USGA announces selection of Pebble Beach as third U.S. Open anchor site

At a media event staged in the Terrace Lounge at the famed Lodge at Pebble Beach, with a spectacular view of Pebble’s 18th green and Carmel Bay as a backdrop, representatives of the United States Golf Association (USGA) and the Pebble Beach Company announced that the world-renowned Monterey Peninsula property would join Oakmont and Pine Valley as the third anchor site in the USGA’s U.S. Open tournament schedule. Banners on either side of the stage listed the upcoming USGA championships that are on the slate for Pebble Beach: the U.S. Women’s Open in 2023, 2035, 2040, and 2048; the U.S. Open in 2027, 2032, 2037, and 2044; and a first – back-to-back Senior Open and Senior Women’s Opens in 2030 (at neighboring Spyglass Hill.)

The U.S. Open and U.S. Women’s Open trophies were on display against the backdrop of Carmel Bay and the 18th hole at Pebble Beach for the announcement of an historic partnership between the USGA and the Pebble Beach Company. (Photo by the author)

On a low stage flanked by photos of Pebble’s past USGA champions—from Woods, Nicklaus, and Watson to Robert H. “Skee” Riegel (1947 U.S. Amateur champion) and Grace Lenczyk (1948 Women’s Amateur champion), USGA President Stu Francis offered opening remarks, and Gary Woodland, who claimed victory at the 2019 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach, joined the conversation by remote video. USGA Chief Championships Officer John Bodenhamer and Pebble Beach Resorts CEO David Stivers then spoke about the new partnership between the USGA and the Pebble Beach Company and what it means for the USGA championships, Pebble Beach and vicinity, and golf in general.

Bodenhamer, who played college golf and came close to final qualifying for the 1982 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach, spoke about the importance of the venue to a USGA champion, referring back to remarks made earlier by moderator Beth Major, of the USGA, and Stu Francis, recalling how USGA Executive Committee member Nick Price, a three-time major championship winner himself (1992 PGA Championship, and 1994 Open Championship and PGA Championship) has said that it’s important where players win their U.S. Open, whether men or women.

Gary Woodland had also touched on this, telling the audience via video link “…when you’re a kid and you’re hitting that (winning) putt you’re dreaming of doing it at Pebble Beach. It’s the most iconic golf course we have in America.”

Both John Bodenhamer and David Stivers touched on the importance of this new relationship between the USGA and the Pebble Beach Company, citing three strategic initiatives that they see as stemming from the partnership:

First – attracting and nurturing the next generation of leaders at the USGA and Pebble Beach through investments in local programs.

Second – environmental stewardship, by partnering with the USGA’s Greens Section to advance research into water conservation and other measures to help make golf a more sustainable activity. (All of the Pebble Beach Company’s courses, plus the NCGA’s home course—Poppy Hills—which is just up the road from Pebble, are irrigated with reclaimed water.)

Third – (and this is perhaps less tangible than the first two) incentivizing young people to take up the game of golf by showcasing the possibility of someday competing in a major championship at a memorable and (not to belabor an already overused word) iconic venue.

Perhaps the most important aspect of this new relationship is the new level of parity between U.S. Open and U.S. Women’s Open venues, as evidenced by the scheduling of four women’s Opens and four men’s Opens at Pebble Beach over the coming 25 years. This is part of the growing level of support of the women’s game across the board, as sponsors, fans, and the media increasingly recognize the quality and entertainment value of women’s golf.

Touching on the benefits of this new long-term relationship, John Bodenhamer stated that it “…allows us continuously improve, put our stake in the ground, partner with Pebble Beach, think strategically differently than we ever have to make things better for players, fans, viewers, what you see.”

Thinking perhaps of the long-term familiarity with the venue that may arise from the partnership, Bodenhamer expressed surprise that “…some of you in the media haven’t coined a special term to describe Pebble Beach. You think about 8, 9, 10, it’s a pretty amazing place—maybe someone will come up with ‘Pebble's Peril’. ”

While I might suggest that John not quit his day job for a spot in the ranks of the golf media, I would also like to point out that one of the greatest writers to wield an Olivetti in a tournament media center, the late Dan Jenkins, has already laid a clever nickname on that trinity of cliffside golf holes, christening it “Abalone Corner” (with a nod to Augusta National’s “Amen Corner” – the 11th, 12th, and 13th holes.)

