.”

For the past three years, Cano has been based in Birmingham. After graduating from Troy in 2017, she realized she needed a place to practice and a way to make money as she worked her way up the professional golf ladder. Cano began working in the golf shop at Shoal Creek Country Club.

After playing in LPGA Q-School that fall, she was accepted into Shoal Creek’s Tour Hopefuls program, which includes about 15 players. Cano is currently the only female among them, but LPGA player Emma Talley, the 2015 NCAA individual champion, is an alum.

When Shoal Creek hosted the 2018 U.S. Women’s Open, Cano got to tee it up on the weekend as a marker. She played in the first group out with Daniela Darquea. Cano also qualified for the 2019 U.S. Women’s Open at the Country Club of Charleston, but missed the cut with back-to-back rounds of 74.

Having been inside the ropes makes Cano all the more hopeful that in the end, it will all work out. After all, she’s due for a bit of good luck.

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Former high school hockey goaltender Sarah White wins Symetra Tour’s Founders Tribute at Longbow

Sarah White capped off a final-round 68 with a birdie on the 18th hole to finish at 15 under to win the Symetra Tour’s Founders Tribute at Longbow.

Sarah White capped off a final-round 68 with a birdie on the 18th hole to finish at 15 under to win the Symetra Tour’s Founders Tribute at Longbow.

White, the starting goaltender for two seasons for East Kentwood High School’s varsity hockey team in Grand Rapids, Michigan, edged Casey Danielson and Sophia Popov by a shot.

“I have that competitive spirit in me from playing ice hockey for so many years,” White said after Saturday’s second round. “I know what it takes, the grind and all of that. I hit a 354-yard drive today and this course sets up for me really well. I’m also putting well, which trusting that frees me up.”

Danielson shot a final-round 65, a score that was matched by Demi Runas and Min-G Kim for the best scores of the day. Popov’s 63 on Saturday was the best score of the week.

Founders Tribute at Longbow scores

Fatima Fernandez Cano finished solo fourth at 12 under. Lucy Li shot a final-round 66 and finished in fifth.

Sunday’s final round in Mesa, Arizona, was played under an excessive heat warning, with the temperature reaching 109. Longbow Golf Club in Mesa withstood high temperatures for all three days of the 54-hole event, the Symetra Tour’s second on its restart. It was 112 during Friday’s first round. The Thursday pro-am saw temperatures climb to 114.

The Symetra Tour should find cooler weather in Beaumont, California, for its next tournament, the IOA Championship Presented by Morongo Casino Resort & Spa, Aug. 21-23.

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