Expanded Content: Beyond the Met
Ina Kim-Schaad and Talia Campbell before the final round of the U.S. Women's Mid-Amateur.
From the LPGA and PGA Tours to the PGA Cup, from the NCAA to the USGA, pros to amateurs, men and women, the metropolitan area sparkled on the national stage this past season.
Locals won four national titles (three individually), played in four international team events, winning three, made the cut at the U.S. Open and made their Solheim Cup debuts.
Brandon Wu and John Pak
Teammates on the victorious United States Walker Cup team, Wu and Pak had incredibly successful seasons that began in NCAA play. For Wu, it culminated with a 17th-place finish in his PGA Tour debut at the Houston Open.
Wu’s summer was unreal. He led Stanford to the NCAA team championship, made the cut at the U.S. Open and received his college diploma on the 18th green at Pebble Beach, won medalist honors at the U.S. Amateur, played on the U.S. gold medal-winning team at the Pan Am Games, won a Walker Cup and reached the PGA Tour.
“I can keep looking forward but sometimes it is nice to sit back and take in all the things that happened this summer. It’s been pretty special,” Wu said as he looked ahead to the second stage of Korn Ferry Tour Q School.
Wu feels that winning the NCAA title while going 3-0 in match play, was “the coolest thing.
“You’re playing with your teammates four years at Stanford and that’s a goal every year. To finally achieve that and have that be that last Stanford memory is quite incredible,” he said. “But everything good keeps happening.”
Even after his great U.S. Open, where he tied for 35th, Wu decided to postpone his pro career to play in the Walker Cup, what he called a “tremendous experience” and “a risk worth waiting for.
“Part of what I’ve really enjoyed is the whole process and journey and I think that’s prepared me well. It’s easy to not perform as well on a bigger stage,” he noted. “You lose some confidence and that can set you back a little but I think by taking my time to slowly develop and check all the boxes, I feel like I’m more prepared to succeed at the higher level,” he said.
About the only thing that didn’t go well for the Stamford, Conn. native, was his pro debut at the Dunhill Links, where he struggled with a third day 76 and missed the cut at Carnoustie, which played to its reputation. Even so, he was paired with Houston Astros owner Jim Crane in the three-day Pro Am portion of the tournament and was extended an invitation to the Houston Open.
“I was a little bit nervous going in not about the golf stuff just because I’d been given this tremendous opportunity. I just didn’t want to let people down more than anything,” he said. “I just knew if I went out and stayed confident and positive that at the end of the day I’d be fine. I ended up playing well the first three days. The putts just didn’t seem to drop that last day which was unfortunate because I was still hitting it really well. I felt I could really make a run at the leaders but just never quite got there. But it was a good experience overall.”
Wu’s goal in the coming year is, of course, making it to the PGA Tour.
“Pro golf is not all glamour but if you’re on the PGA Tour and doing well, it can be,” he said. “It’s obviously a long to get there. It starts with Q School in two weeks. Get through that, get on the Korn Ferry, get after it there and hopefully make it to the PGA Tour around this time next year.”
Pak, a junior at Florida State, is putting his pro aspirations on hold for now. He’s having too much fun at the college level. The Scotch Plains, N.J., native set the single-year scoring record at FSU for 2018-19, with a 69.56 to break current PGA Tour star Danny Berger’s 69.79 in 2012-13. He was a first team All American, won medalist honors at the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament , made it to the round of 16 at the U.S. Am and capped it all of by being the only player on either the U.S. or Great Britain and Ireland teams to go 3-0 at the Walker Cup at Royal Liverpool. His singles win Saturday over British Amateur champ James Sugrue was the pivotal point in an American comeback from a 7-3 deficit going into Sunday.
“We were down pretty badly and I was actually losing the match going into 17,” Pak recalled. “I ended up winning 17 and making birdie on 18 to win the match on 18. Instead of 8-2, going to 7-3, you can come back from that. I think I was one of the last matches to finish and all of my teammates were out there watching. Giving them that little momentum push going into the next day helped out a lot.”
Pak had been in big events before but was never as nervous, he said, as on the first tee the first day.
“Just representing your country gives you the chills,” he said. “I was the third tee shot of the tournament because I was in the second group and it was alternate shot. I was off the odd holes so I had to tee off on No. 1 with a couple of thousand people watching and I was so nervous.”