Personally, I don’t think that unfamiliarity with the course—which boasts some of the most scenic and notable golf holes ever broadcast to the television and computer screens of tens of millions of viewers across the world—is an issue. I can’t imagine that even a casual golf fan would fail to recognize holes like #7, the 106-yard par-3 perched on the tip of Arrowhead Point; or #17, the 200-odd-yard par-3 that yielded two of the greatest moments in U.S. Open history courtesy of Jack Nicklaus and Tom Watson; or #18, undeniably the greatest and most memorable closing hole in major championship golf.

And the good, great, amazing news coming out of this new partnership between the USGA and the Pebble Beach Company is that we will have the opportunity to watch more major championship golf being played, more often, in the years to come, here on the shores of Carmel Bay.

Flashback: Revisiting Scottie Scheffler’s 2013 U.S. Jr Amateur victory

Scottie Scheffler’s win at the Dell Match Play yesterday, and resultant ascension to the #1 spot in men’s professional golf, inspired me to revisit the column I wrote a little under nine years ago*, when Scottie capped his junior golf career with a victory in the 2013 USGA U.S. Junior Amateur Championship at Martis Camp, in Truckee, California:

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Recreational golf is a leisurely activity – a little too leisurely, the way some people play it – but competitive golf has an inherent intensity which the calm exterior aspect of the game belies, and nowhere is that more aptly demonstrated than in the USGA’s national championship tournaments. Two national championships were contested this past week, July 22 to 27 – the U.S. Junior Amateur at Martis Camp Club, in Truckee, and the U.S. Girls Junior, at Sycamore Hills Golf Club, in Fort Wayne, Indiana – and the action in the championship match in the Junior Amateur provided an apt demonstration of the level of intensity that accompanies a national championship.

The players in the final match at a USGA national championship tournament will have played nine 18-hole rounds of competitive golf in six days by the time all is said and done, and seven of those rounds are intense, one-on-one, match play. It is a measure of the caliber of the competition that the 36-hole championship matches play out so close, often coming down to the last few holes before a winner is decided.

Two accomplished junior golfers played their way through the selection process to face off in the championship match at the Junior Amateur: Scottie Scheffler, of Dallas, Texas, 3rd seed after stroke play, and Davis Riley, of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, who was T-4 at the conclusion of stroke play.

After playing 36 holes of stroke play and five rounds of match play, the two finalists were faced with 36 holes of match play, in a single day, to determine the 2013 national champion.

The young Mississippian, Riley, took the lead on the first hole with a par to Scheffler’s double-bogey, and appeared set to hold onto it until the finish. By the time the match got to the seventh hole Riley had built his lead to three holes with steady pars. Scheffler turned the tide briefly at Holes 7 and 8, making his own pars while Riley slipped back to 1-up with a pair of bogeys.

Riley led Scheffler for the remainder of the first round, moving back and forth between 1-up and 2-up a time or two, but never relinquishing the lead.

Starting the second eighteen after the lunch break, the two players came out of the blocks pretty evenly matched, each posting pars for the first four holes. Scheffler, 17, who is playing in his last Junior Amateur before he ages out of eligibility, squared the match with a chip-in birdie on the fifth hole, a 486-yard par-4, but went 1-down again at the sixth, another par-4, with a bogey. Riley, who has verbally committed to Alabama for his college golf, held onto the lead for a further seven holes, then a small error on his part – which may have resulted from a subtle, but shrewd, tactical move by Scheffler, turned the momentum of the match in his opponent’s favor.

Both players carried their approaches hole high and just slightly off the back of the green at the 31st hole of the match, but in good position to get to the back-right hole location. Scheffler who was away, chipped to tap-in range and was given the putt. Riley, who was closer to the flag but with a marginally less-favorable lie, chipped to a decent position below the flag, but about half-again the distance from the hole that Scheffler’s ball had been. The ball was marginally within concession range, but Scheffler made no move to concede the putt, and Riley, possibly taken aback slightly by this, pushed the putt, lipping out for a bogey-5, giving up the lead for only the second time in the match.

