The course and setting were nothing short of spectacular, the type of test worthy of championship golf.
Chambers Bay, once maligned for hosting a bizarre U.S. Open in 2015, continued its redemption arc last week by earning effusive praise from nearly every competitor in the 122nd U.S. Women’s Amateur. The previous waffle-board fescue greens had long been replaced by gorgeous and receptive poa annua. Spectators who once fought massive dunes and hideous sight lines had no issue viewing the golf as they walked freely along the fairways, as is tradition in USGA amateur events. Sun rained down on Puget Sound as a firm, fair and fascinating fantasy land of a golf course had Twitter buzzing with an impromptu campaign to give Chambers another chance at major-championship golf. Mike Whan, the USGA CEO who could make that call, even tweeted that he made a mistake by not including the “golf heaven” in his busy travel schedule.
What a stage to showcase women’s amateur golf on prime-time TV. No municipal course had ever hosted the U.S. Open, U.S. Amateur (back in 2010 when Peter Uihlein won) and U.S. Women’s Amateur. Chambers and the USGA may have endured some rightful criticism for the first two, but the third was a right time/right place event that could be held up as a model for this tournament. The upcoming sites are also real bangers, with Bel-Air, Southern Hills and Bandon Dunes on tap.
It’s curious, then, why only three of the top 10 women in the World Amateur Golf Ranking came to the Pacific Northwest this past week. By Friday afternoon’s quarterfinals, no top-40 player in the world remained, and just two of the final eight contestants were in the top 140 in the world. A day later, the semifinals featured four players making their first start in the event.
The tournament is in a difficult position. The top amateurs in the women’s game are going to be pulled in a lot of different directions with a crowded schedule of opportunities ...
Much of the golf matched the beauty of Chambers, but the starring roles went to relative unknowns.
Annabel Wilson, a UCLA player who became the first Irishwoman to reach the semifinals since 1980, has effectively been the seventh player for the Bruins during an indifferent college career. Finalist Monet Chun is a strong player from Canada with a lot of upside, but she hasn’t cracked the top 100 at the NCAA Championship the last two seasons. Champion Saki Baba, a 17-year-old who looked like a professional as she sported a massive Bridgestone logo on her hat and multiple sponsor panels on her shirt sleeves, is an exciting emerging talent without much international success before this year. Her resounding 11 and 9 win comes a year after Jensen Castle, then world No. 248, arrived out of nowhere to capture the Women’s Am at Westchester.
If you take the travel restriction-laden COVID-19 year out, the last three editions of the tournament had no more than four of the top 10 in the WAGR. The installments in 2017 and 2018, had seven or more. This isn’t happening on the men’s side – nine of the top 10 in the WAGR will compete in the U.S. Amateur this week at Ridgewood Country Club, and it’s rare for top players to skip.
Without diminishing the high level of golf that was played last week, it’s justified to ask where the top women amateurs are going and why there has been so much unpredictability in recent years. The men’s U.S. Amateur is known for scattershot winners who range from bonafide stars to complete unknowns. It’s an unreliable predictor of future success. The Women’s Am has been just the opposite, rarely offering a winner without a serious resume.
Just in the past two decades alone, the list of players to at least reach the finals is teeming with standout amateurs and future successful pros: Jane Park, Danielle Kang, Morgan Pressel, Lydia Ko, Brooke Henderson, Jessica Korda, Amanda Blumenhurst, Azahara Munoz, Jennifer Song, Emma Talley, Sophia Schubert, Kristen Gillman, Virginia Elena Carta, Albane Valenzuela, Gabriela Ruffels and Rose Zhang among them.
Those are high-level competitors, and there weren’t as many in that category last week.
Is it an outlier? It could be, but there are also a couple of reasons why the U.S. Women’s Am could continue to turn into more of a free-for-all between less-recognized players.
The obvious one is that the women’s game continues to add depth of talent, leading to more chaos in match play. There are 11 countries represented in the top 20 of the WAGR, which is indicative of how many nations are heavily invested in women’s golf. From 1895 through 2015, there was only one all-international final in the U.S. Women's Amateur. This year was the third in the past seven years.
