Sea Island, Georgia, has long been an important stop in men’s amateur golf, having hosted the Jones Cup tournaments (together with Ocean Forest Golf Club) since the early 2000s. Now, women will get the chance to compete there annually, too. The Georgia resort has announced the creation of the Sea Island Women’s Amateur, to be played for the first time July 27-29, 2021.
“With Sea Island’s strong commitment to amateur golf and hosting multiple amateur championships over the years, creating the Sea Island Women’s Amateur was an important and natural next step, one that we are very pleased to be taking,” said Brannen Veal, Director of Golf. “This opportunity will give the best female golfers a stage on which to showcase their talents.”
The 54-hole tournament will be held on Seaside, Sea Island’s signature course, with a field limited to 84 players.
Sea Island has long been a site for big competition. The PGA Tour’s RSM Classic makes an annual fall stop there, and Sea Island has also hosted eight USGA championships, the U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur, U.S. Senior Amateur and U.S. Mid-Amateur among them.
The inaugural Sea Island Women’s Amateur will be open to females of all ages, with registration beginning in April and closing June 18 (players can register on the tournament’s web site).
Sea Island becomes the latest venue to either expand an established men’s field to include women, or to create a new event solely for women. Augusta National is perhaps the most notable entity to do so with the first playing of the Augusta National Women’s Amateur in 2019. Last spring, Sage Valley Golf Club, which has hosted the prestigious Junior Invitational since 2011, announced it would also host a women’s event beginning in 2021.
Recently, the Gator Invitational, a junior event played at Country Club of Jackson (Mississippi), announced it was creating a women’s field for its event, too. The Donna Andrews Invitational at Boonsboro Golf Club in Lynchburg, Virginia, was played for the first time in 2019 and back-to-back 54-hole women’s amateur events in Florida, dubbed the U.S. Women’s Elite Amateur, were put on the calendar for this June only to be postponed because of COVID. The R&A, together with the ANNIKA Foundation, also announced in January the creation of the first Women’s Amateur Latin America, but that event also was canceled because of COVID.
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