“Yeah it was [a momentum swing],” Riley said about the missed par putt on the 13th hole. “I felt like I still could have won [the match]. I was playing really well, my ball-striking was really good.”

At the 32nd hole, the 159-yard par-three 14th, Scheffler’s tee shot landed just right of and below the flag, bouncing forward and rolling to the collar of the green, pin high. It was a bold shot, attacking a flag which was was tucked well back and right, and a risk that could have backfired on him.

Teeing off next, Riley fired a shot which was also on the flag like a laser, but landed and stopped several feet short, failing to release and roll up closer to the hole.

Watching from the tee box as his ball tracked to the hole location like a heat-seeking missile, Riley twirled his club as he let it slide thorough his grasp, looking like a man who was watching a perfect shot perform just as he had expected it to. When the ball came up short, the victim of geometry, after hitting into the slight upslope below the hole, he was visibly upset, and slammed his clubhead into the turf as he walked to the hole.

Scheffler’s ball was in a good lie, despite its position up against the collar of rough around the green. The grass behind the ball was just thin enough to give him a good shot at the back of the ball, and he rolled in the eight-footer for a birdie to take his first, and very timely, lead of the match with little drama.

Scheffler won the next hole, the par-five 15th, with his third birdie of the inward nine, knocking a 250-yard shot onto the green with a hybrid club and two-putting for the birdie – and was now two up with three to play.

The match ended on somewhat of a down note on the par-four 16th hole as a result of Riley calling an infraction on himself as he prepared to putt from just off the green. He said that his ball moved slightly after he addressed it, which resulted in a one-stroke penalty, and a bogey to Scheffler’s par, giving the Texan the win 3-and-2.

The victory may seem anticlimactic, but Scheffler’s late rally showed his mental toughness, as he came back from nearly thirty straight holes of trailing his opponent.

“I played pretty well down the stretch,” Scheffler said afterwards. “In the morning round, I gave away a lot of shots and I struggled with the putting a little bit early, then I started to figure it out.”

“You have to be mentally tough. I mean, you have to make putts. You need to perform.”

                              

* (Originally posted on the now-defunct Examiner.com website.)

Book review: “The Prodigy”, by John Feinstein ⭐⭐⭐-1/2

I have been aware of John Feinstein’s writing, especially his golf writing, for many years; in fact, his 1996 chronicle of a season on the PGA Tour, A Good Walk Spoiled, was my introduction to non-fiction reading about professional golf. Though I have concentrated on his golf writing, Feinstein has written several well-regarded books on basketball, baseball, and football—and I have only recently learned that he has also authored a series of sports-related YA (young adult) novels, including the recent release, The Prodigy, the first of his books for younger readers on the subject of golf.

The Prodigy is the new YA sports novel from John Feinstein—his first that is set in the world of golf.

The Prodigy is the somewhat fanciful tale of a 17-year-old golf phenom named Frank Baker, a nice kid from a small town in Connecticut who has amazing golf skills. The book is set in the recent past—2017 and early 2018, to be exact—and we pick up the story when Frank is preparing to play in the 2017 U.S. Amateur at Riviera Country Club, in the upscale Los Angeles-area city of Pacific Palisades.

Frank is being raised by his father, Tom, a divorced single parent who is a freelance stock trader—and a full-time golf dad. Frank is looking forward to playing college golf, and given his record, which includes making it to the semifinals of the U.S. Amateur the previous year at the age of 16, he is assured of a multitude of offers, from the best programs in the country. His father, on the other hand, has his eyes on a different prize.

Frank’s prowess on the golf course has attracted attention from more than just college coaches; agents and equipment company reps have shown interest, and the book’s story arc is built around the conflict that arises when Frank’s dad gets too cozy with an agent from a big sports-representation firm. Frank is under pressure from his dad and the agent to forgo a college career and turn pro. The pressure gets more intense when the youngster earns a spot in the field at the 2018 Masters, heating up even more when Frank shows that he can keep up with the big boys on one of the biggest stages in the game of golf.

