The USGA Women’s Mid-Amateur Championship was held at Monterey Peninsula Country Club’s Dune Course.  As a member of MPCC, I know the club has been preparing for this event for over a year and genuinely embraced having a signature USGA event at the club.   The organization and course preparation was absolutely first-rate providing a wonderful and challenging venue for the 132 participants.  The USGA championships are very difficult to win.  The participants start with two days of stroke play cutting the 132 players to 64 to begin match play.  Match play will then take place over the next two days of 36 holes a day for the players to eventually get to the championship match.

Kim Schaad from Jupiter, Florida, and very familiar with the Pebble Beach area won the title for the second time in her career at age 42.  Kim defeated Hanley Long from Tennessee in a finals match that went 23 holes before Schaad drained an 18 foot birdie putt on the fifth extra hole to claim the title.  It was a very tight match throughout in some pretty tough conditions with wind and USGA tricky pin positions.  Qualifying match play is a real grind with two 18 match play contests per day testing the player’s skill as well as their endurance to stay mentally alert over 36 holes.

Katherine Zu, 25, from the Bay Area,  went home with a gold medal for finishing first in the 36 hole stroke play qualifying event with 3 under par. Katherine made it pretty far but lost her semi-final match to Schaad, but showed tremendous grit and determination.  Defending champion and MPCC member, Lara Tennant also progressed in the event and walked the championship match.  Lara’s dedication to the event and her passion in general shines through and she’ll continue to compete in future events as her previous victories render multi-year exemptions to compete in this event.

Kudos to MPCC and its members for supporting these women and the USGA as it turned out to be a classy and exciting event.

Ryder Cup Blues

In stark contrast to the USGA Women’s Mid-Am class event, a continuous stream of vile continues to emanate from social media and other sources post Ryder Cup.  The fallout from the US  Ryder Cup defeat has created a cacophony of misinformation and social media garbage that is further embarrassing to the state of USA professional golf. The US should be proud of its Sunday comeback effort, which almost enabled them to tie the match or squeak out a victory.  Instead of praising the US team for its courage and persistence, the US media is super critical of Keegan Bradley’s skill as a captain, pairings, course setup  and various players continuously.  These criticisms are combined with the PGA of America’s pathetic responses to the complete boorishness of the American crowd.  There are some ridiculous comments that the European team cheated during the event, which isn’t even worth further comment.  It seems that this behavior mirrors the behavior of the current politican spectrum in the United States where fact versus fiction is a mirage.

All of this negativity will contribute to more vitriolic behavior and less general interest in this event and interest will wane with the US golf fan.  The abundance of ridiculous comments and popoffs is tiresome.  With the Cup competition in Ireland in two years, professional golf has lot to do to create the type of US interest required to be competitive especially competing for eyeballs with college and professional football for the viewing audience.  The US is now to the Ryder Cup what the Internationals are to the President’s Cup–perhaps both of these events should be relegated to the trash heap.  Today’s competition bears no resemblance to the type of gentlemanly event that Samuel Ryder created.