The 97th-anniversary edition of the tournament tees off this week — a field of golfers that grows younger and deeper by the year.
ORMOND BEACH, Florida — The 97th-anniversary edition of the Sally Championship tees off this week in its modern form — a field of golfers that seems to grow younger and deeper by the year.
The Championship Division features 85 golfers from top college programs and plenty of even younger talent from the top rungs of the national junior rankings, all here to face the unique challenges presented by Oceanside Country Club, where the fickle beachside elements always play a role.
Following Tuesday’s annual Member-Sally event, the 72-hole, stroke-play tournament — formally known as the Women’s South Atlantic Amateur Championship — runs Wednesday through Saturday.
Leading the way is defending champion Emma McMyler, a junior at Xavier University, who won by a stroke last year with a total of 1-under 287. She tees off at 10:02 Wednesday morning to start her title defense.
Ellen Hume won the Sally Amateur to start 2021. (Daytona Beach News-Journal)
Emma McMyler won last year’s Sally Championship by one shot.
A few other golfers from last year’s top-10 finishers return this year, including the nation’s top-ranked junior, Ohio’s Gianna Clemente. She made history last summer as a 14-year-old, earning three straight LPGA Tour starts through Monday qualifiers.
The second-ranked player on the current junior rankings, Kaitlyn Schroeder of Jacksonville, also returns this year after tying for fourth with Clemente, at 2 over par, in last year’s Sally. Schroeder, who enrolls this month at the University of Alabama, was the 2022 American Junior Golf Association’s Player of the Year.
This week’s field also includes a handful of high school golfers from the nearby Daytona Beach area: Amelia Cobb (Seabreeze), Riley Fletcher (Seabreeze), Vanessa Perry (Spruce Creek) and Alexandra Gazzoli (Matanzas).
The Sally’s history is tied to a wintertime group of amateur tournaments in Florida dubbed the Orange Blossom Circuit. Its list of past champions includes a pair of Hall of Famers — Patty Berg (1938-39) and Babe Zaharias (1947) — as well as some modern LPGA Tour stars such as Cristie Kerr, Grace Park, Lexi Thompson, Jessica Korda and Brooke Henderson.
Nelly Korda, the younger sister of LPGA player Jessica Korda during the first round of the 86th South Atlantic Amateur at Oceanside Country Club.
From the 1920s to the 2020s, an oncoming Sally sends golfers to the oncoming forecast. This week’s daily offerings from Wednesday through Saturday, at least so far, include a temp range from low 80s to low 50s, predominant winds from three different directions, and a decent chance of thunderstorms during Thursday’s second round.
Tee times run from 7:30 a.m. to about noon each day.
Ole Miss transfer Ellen Hume made a big statement to start the year by winning the Sally Amateur.
ORMOND BEACH, Fla. — A two-shot lead with several holes to play at Oceanside Country Club isn’t exactly a comfortable cushion. Along with the normal challenges, there’s a lot of water over the final mile or so to the safety of the clubhouse.
Ellen Hume kept dry and kept the chasers at arm’s length with a few par saves, then closed things out dramatically with an eagle on the par-5 17th, a birdie on the par-4 18th, and in the end, a five-shot win in her first attempt at the Sally Amateur.
“It’s definitely a tough course, so I’m very happy,” said Hume, an England native and junior at Ole Miss. “The Sally is a massive tournament and I’m really glad to win it.”
Hume’s 72-hole total of 5-under-par 283 was five clear of 15-year-old Bailey Shoemaker, who shot 72 on Saturday and had several birdie putts tickle the edge of the cup over the closing stretch of holes. Xin “Cindy” Kou, a future USC Trojan, was alone in third at 1 over after a closing 72.
Hume began the day with a two-shot lead and saw it sliced immediately with a bogey on the first. She had two more bogeys and a pair of birdies to make the nine-hole turn in 1-over 37 before stringing together a birdie and six pars on the back ahead of her eagle-birdie finish.
“It wasn’t easy to start with, but I managed to hang in there and got it going a little bit on the back,” she said.
Hume did it all in cool temps and a steady breeze, both of which are always accentuated on the wide-open beachside layout. That, according to the London native, might’ve played to her advantage.