There are two people in Frank’s corner in all of the drama surrounding his college / pro dilemma: his swing coach, Slugger Johnson—the head pro at Frank’s home course; and Slugger’s longtime friend and college golf teammate, Keith Forman, a former low-level pro golfer turned golf writer. Forman’s involvement raises journalistic dilemmas for him as he finds himself becoming part of Frank’s story—even coming into conflict with Frank’s father and the ever-present agent—and not just a dispassionate observer who is reporting the story.

Feinstein creates an air of conflict that the Keith Forman character has to work through, describing a number of rather hostile encounters between Forman and tournament volunteers and security personnel, even citing a USGA training session for marshals in which media-badge holders are singled out as untrustworthy (based on a real experience of Feinstein’s—I guess I had better watch my P’s and Q’s the next time I’m at a USGA event on a media credential!)

The conflict between Frank (with Slugger and Keith in his corner), and his dad and the agent, along with his extraordinary play at one of the most high-profile golf tournaments in the world, are the main factors that combine to bring the action to a dramatic conclusion at the 2018 Masters.

One thing you can be sure of in a John Feinstein book is the insider’s touch. Feinstein knows everybody in the game, from players to agents, equipment reps, media folks, and officials and functionaries from the USGA and the PGA Tour. This knowledge is on full display in The Prodigy, to the extent that it starts to feel like rather gratuitous name-dropping. Players, including big names like Phil Mickelson, Jason Day, Rory McIlroy, Jordan Spieth, and Justin Thomas, not only have cameos, they play significant roles in the story, interacting with Frank and the other characters.

And it’s not just players, though they are the most recognizable names. Some of the other real-life names that are dropped include golf media personalities from TV, print journalists, and behind-the-scenes folks from the USGA and the technical side of broadcasting. As for the agents and equipment reps, they get the same short shrift that Florida real-estate developers get in a Carl Hiaasen novel—and I wonder how many of them are still going to be speaking to Feinstein after reading this book.

For the golf-knowledgeable teen audience at which this book is aimed, the big-name golfers who are mentioned will be well-known figures, and those readers might get a kick out of reading a story in which these stars of the PGA Tour interact with a teenaged golfer, even if the conversations and situations feel awkward and contrived—which they do.

The inclusion of real people from golf broadcasting, such as Joe Buck, Paul Azinger, Brandel Chamblee, and Holly Sonders, will pique the interest of young readers who watch golf on TV, but the use of the real names of people from the behind-the-scenes operations, and from the print-media world, will go right over the heads of the young reading audience (and many older readers, too…). On the other hand, readers and reviewers who actually know these people (and I know, or at least have met, a few of them) will find it odd to see in print a fictionalized version of a known person. This aspect of the book rings false with me, and seems rather pointless, all things considered.

Other aspects of the story are also rather uneven. While the overall “voice” of the book has a decided YA tenor, it wanders back and forth between over-explaining simple aspects of the game, as if catering to non-golfers, and using shorthand references that only a reader who is well-versed in the game will understand.

There are curious (and admittedly, mostly minor) lapses that will bother the knowledgeable golfer (or maybe just golf writers who are also editors…). For instance, when setting the scene for the section of the book in which Frank is playing in the 2017 U.S. Amateur, at Riviera Country Club, Feinstein describes the club’s location as being “…a few miles east of the Pacific Ocean…”, but Riviera’s westernmost border lies a scant mile or so from the beach. (Yeah, it’s a nit, but it caught my eye because I specifically checked it for a column I did a few years ago about Ben Hogan’s history at Riviera.) 

Another little faux pas that caught my attention was a misquote of the tagline from the USGA’s pace-of-play campaign of a couple of years back (a line borrowed from a scene in Caddyshack), which is cited as “While we’re still young”, rather than the correct line, which is just “While we’re young.” There are a few other instances like that scattered throughout the book—small things, but noticeable to the knowledgeable, and attentive, reader.

