Kenzie Wright – Syndication Server

For ANWA first-timers and returners, the chance to play Augusta National still feels untouchable

For Augusta National Women’s Amateur participants, the chance to play the iconic course still feels somewhat untouchable.

To prepare for her first trip to Augusta National, Kenzie Wright has been chipping off of Alabama’s practice putting green to get a feel for tight lies.

“Mic (Potter) probably won’t be too happy to hear this,” said Wright, a fifth-year senior, of the Tide’s head coach.

Apologies to Potter, but there’s a whatever-it-takes attitude when it comes to Augusta National. Whether it’s securing tickets to the Masters or preparing your game for a bucket-list event.

After last year’s Augusta National Women’s Amateur was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, staying amateur for another year and playing a super-senior season at Alabama was a no-brainer for Wright. The 23-year-old stayed on in Tuscaloosa, where on May 1 she’ll graduate with a Master’s degree in sport hospitality. The Texan plans to attend LPGA Q-School later this year.

But first, she’ll join 82 other amateurs March 31-April 3 for the much-anticipated second edition of the ANWA. Wright, who will be one 54 first-timers at the event, said Masters week always felt like a holiday for her family. In high school, she’d sneak a peek at tournament coverage on her phone during class.

The chance to play the iconic course still feels somewhat untouchable.

The good news is that no matter how Wright plays, she’s guaranteed to tee it up at Augusta National. The field will be cut to the top 30 players after 36 holes at nearby Champions Retreat Golf Club. On Friday, all 85 players will the play a practice round at Augusta National. The final round will be broadcast live on NBC.

In 2019, Jennifer Kupcho and Maria Fassi put on an unforgettable show in front of packed crowds. Kupcho played her final six holes in 5 under, posting a 5-under 67 at Augusta to win the inaugural event. Two days later, both Kupcho and Fassi were on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.”

It was an instant classic.

Linn Grant was in the gallery that Saturday, watching a couple of friends compete after she missed the cut.

“I want to get some revenge,” she said of Champions Retreat.

So much has happened since Grant last competed in Augusta. Last December, for example, she was in the final group at the U.S. Women’s Open on Saturday alongside fellow amateur Kaitlyn Papp. Grant’s inspiring run came unraveled when she carded a quadruple-bogey eight on the 10th hole.

“Inside I was fuming, just furious,” she said. “But then I also know that there and then, the anger inside of me won’t help me to score better.”

Right now, Grant said, everything about her game feels like it’s going her way. The Arizona State sophomore, currently No. 2 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking, won the inaugural Sun Devil Winter Classic in February, the Bruin Wave Invitational in early March and the Clover Cup 11 days later.

“I just have a mental flow,” said Grant, “and feel very positive about what I’m doing.”

Linn Grant, Arizona State (Arizona State Athletics)

Rose Zhang returns to Augusta as the undisputed favorite. The No. 1-ranked amateur enjoyed a spectacular 2020 season in which she won the U.S. Women’s Amateur as well as three AJGA invitationals and finished 11th at the ANA Inspiration, an LPGA major.

Zhang had the chance to return to the ANA this year (held the same week as ANWA) but instead chose to come back to Augusta, where she tied for 17th in 2019. The 17-year-old Stanford commit suffered a left wrist injury last summer that resulted from hitting balls in her garage during the pandemic lockdown. After making the cut at the U.S. Women’s Open last December, Zhang took a month off from golf to give her wrist more time to heal.

“It was just uncomfortable,” said Zhang, who noted that additional breaks might be in order.

Two weeks before the ANWA, Zhang nearly won a Symetra Tour event. She lost to Ruixin Liu on the second playoff hole at the Carlisle Arizona Women’s Classic.

Rose Zhang lines up her tee shot on the 7th hole during the second round of the 2020 ANA Inspiration Mission Hills Golf Club. (Photo: Kelvin Kuo-USA TODAY Sports)

Ashley Gilliam heads to Augusta National for a third time after twice competing in the Drive, Chip and Putt finals (2014 and 2015). The Mississippi State sophomore was out practicing at Old Waverly when she received a notification on her phone that a package had been delivered. After a long 30-minute ride back to her apartment, Gilliam got her parents and older sister on FaceTime so that they could watch her open the official invitation.

Her parents pulled up pictures from her Drive, Chip and Putt invitations to hold them all side by side. Gilliam’s father, Marshall, who played baseball at Tennessee Tech, will caddie for Ashley the first two rounds. She plans to get a local caddie for Augusta National.

In 2014, it was Gilliam’s mother, Jennifer, who caddied for her at Drive, Chip and Putt. Jennifer played college golf at Ole Miss and introduced her daughters to the game.

Ashley Gilliam Augusta National Women's Amateur — Ashley Gilliam, right, and her mother Jennifer. (Photo submitted)

“I can’t remember what age I finally beat her,” said Ashley, whose older sister Savannah is a senior at Middle Tennessee State.

Wright said her father, J.W., a car salesman in McKinney, doesn’t often show his emotions, but he can’t hold back when the subject of his daughter playing Augusta comes up.

“He’s already excited just to go shopping,” she said.

Before the pandemic, Wright said only one designated guest was allowed to watch the practice round at Augusta. But now that fewer total guest tickets are available to players, all three designated guests can walk the practice round on Friday. Wright said her boyfriend, Brayden Conover, a golf writer who is taking the week off from his job, will get the third badge.