“It does remind me of home,” she said. “The wind and the cold, it’s definitely English.”
Kate Smith, a fifth-year senior at Nebraska, is combining her passion for golf and graphic design in a unique way.
ORMOND BEACH, Fla. – Kate Smith’s golf hat collection has spilled out of her closet. Part of it now lives above the stairway in her apartment near the University of Nebraska. Add some hats from roommate Megan Whittaker’s collection and it makes for the kind of installation you might expect in the home of a graphic designer.
Smith and Whittaker both play on Nebraska’s women’s golf team. Smith is wrapping up an extra COVID year by taking on a fashion merchandising minor to go along with her graphic design degree.
“Graphic design is such an awesome major because I can do it at night and on a plane,” said Smith, who is still considering a playing career. “It’s worked out well so far.”
The hats are keepsakes that eventually inspired a career path. Even when she was a kid, her dad Kris would sometimes bring home a hat with a logo he thought his daughter, a budding designer, might appreciate.
Kate Smith and Megan Whittaker’s hat collection. (Photo submitted)
Kris, the PGA member and manager of the city-owned Lakeview Golf Course in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, once brought home a cap from exclusive McArthur Golf Club in Hobe Sound, Florida. Its logo is a simple milk jug – much appreciated by Kate.
To this day, Kate names it as being among her favorite logos. There’s also Pebble Beach, Scioto and Winged Foot. Some of these courses she has never visited. At some, like Scioto, she has merely made a trip into the golf shop. Kate recognizes she can’t leave out Minnesota’s best and there plenty in that category. Windsong Farms and Hazeltine quickly come to mind.
There are plenty of golf fans out there with hat collections rivaling Kate Smith’s, but they likely don’t have their own personal collection of golf logos. That portfolio is still growing.
By the time Smith plays two more rounds at the Sally Amateur, she’ll have reached seven consecutive days of competitive golf between that tournament and last week’s Orlando International Amateur (where she finished T-22). At each such tournament, Smith as decided to give the course logo a refresh – she’s hashtagging it #LogosUnderRepair on Twitter where she’s posting the designs.
“I hope it doesn’t offend anybody that I’m redesigning their logos,” Smith explains. “It’s been really fun for me.”
After playing last week’s event at Orange County National, Smith’s logo upgrade included half a bright yellow orange to the left of the course name, in an updated typeface.
“Florida has kind of a flair to it and I wanted to express that in that logo,” she said.
Playing the historic Sally for the first time at Oceanside Country Club, Smith tried to work in the location a little more prominently. A wave now occupies the center of her revamped logo.
“You’re right near the ocean and you should know that when you see it,” she said.
Smith played her way into contention at the Sally Amateur on Thursday (rounds of 72-69 left her in second, two shots off the lead) in a bright pink long-sleeve top and a neon yellow skirt. She chose a hat from Moody Gardens in Galveston, Texas, noting that she might need to play a tournament there so she could add a Moody refresh to her list. There are pyramids (housing various nature exhibits) next to that golf course, and she’d like to see that become a bigger part of the logo.
Course logos make up a running dialogue in Smith’s head, and they always have. Part of that, she thinks, is inspired by her dad’s job as a PGA professional. Golf business naturally morphed into golf branding for Smith. Her designs are picking up some traction on social media, too.
“I definitely didn’t think people would enjoy them as much as they are,” she said. “It’s not like I’m viral but people like seeing it.”
Numbering them on her Twitter allows Smith to catalogue the places she’s been. It’s part travel journal and part budding portfolio.
This COVID season has amounted to many extra opportunities for Smith. Both parents were on hand at Oceanside to watch their daughter compete. Margery Smith took extra days away from work just in case COVID forces more spring golf cancellations. The Big 10 didn’t compete in the fall.
Still, Smith, the Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, native who was named Minnesota’s women’s co-player of the year in 2020, has risen to No. 161 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking. It helped her gain entry into the Sally for the first time and also got her into the U.S. Women’s Amateur for the first time ever.
“Anybody from the Midwest can tell you, you always feel a little bit behind with the climate,” she said. “I kind of feel like I got to catch up a little bit this year as far as rankings and tournaments. I got to play in my state am one last time, those type of things.