One thread that runs through the latter part of the story, and one which I relished, is a series of subtle, and not-so-subtle, digs at Augusta National Golf Club and the Masters—and their fussy rules and regulations, which are capriciously enacted and vigorously enforced, such as their insistence on referring to spectators on the grounds of the club as “patrons”, a ban on cellphones on the grounds (which Frank is gently but firmly admonished for joking about in an interview), and the use of the terms “first nine” and “second nine” instead of “front nine” and “back nine”. The Keith Forman character is characterized as “…(knowing) he was privileged to cover the Masters and (that) he was in a place any golf fan would kill to be, but the atmosphere of the place—the entitlement of it all—made him feel a bit squeamish.” I’m with Keith on that one.

All in all, while The Prodigy is an engaging read, especially for young golf fans, the overall scenario—which I cannot fully describe without introducing spoilers—is a little over-the-top, and the scenes which involve real-life people from the golf world feel forced and unrealistic. These things might not matter to, or be noticed by, the intended teenage audience, but adult readers, especially those with a bit of familiarity with the personalities involved, will squirm a little over some of those passages.

All-NorCal final a possibility in 70th U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship

A week of “June Gloom” fog delays for the 2018 U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship at the NCGA’s Poppy Hills Golf Club peaked on Friday, when the completion of the last Round of 16 matches, and tee times for the Quarterfinal matches were eventually pushed back six hours from their original 7:00 a.m. starts.

When the fog had cleared and play was completed, the semifinal matchups are down to a quartet of American players, including two from NCGA territory – Yealimi Noh, 16, of Concord; and Lucy Li, 15, of Redwood Shores. Noh will face off against Gina Kim, 18, of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in the semifinal round; and Li will play Alexa Pano, 13, of Lake Worth, Florida.

Yealimi Noh, of Concord, is one of two NorCal players in the semifinals of the 70th U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship, being played at Poppy Hills Golf Club this week. (Copyright USGA/JD Cuban)

Noh, who is fresh off of a record-setting 24-under win in the PGA Jr Girls’ Championship last week, is particularly strong on the par-5s at Poppy Hills, though she has yet to see the par-5 18th in match play (she birdied all three of the par-5s that she played in her quarterfinal match) – her matches have finished on 16, 16, 17, and 13.

Li, who played in the 2014 U.S. Women’s Open as an 11-year-old, will face a tough opponent in Pano, who has only played past the 15th hole once in the match play portion of the tournament, when her Round of 16 match against Stephanie Kyriacou of Australia went to the 18th hole. Li has been played down to the wire in two of her matches, but closed out her opponents in the Round of 32 and Quarterfinal matches with late birdie runs.

Semifinal matches are scheduled to start Saturday morning at 7:00 a.m., with Li/Pano, followed by Noh/Kim at 7:15 a.m. – weather permitting. The 36-hole championship match will be split: 18 holes on Saturday, after the conclusion of the semifinal round, and the final 18 on Sunday morning.

70th U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship coming to Poppy Hills GC

The golf courses in the Del Monte Forest are no strangers to championship events. Pebble Beach and Spyglass Hill, and the private courses, Cypress Point and Monterey Peninsula Country Club, have hosted PGA Tour and Champions Tour events, and Pebble Beach Golf Links has hosted several national championships – five U.S. Opens, and four U.S. Amateur Championships.

Poppy Hills, the home of the Northern California Golf Association – the largest regional golf association in the United States, and the only one to have its own home course – has been in the mix, too. In addition to the NCGA’s own state and local championship events, Poppy Hills was for many years one of the host courses for the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, and currently co-hosts the Champions Tour’s First Tee Open (presented by PURE Insurance.) In a few weeks from now, July 16 – 21, the NCGA’s flagship course will host a USGA championship of its own – the 70th U.S. Junior Girls’ Championship.

The Northern California Golf Association (NCGA) will host its first national championship when the 70th U.S. Girls’ Junior Chanpiosnhip comes to Poppy Hills GC July 16–21, 2018.

