NorCal’s Cowan and Cornett advance to Round of 32 in USGA Sr Women’s Amateur

Three Northern California players – Lynne Cowan, Pat Cornett, and Tina Barker – advanced from stroke play to match play in the 56th USGA Women’s Senior Amateur Championship at Waverley Country Club in Portland, Oregon, and two – Cowan and Cornett, have moved on to the Round of 32.

Patricia Cornett, of Mill Valley, a U.S. Curtis Cup player in 1978 and 1988 who captained the U.S. squad in 2012, is one of two Northern California golfers who advanced to the round of 32 at the 2017 U.S. Women’s Senior Amateur at Waverley Country Club in Portland, Oregon.
(USGA/Chris Keane)

Cowan, of Rocklin, is the assistant women’s golf coach at UC Davis. A player with an impressive record in local, state, and national competition, Cowan shot rounds of 81 and 77 to advance to the round of 64 as the 33rd seed, the highest-ranked of the three NorCal players to move on from medal play. Cowan’s match against 32 seed Anita Wicks of Roseburg, Oregon, was a hard-fought affair that had Wicks trailing Cowan for most of the match, fighting back to square the match twice before eventually falling to Cowan 2 and 1.

Lynne Cowan will face 64 seed Courtney Myhrum, of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in a 7:45 a.m. match in the round of 32. Myhrum, who is the vice-chair of the USGA Women’s Committee and serves as chairman of the Girls’ Junior Committee, closed out #1 seed Lara Tennant 1-up in a closely fought match to advance to match play.

Fairfield’s Tina Barker, who plays out of the Green Valley Country Club in Fairfield, also had a tough match, against Evelyn Orley of Cardiff, California. Barker was ahead of her opponent for 11 of the eventual 19 holes of the match, but never more than two up.

Orley, who played junior golf in her native Switzerland and later college golf for Duke University, went one-up on Barker on the second hole before losing the third hole with a bogey to Barker’s par.

Orley pulled the match back to square no less than four times, but was unable to seize a definitive advantage. After squaring the match for the fourth time, with a par to Barker’s bogey on the 18th hole, the former LPGA Tour pro – now a reinstated amateur – closed out the match with a birdie on the first extra hole.

Probably the toughest match played by any of the three NorCal women was the contest between Mill Valley’s Pat Cornett and Akemi Nakata Khaiat, of Japan, the 2015 Japan Women’s Senior Golf champion.

Dr. Cornett, a 1972 graduate of North Salinas High School, where she played on the boy’s golf team along with future PGA Tour pro Mike Brannan (NSHS Class of 1974), has been a fixture in local, state, national, and international amateur golf ever since high school. She has played in over 50 USGA championships, starting with the 1971 U.S. Girls’ Junior, including eight U.S. Women’s Opens.

Her accomplishments in the game run to several pages, but the highlights include a runner-up finish in the inaugural USGA Women’s Mid-Amateur Championship in 1987, member of the 1978 and 1988 U.S. Curtis Cup teams, as well as being captain of the 2012 team, and winning the 1990 Women’s Western Amateur.

Cornett’s achievements on the golf course have had to fit into an impressive professional career. A graduate of Stanford University and the Medical College of Pennsylvania, Dr. Cornett specializes in the field of non-malignant hematology, and is a Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.

Trailing after the fourth hole, Cornett went three down at the 14th hole before holding the line at the 15th with a par to match Khaiat. Three down with three to play and needing four straight wins to take the match, Cornett played in with a solid string of three pars against three bogeys from Khaiat, squaring the match at the 18th hole before closing out her opponent with a birdie on the first extra hole.

Pat Cornett will face #10 seed Caryn Wilson of Rancho Mirage in Tuesday’s Round of 32. Wilson, also a graduate of Stanford University, is a country-club-sport double threat: she played college tennis at Stanford and went on to a professional career in that sport in the mid-1980s, competing at Wimbledon, and in the U.S. and Australian Opens.

Taking up golf after stints as an assistant tennis coach at Stanford and a head coaching position at Santa Monica Junior College, Wilson turned pro again, this time in golf, in 1999, and qualified for the first of two U.S. Opens; she is now a reinstated amateur. She joins the legendary Althea Gibson as the only other woman to have played in the U.S. Open in both golf and tennis.