6. No one said a USGA title would come easily
To win an USGA amateur title is to show that you not only have the game but the stamina to advance through two rounds of stroke play plus an additional six rounds of match play (the final one being 36 holes). Stamina was perhaps never so important as it was at the 2018 U.S. Girls’ Junior.
The championship schedule was repeatedly thrown off by a marine layer that crept over Poppy Hills Golf Course in Pebble Beach, California, and backed one round right into the next one (nearly 16 hours of delays in all). A hazy, er, crazy week ended when Yealimi Noh defeated Alexa Pano in 33 holes of the scheduled 36-hole final. But here’s the catch: Noh had also completed the final 13 holes of her semifinal match that morning, which made her championship run a 49-hole day. It is believed to be the most holes of golf ever played on the final day of a USGA championship dating to 1895, the year the USGA began conducting national championships.