Three More From BC Added To CPKC Women's Open Field, See Who & Much More In Ziemer's BC Golf Notes
By Brad Ziemer, British Columbia Golf
Some additional British Columbia content has been added to this week’s CPKC Women’s Open at Shaughnessy Golf & Country Club in Vancouver.
Port Coquitlam’s Yeji Kwon, Sonja Tang of Victoria and Surrey’s Angela Arora were all given late exemptions into the event by Golf Canada. They will join Surrey’s Lauren Kim and Vancouver’s Victoria Liu in the Shaughnessy field.
Kim earned her exemption by winning the Canadian Women’s Amateur Championship, while Liu received hers for winning the Glencoe Invitational in Calgary earlier this summer. They join a star-studded field that includes nine of the top 10 and 22 of the top 25 on the LPGA Tour’s Race to CME Globe standings.
The winners of all five of the LPGA Tour’s major championships this year will be at Shaughnessy.
Tang, a key member of UBC’s championship women’s team, can’t wait to tee it up for what will be her first LPGA Tour event. The fact that it is being played at Shaughnessy, the home course for the UBC women, should help Tang calm her nerves.
“I was in shock when I got the call and I am very excited for this week,” Tang said. “It will be especially nice to play it at Shaughnessy, which is my home course.”
Tang, who is heading to the University of Oregon this fall for her final year of collegiate golf, knows Shaughnessy will set up considerably longer than she is accustomed to playing it. “I have played the course so many times, so it is definitely going to be familiar to me,” she said. “I know some of the places where not to miss it.
“I am just going to try and stick to my own game plan and have fun. I will definitely try to keep the ball in the fairway and not short side myself because the greens are really small. It’s going to be playing long, especially for me, so I will have some long irons and hybrids into some of the greens.”
Arora and Kim are both members of Golf Canada’s national women’s team, while Kwon, the 2022 Canadian Junior Girls Champion, is a member of Golf Canada’s NextGen (junior) team. There’s a chance some other British Columbians could earn a spot in the field at the tournament’s Monday qualifier at Point Grey Golf & Country Club, where four spots are available.
ON TO ATLANTA: Abbotsford’s Nick Taylor struggled at the BMW Championship, but still has a spot in this week’s Tour Championship in Atlanta. Taylor was 16th on the points list heading into the BMW Championship and that guaranteed him a spot in the Tour Championship no matter what happened at the BMW Championship. That was a good thing as Taylor ended up 47th in the 50-player field at Olympia Fields Country Club in suburban Chicago. He dropped to 22nd on the points list, but still comfortably inside that magic top-30 number.
Fellow British Columbians Adam Hadwin of Abbotsford and Adam Svensson of Surrey saw their seasons end at Olympia Fields. Svensson tied for 15th and moved up two spots to finish 37th on the points list. Hadwin was 44th at the BMW and finished 45th on the points list. Ontario’s Corey Conners (19th on the points list) was the only other Canadian to advance to the Tour Championship.
PLAYOFF PUSH: Merritt’s Roger Sloan tied for 42nd at the Magnit Championship, the final regular-season event on the Korn Ferry Tour. Sloan dropped one spot to 33rd on the points list. The first of three playoff events starts at this week’s Albertsons Boise Open in Idaho and Sloan needs to move inside the top 30 to earn his PGA TOUR card for 2024.
NO DEFENDERS: New champions will be crowned at this week’s B.C. Juvenile Boys & Girls championships at Highland Pacific Golf Course in Victoria. The 54-hole event is open to players aged 16 and under. Last year’s boys’ champion, Daniel Xu of Richmond, is not age-eligible to compete this year, while 2022 girls champion Amy Lee of Langley is not in the field. Lee won last month’s B.C. Junior Girls championship in Prince George. Players to watch at Highland Pacific include Richmond’s Cadence Ko, who was third in the girls’ competition last year, and Manpreet Lalh of Nanaimo, who was third in last year’s boys’ championship.
MEMORABLE MATCH: Vancouver’s Yeeun (Jenny) Kwon made her first match play experience a special one as she won the 67th PNGA Junior Girls Championship at North Bellingham Golf Course. The 14-year-old Kwon, who was fifth at this summer’s B.C. Junior Girls Championship in Prince George, defeated Ella Amzen of Boise, Idaho 12&10 in the 36-hole final. “This was my first time playing match play,” Kwon said.
“I’m really happy because I got to experience a new genre of golf. I was really surprised that I made it all of the way to the end.” B.C. Junior Girls Champion Amy Lee of Langley and B.C. Women’s Amateur champion Chelsea Truong of Victoria were both eliminated in the quarter-finals. The PNGA Junior Boys Championship was played concurrently and Vancouver’s Forrest Van Alstine advanced to the final, where he was defeated 4&2 by Teigen Brill of Spokane. Van Alstine is heading into his freshman year with the UBC Thunderbirds.
MID-AM MOMENT: B.C. Mid-Amateur champion Nathan Ward of Summerland and Mid-Master champion Gary Pike of Victoria headline the B.C. contingent competing at this week’s Canadian Mid-Amateur Championship at Algonquin Golf Resort in St. Andrews, N.B. Ward, Alex Cartwright of Victoria and Cory Hilditch of Penticton will represent British Columbia in a 36-hole inter-provincial team competition that is part of the tournament.
SENIOR MOMENT: Nanoose Bay’s Shelly Stouffer has a spot in the field for this week’s U.S. Senior Women’s Open, which is being played at Waverley Country Club in Portland, Ore. Stouffer, a four-time B.C. Senior Women’s champion, earned an exemption into the tournament by winning last year’s U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur Championship in Alaska.
ZACH ATTACK: Zach Olson of Chilliwack Golf Club shot rounds of 68 and 66 at Revelstoke Golf Club to win the PGA of BC Championship. Olson recorded four eagles over the two rounds and his 10-under total was two shots better than runner-up Doug Morgan of Richmond Country Club. Steven Lecuyer of Seymour Creek in North Vancouver and Max Cohen of Langley Golf Academy tied for third at six-under par. Olson earned $7,500 for the win.
CHIP SHOT: Alexa Pano, the 19-year-old American who won the ISPS Handa World Invitational in a playoff in Northern Ireland on Sunday, is in the Shaughnessy field for this week’s CPKC Women’s Open.