The Girls’ Junior, which is a showcase for the Curtis Cup, Solheim Cup, and LPGA stars of the future, last visited Central California in 2012. That year’s event saw current LPGA stars such as Ariya Jutanagarn, Lydia Ko, and Minjee Lee playing for the Glenna Collett-Vare trophy at Lake Merced Golf Club in Daly City. The tournament has been played on the Monterey Peninsula before, in 1952 at Monterey Peninsula Country Club, when future World Golf Hall of Fame member Mickey Wright, then 17 years old, was the champion. Next month at Poppy Hills some of women’s golf’s stars of years to come will certainly be in the field.

Renovated Poppy Hills course is ready for a championship

When qualifying concludes on June 28th, a field of 156 girls up to the age of 18 will be headed for the Monterey Peninsula to contest their national championship on the beautifully renovated Poppy Hills course.

The course closed in March 2013 for a complete makeover, reopening in April 2014 after a 13-month-long renovation. Completely sand-capped to improve drainage, the course also received a state-of-the-art irrigation control system for more efficient water use. Native areas were restored, eliminating 25 acres that were previously irrigated turf to reduce water requirements. Water hazards were reduced or eliminated, some holes were realigned, and many of the greens significantly revamped.

Later that year, once the renovation was firmly in place, the NCGA approached the USGA about the possibility of hosting a national championship on the now “firm, fast, and fun” course, and in 2015 were selected to host this event. Planning for the tournament began in 2016.

Expect a different look than the Poppy Hills you play

The course will play a bit differently for the tournament than day-to-day players are used to. The nines were flipped after a couple of years’ experience with the new layout, improving pace of play by eliminating the backups that occurred on the then-front nine, which has an early run of difficult holes.

Tracy Parsons, the USGA’s tournament director for the event, first walked the course with the original order in place.

“The very first time that I came on this golf course, the First Tee was here, and that’s the way that I walked the course, that’s the way that I began preparing, and that’s the way that I envisioned the championship being played. When the NCGA flipped the nines I started walking the golf course the opposite way…and it didn’t make much sense to me for our championship.”

“When we go to match play we go to a single-tee start, and I’d like to have the crowd around the first tee for all the players. It obviously makes more sense for us to have it (the first tee) right here (near the clubhouse), and to have both the finishing holes right there as well. In match play, obviously some of our matches won’t make it to the 18th hole, and some of those holes on the front nine are so key to the round that I don’t want to skip them. The way that the routing was originally works in our best interests for the championship. I understand why they (the NCGA) flipped it for regular play, but for our purposes I think it makes the most sense to stick with the original routing.”

A record 1,609 entries were received for this year’s event, 103 more than in 2017. Forty sites around the country are hosting qualifying tournaments, where 140 girls (156-player field minus 16 exempt players) will advance to the championship event at Poppy Hills. They will play the course to a par of 71, at a length of 6,182 yards.

These Girls Are Good

Entry into the championship requires that the player carry a handicap of -9.4 or better.

“People who have never come to the Girls’ Junior think, ‘Oh that’s so cute, with their little pigtails and their bows,’ tournament director Tracy Parsons told the media during the recent preview day, “but I think that if they were actually to come and watch these players compete – because that’s what they are, they’re competitors – they would be surprised, and in awe of what these girls can do. I think the testament to that is the fact that the USGA has recognized the level of play, and last year awarded this champion an exemption into the U.S. Women’s Open.”

A USGA review of the level of play in both the Girls’ Junior and the Junior Amateur Championship two years ago led them to raise the maximum age from 17 to 18, and also to raise the bar for the required handicap. Prior to 2017 the requirement for the Girls’ Junior was -18.4; it was slashed nearly in half to the current -9.4. In 2017 no player that advanced to the championship was above a 6.0.

For a taste of the level of competitor who will be playing in this tournament, Concord’s Yealimi Noh, 16, a member of the Junior Tour of Northern California who qualified for the championship with a 5-under 67 on the par-72 course at The Reserve at Spanos Park, in Stockton, carries a +4 handicap.

Play begins July 16, with rounds of stroke play on the 16th and 17th to trim the field down to 64 players. Single-elimination match play at 18 holes will cut the field down to an eventual two finalists squaring off for the championship, which will be decided by a 36-hole match on 21 July.

Admission to the tournament is free for spectators.

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.