“It was a big fight between my mom and dad over who was going to be the designated guest before,” said Wright, with a laugh.

Now everyone gets to experience the walk of a lifetime. Maybe even more than once.

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As 2019 ends, Kenzie Wright hopes Dixie Amateur is the last rung on the climb to ANWA

Wright is making her final start of 2019 at the Dixie Women’s Amateur, the last event of the year where WAGR points are awarded.

TAMARAC, Fla. – Kenzie Wright was in a leadership role at Alabama before she even knew her way around campus. Two tournaments after she transferred from SMU at the start of the 2018 fall season, Wright was part of a team that set an NCAA scoring record. Barely a month later, she was one of the oldest players left.

When Tide stars Kristen Gillman and Lauren Stephenson departed for the LPGA at the end of last fall, the Crimson Tide dynamic changed almost instantly.

“Last year was pretty rough on the girls who remained,” said head coach Mic Potter.

Potter was not particularly fond of the soundtrack – joking that if he and Wright butt heads on anything, it’s music – but Wright has led an admirable rebuilding effort.

Dixie Women’s Amateur: Leaderboard

Among the several choreographed videos on the “Golfing Gals RTR” (short for roll, Tide, roll) Instagram page is one in which Wright emerges from a doorway in a long hall of offices and dances toward the camera to “That Girl is Poison,” a 1990s hit by Bell Biv DeVoe. Her Tide teammates fall in step, and there’s maybe no better way to describe the real-life musical going on in Tuscaloosa.

“She came in very much a natural leader this year,” assistant coach Susan Rosensteil said. “I’m not sure that would have been her role.”

Leading the charge

For all the hamming she does on social media, Wright knows when to buckle down. She was paying close attention during the short time she had with Gillman and Stephenson.

“Even though it was for two tournaments, just being around them and watching how they practice was honestly the best thing I’ve been able to be a part of,” Wright said.

Potter has also played a big role in Wright’s development despite the relatively short amount of time she has spent at Alabama.

Conversations around game improvement can sometimes be daunting. When Wright and Potter sat down at the end of last year to see where she was losing shots, she thought a complete short-game overhaul was on the horizon. Potter wanted to see her control her distances better with a wedge in her hand and get more precise with trajectory and spin.

“It was basically making one or two more putts per round, maybe making an up-and-down a round,” Wright said. “In my head before that, I was thinking it was going to be a lot.”

Wright tracks progress in a category called “P6,” which essentially means making the putt each time you hit it to 6 feet. She completes a P6 90 percent of the time now (as opposed to 60 percent last spring) and has improved her scrambling percentage from roughly 60 percent last season to 85 percent this fall. Rosenstiel praises Wright’s ability to be realistic in her own assessment of her game. That alone has allowed for continuous improvement.

The time is now

This is exactly the time of year when all of those little shots count. Wright is making her final start of 2019 at the Dixie Women’s Amateur, the last amateur event of the year where World Amateur Golf Ranking points are awarded. Wright was No. 145 in the WAGR at the start of the week.

Come January, Augusta National Women’s Amateur invitations are awarded to the top 30 Americans in the ranking. Wright is roughly 30 spots short of the projected cut-off. The Dixie, as the last stop on the competition calendar each year, figures in prominently for ANWA hopefuls.

Wright has played the event each of the past two years, and at the end of the year a 48th-place finish will rotate out of her two-year rankings window.

“I shot 12 over here two years ago,” Wright said. “I was like, ‘If I shoot 12 over, I don’t even deserve to go to Augusta.’ I don’t have anything to lose – if I don’t play, I’d be mad if I didn’t make it.”

Augusta became real when she and her teammates huddled around the TV during last year’s final round and actually saw it happen. She and Tide junior Angelica Moresco, of Caldogno, Italy, vowed they’d be there next time, but it was still a long shot for Wright.

“I didn’t even think I’d have a chance,” she said. “That’s what’s so crazy. In April, I was like, I’m going to have to do a lot to be able to get there.”

Improving ranking, building confidence

A quarterfinal run at the U.S. Women’s Amateur, as the No. 445 player in the world, did a lot to improve her standing. Wright had never qualified for that event before this year and had never really seen herself on the same stage with the world’s best players.

In her quarterfinal match against eventual champion Gabriela Ruffels, Wright birdied four consecutive holes from Nos. 9 to 12 but only won one of them. They combined for 13 birdies in a match Ruffels won on the 17th hole at Old Waverly Golf Club in West Point, Mississippi.

“That match really solidified it for me,” Wright said. “I played well the whole week, but that’s the one I remember. I know I deserve to be there, and I know I can compete with the best.”

These are big revelations for a player who, one year ago, saw her name on an Arnold Palmer Cup watch list and didn’t know how to handle it. Potter coached her to be less distractable, across the board. Wright is not exceptionally long and fell into the trap last season of feeling that she needed more power to seriously compete.

Knight shares a swing coach – Joey Wuertemberger – with LPGA rookie Cheyenne Knight, who turned professional after her junior year at Alabama in 2018 or would have overlapped Wright on the Tide roster. Knight inspired another Alabama team TV moment when she won the LPGA’s Volunteers of America Classic in October.

“Seeing Cheyenne go win a tournament where all these girls are out-driving her, I don’t need to worry about that,” Knight said of the “flashy” stuff. “Just stick with short game, make some putts, make some up and downs. That’s how you can beat them.”

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