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MAY/JUNE 08
By Dennis McCann When play opens for the U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links Championship at Erin Hills GC in June, some might look at the field as largely a bunch of young players no one outside their families has ever heard of before.
Maybe it’s better to look at it this way: In that large field of young and promising players are almost certainly women whose names you will hear about in the not-so-distant future. When the competition was last played in Wisconsin, at SentryWorld GC in Stevens Point in 1986, Cindy Schreyer defeated Mishicot’s Vicki Goetze for the title, and both women would go on to play on the LPGA Tour. Other WAPL winners through the years include Heather Farr, Danielle Ammaccapane, Pearl Sinn, Jill McGill and a host of others who have gone on to play on United States Curtis Cup teams and on the LPGA Tour.
Oh, and one of those public links champs was a player named Michelle Wie, who was just 13 when she won the 2003 Women’s Publinks, as the event is informally known. You’re still hearing about her.
In short, when the 2008 WAPL championship is contested from June 16-21, Wisconsin golf fans will have a sneak peak at the future of the women’s game, as well as a close-up view of what the USGA’s Teresa Belmont, the tournament’s director, calls some pretty darn good golf.
“It’s incredible the talent,” Belmont said by telephone from her office earlier this spring. “I’ve played for 20-some years and they’re far better than I will ever be. People just don’t know that, and they don’t know what they’re missing (if they don’t attend) when it’s in their back yard.”
That back yard this year is Erin Hills, the much-acclaimed new course in the shadow of the Holy Hill steeple in the Kettle Moraine area of southeastern Wisconsin, about 35 miles northwest of Milwaukee. So highly anticipated was the course, set among the kettles and eskers in as natural a setting for golf as could be imagined, that Erin Hills was awarded the 2008 Women’s Amateur Public Links Championship long before it opened for play – in fact, even before it had been seeded. (As it happens, the U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship will be played at Milwaukee CC in River Hills in early September, meaning that Wisconsin courses will host two of the USGA’s 13 annual national championships in 2008.)
Landing the WAPL before it opened was only the first coup for Erin Hills and its developer, Bob Lang. The USGA also awarded Erin Hills the 2011 U.S. Amateur Championship, and anticipation is high that the course will eventually land the U.S. Open that Lang has acknowledged is a long-term goal.
First, though, the women’s event will serve as a trial run for how the course can stand up to a major event. The U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links is open to female golfers who play at bona fide public courses and who have handicap indexes not exceeding 18.4. There are no limits on age, but while there are a few contestants who bring a bit of gray hair to the first tee it is primarily a contest for girls and young women; Wie first competed at age 11 and became the youngest winner at 13, but the age of the oldest champion is just 23.
It might surprise some to learn this year’s WAPL championship will actually be the third contested on Wisconsin soil, including the 1986 championship at Stevens Point’s SentryWorld and the inaugural competition at Madison’s Yahara GC in 1977. That event surprised USGA officials, who even as they created a new event aimed at public course players wondered if there would be sufficient interest to justify a national championship. There was, and more. A field of 686 players – more than the combined fields of the 1977 Women’s Amateur, Women’s Open, Senior Women’s Amateur and Girls’ Junior – turned out, representing 24 states. In 1986, a record 1,085 entries were submitted for the championship at SentryWorld, but Belmont said interest in the new course might have accounted for some of that. Last year’s WAPL at Kearney Hill Golf Links in Lexington, Ky., drew a total of 735 contestants, including three from Wisconsin – Carly Werwie of Kenosha, Lindsay Danielson of Osceola and Rheba Mabie of Boulder Junction.
And again, youth was served. Despite the presence of four women who could have qualified for AARP membership as well as the WAPL, the average age of the 156 who opened play was a tender 20 years old. The youngest was 11.
Setting up the course to accommodate both still-developing teens and college-age bombers presents it own challenges. Belmont, who has been attending public links championships since 2000 and directing the event since 2003, said Erin Hills will play to a par-73 for the tournament and extend to 6,178 yards. And she has to maintain landing areas for tee shots that range from 210 to as much as 260, given the range of strength displayed by young women.
“I need the length, yes, but we have different calibers of players,” Belmont said. Still, “I keep getting longer and longer,” she said of course set-ups. “The players today … it’s just amazing how far they hit it. I call them kids (but) it’s just amazing the skill level out there, the talent.”
The event opens with two days of stroke-play qualifying over 18 holes, followed by four days of match-play elimination until the finalists play 36 holes on Saturday, June 21. Earlier this year, Michael Hurzdan, who designed the course along with Dana Fry and Golf Digest magazine architecture editor Ron Whitten, was asked how the course would handle the two styles of competition.
Just fine, he said.
“I actually think that Erin Hills is probably going to be a better match-play golf course than it would a medal-play, just because there are so many places where you can make a big number so easily. If you make a double bogey, you lost a hole, but you’re only 1-down, as opposed to losing maybe two or three or four shots.
“I think the fact that it has so much match-play appeal is one of the reasons that the USGA got so interested in it,” Hurzdan said.
Belmont said public curiosity about Erin Hills, which is still so new many golfers have not seen it, could help boost attendance at the event. Well, that and the fact that “Wisconsin golfers, they like to watch golf,” she said. Because the Erin Hills contest comes not long before the Women’s Open, Belmont said Wisconsin fans could walk down the fairways – there are no ropes to stay behind – with women one week who will be playing on national television a short time later. And with Lang’s interest in using this first national championship as a springboard for more and bigger events, expect the competition to be run with great attention to detail.
“I know some people might prefer to be playing golf,” Belmont said of those June days, “but it’s not a bad way to spend a half day or so.”
Admission is free for the Women’s Amateur Public Links Championship. For more information, visit the tournament Web site at www.uswapl.org, or visit the Erin Hills site at www.erinhills.com.
What: The 32nd U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links Championship.
When: June 16-21.
Where: Erin Hills GC, Erin (6,178 yards; par-73).
Who: An international field of 156 female amateurs who play at public golf courses and have USGA handicap indexes not exceeding 18.4. Although some are exempt, most of the field will have to qualify. Wisconsin’s qualifying event is scheduled for May 25 on the championship course, Erin Hills GC.
Format: A 36-hole stroke- play qualifier is scheduled for June 16-17, after which the field will be reduced to the 64-player match-play bracket. Matches will be contested beginning on June 18 and end on June 21 with a 36-hole championship match for the title.
Following the Action: There is no admission fee, and spectators are encouraged to attend. Real-time scoring is available at www.uswapl.org.
Last Year: Seventeen-year-old Mina Harigae of Monterey, Calif., defeated Stephany Fleet of DeWitt, Mich., in the title match (4 and 3) at Kearney Hill Golf Links in Lexington, Ky.
For More Info: Visit www.uswapl.org. For details on local qualifying, go to www.wsga.org.
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