“I think a lot of us golfers, once we get to a certain level, we’re in a rush to play on the LPGA and we don’t realize how really cool these amateur events are.”
So Smith plays on in her golf and design journey, recognizing that there’s one coveted event that would throw the logo refresh operation out the window: the Augusta National Women’s Amateur.
“I wonder if I get in, I think I would just tweet that logo because I can’t redesign it,” she said. “That would be like golf sin.”
Amanda Doherty trailed Alexa Pano by four shots entering the final round, but ended up coming out four shots ahead on a windy day.
ORMOND BEACH, Fla. – No lead is safe in a three-club wind. Even as the birdies piled up for Amanda Doherty on the back nine at Oceanside Country Club, she never fell into that trap.
The weather is never predictable at the South Atlantic Amateur, nicknamed the Sally Amateur. If it was 80 degrees in the parking lot on Saturday, it felt 15 degrees cooler standing on exposed fairways in a stiff Atlantic breeze.
Doherty, a senior at Florida State, can’t remember a time she played in the kind of sustained winds she experienced on Saturday. She and her mother Laura, who manned her daughter’s push cart for 72 holes this week, talked through most shots in the final round, adding or taking away yardage as appropriate.
“It felt like I was on the ocean, in a boat, driving fast,” Laura said in describing the conditions.
The Doherty family hails from Brookhaven, Georgia, but Amanda knows what to expect when you come to the coast – after all, she won this title last year.
Doherty trailed 15-year-old Alexa Pano by four shots entering the final round. Those two, plus 2018 Sally champion Emilia Migliaccio, made up the final pairing. Migliaccio made an 8 on the opening hole, thanks in part to misjudging a distance right out of the gate and spent the rest of the day trailing.
Doherty did the opposite. She went out in even-par 36 and made up four shots on Pano. The two were tied starting the back nine.
Doherty proceeded to hole birdie putts of no less than 10 feet on each of the next four holes and stood on the 14th tee leading by five shots. She concedes she might have taken a breath at that point, because she promptly bogeyed No. 14 then dunked her drive in a pond on the left side of No. 15 on the way to a double.
“You gotta keep doing what you’re doing,” she said. “As soon as you change it up thinking you’re good, you’re really not.”
Three solid pars wrapped up a closing 71, which left her 2 under and four shots clear of Pano.
Amanda Doherty signs a hat for a Sally fan. (Golfweek/Julie Williams)
Doherty never stepped up to a shot before she was ready on Saturday, working not only to quiet her brain and focus on the shot, but to gauge the wind.
“I play this tournament to get back into the swing of things,” said Doherty, who last competed at the Landfall Tradition, a college event, at the end of October.
During exam time at Florida State, she thinks a combination of sitting too long studying then attempting to work out resulted in a strained hip. It turned out to be a blessing, forcing more work on her short game and a little offseason break.
“I’m not going to miss a chance to defend,” she told herself as she rested, then built back up for the Sally.
For her part, Migliaccio had three birdies on the back plus a clutch par on No. 18 – a hole that played dead into the wind – to secure solo third. She was 3 over after the opening hole but only 6 over at the end of a day where players struggled to take even pull the putter back on the green.
Migliaccio and Pano, being top-50 players in the World Amateur Golf Ranking, were invited to participate last month in a Curtis Cup practice session for the 2020 matches hosted by Great Britain and Ireland.
“After today, if we go to Wales, we’ll be fine,” Migliaccio said with a laugh.
By that time, Doherty likely will be off and running in professional golf. The 22-year-old played the first and second stages of LPGA Q-School this fall, securing Symetra Tour status for this season. Leaving college early to chase that dream was never in the cards.
A year ago, Doherty picked up her phone mid-Sally week to a number she didn’t recognize. It turned out to be Augusta calling to offer her a spot in the Augusta National Women’s Amateur. This time, she’ll likely receive her invitation by mail considering she started the year among the top 30 Americans in the WAGR.
Doherty made the 30-woman cut at the ANWA last year, thus earning a chance to actually compete on Augusta National. She finished T-21 overall. All three women in the final group, in fact, should have invitations waiting for them upon returning home from Ormond Beach.
As has often been the case at the Sally, tomorrow’s talent stands out once again.