Individual nations are making big strides. Ireland had only two players in the top 600 in the world a decade ago this week. Now the Irish have 10 players in that range. Sweden had only two players in the top 100 a decade ago. Now the Swedes have seven. Countries have poured resources into development programs, and college golf programs are routinely recruiting from around the world.
It’s not just about rankings, either. The young women are more polished, college golf has improved dramatically and the margins between top players and middle-of-the-pack players is thinner.
But a bigger reason might be the schedule. We’ve seen the rise of the Augusta National Women’s Amateur, which many of the top players understandably chose to play instead of what is now the Chevron Championship (which will move in 2023 to not coincide). But then there are three more major-championship opportunities that invite amateurs during the summer. Notably, the Evian was moved from September to July in 2019 – inside the college golf season to outside the college window – while the reinvigorated AIG Women’s Open, which finished a day before this year’s U.S. Women’s Am started, has become a bigger draw.
World Nos. 1 and 2, Zhang and Ingrid Lindblad, respectively, played at Muirfield. So did ANWA champion Anna Davis. All three skipped the U.S. Women’s Am. Next year, the AIG Women’s Open and Women’s Am will be contested during the same week. The Women’s Open venues boast a powerhouse lineup of Walton Heath, St. Andrews and Royal Porthcawl the next three years, a further incentive to lure players.
The summer schedule also includes the Palmer Cup, which was played in Switzerland last month, and the Curtis Cup, held two months ago. Both of those team events don’t hear “no” from players very often.
All of a sudden, we’re talking about a significant amount of travel for top women amateurs.
Take the case of Zhang, a former champion of the U.S. Women’s Am. She was resting at home in California last week after a low-amateur performance at the AIG Women’s Open. She will now fly back across the Atlantic to Paris for the World Amateur Team Championship before returning to California, where she will go straight to Pebble Beach for a collegiate event. She already had traveled to Europe for the Palmer Cup and Amundi Evian Championship earlier this summer. The rising sophomore’s decision potentially to turn professional is “up in the air right now,” she told reporters at the AIG Women’s Open, but it appears she will stick with Stanford for the upcoming season.
Shortly after winning the NCAA Championship, Zhang announced that she was the first student-athlete in any sport to sign an NIL deal with Adidas. The company is listed as an official supplier of the AIG Women’s Open. What role NIL deals and agents have in steering players toward more widely watched events is unclear, but you can bet that it is now a factor for certain top amateurs.
The reality is that guidelines around NIL reflect that top amateurs are essentially professional golfers in training. That open marketplace will inevitably play itself out in the summer tournament schedule, especially as playing in majors is now an expected part of their development. We’ve seen multiple female amateurs go into the final round with legitimate shots to win a major in the past few years, and the talent gap is just not as pronounced. These amateurs view professional events like any other tournament on the path to getting ready for the future.
This is no criticism of the U.S. Women’s Amateur, a first-class event that still ranks among the top venues for women’s amateur play. The tournament is in a difficult position. The top amateurs in the women’s game are going to be pulled in a lot of different directions with a crowded schedule of opportunities, so the Women’s Am could be a chance for up-and-coming players like Baba and Chun to come into amateur golf’s limelight.
Fortunately for the men’s U.S. Amateur, it is protected by the FedEx Cup playoffs, and the preceding Wyndham Championship is all about PGA Tour players trying to earn their cards. The top male amateurs will be at Ridgewood this week. It doesn’t mean one of the favorites will win, but we’ll get to see them compete in one of the great amateur tournaments in the world.
The Women’s Am is less shielded. It’s a reality of the modern amateur game.
We may still be witnessing future stars in the making but, at least for now, many of the ones we already have grown to know have other plans.
Top: Canada's Monet Chun vies for the Robert Cox Trophy in U.S. Women's Amateur at Chambers Bay.
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