It would be nice to say Pak striped it.
“No, I chunked it really bad,” he admitted. “I just started laughing and the whole crowd started laughing. That probably took the edge off a little”
All was well that ended well, however.
“They were crazy,” he said of the hometown galleries. “I asked James (Sugrue) how many people he knew in the crowd and he said about 100. I brought three people from home. It was nice to be the underdog and kind of silence the crowd. You could tell who they were rooting for.”
Marina Alex and Annie Park
The area’s two representatives on the LPGA Tour, both of whom won their first tournaments in 2018, made their Solheim Cup debuts in Europe’s one-point victory at Glenagles. Alex went 1-1-2 and Park 1-2 as rookies.
“It was an incredible experience. It definitely met expectations and beyond that.,” said Alex, the Wayne, N.J., native. “It was obviously different than anything I’ve ever been a part of, playing on a team and playing for your country. You want to do a good job because you have a partner and you don’t want to let them down. You’re maybe focused a little bit more on executing a perfect shot. You feel a little badly if you put your partner in a bad position.”
After playing well all week, Alex was locked in what ended up as the pressure-packed match against veteran Suzann Pettersen that ultimately decided the matches.
In what was one of the most dramatic finishes in Solheim Cup history, Alex’ 10-footer to win slid past the hole on 18 before Pettersen rolled in a seven-footer. Had she missed it, the Americans would have retained the Cup. Pettersen announced her retirement afterwards.
Alex was philosophical about the cruel ending.
“We did the best we could,” she said, admitting it would be nice to get a chance on home soil the next time.
“It’s still quite a ways away so I have to just keep working hard to get back there,” she said.
Alex Beach, Jason Caron, Danny Balin and Rob Labritz
Beach, Caron and Balin, three Metropolitan PGA Section pros, capped off their year by helping the U.S. to a miracle comeback victory over Great Britain and Ireland in the PGA Cup at Barton Creek in Texas. Beach had just become the new assistant pro at Westchester Country Club when he won the PGA Professional Championship in April by outdueling Balin, whose job he took over when Balin took the head professional job at Fresh Meadow Country Club. Caron, the head pro at Mill River joined them in qualifying for the PGA Championship at Bethpage Black, where Labritz, the GlenArbor Golf Club Director of Golf, was low club pro for the second time in his career.
“It was a great year,” Beach said. “Certainly making the transition to the Met Section from New Jersey (Ridgewood Country Club) could not have worked out any better. I’m very thankful to be at Westchester. It’s such an awesome club with a tone of support and that allows me to play with confidence.”
Beach called his NPC win at Belfair in Bluffton, S.C. a “huge milestone” while the encore at the PGA Cup, he said, “will go down as one of the greatest golf experiences of my life.”
Caron agreed.
“Unbelievable comeback, great team, the chemistry was amazing,” he said. “You don’t do a team event too often and it’s amazing how the comraderie even today is still going on with us. It’s pretty neat.”
The week started when Ben Crenshaw, who lives in nearby Austin, came into the U.S. Team Room to relate the U.S.’s storied comeback at the 1999 Ryder Cup at Brookline.
“Then all of a sudden it’s the same exact score (the Americans trailed, 10-6) Saturday,” Caron explained. “Mark Rolfing comes in tells us, ‘Hey, I was there, I witnessed it, it can be done.’ And there it was.”
There would have been no comeback had Caron and Beach not won the only American point out of eight Saturday when Beach sank a clutch putt on the 18th hole to salvage the last afternoon foursomes match still in doubt. The next day, the red flags kept going up on the scoreboards with Beach in the eighth match and Caron in the ninth.
“When I saw all the red on six I thought we might have a chance. Then on 16, I was one down and I realized that if Iost my match we’d lose the Cup. That was a tough thing to stomach so for me.”
Incredibly, Beach was able to get up and down from an awkward lie 100 yards away from the pin on the par five 18th for the birdie that won the match.
“I’d hit a pretty poor approach shot and left it in a pretty poor spot on a downslope.,” he explained. “It was probably a shot that a righty couldn’t have pulled off but being a lefty became an advantage for once in my life. I enjoy shots like that. I make a lot of birdies from wired spots. It came off the club perfectly, the wind kind of pushed it, had some spin on it and somehow ended up 10 feet behind the hole.”
Beach’s opponent, Alex Wrigley, has just a routing wedge to the green with his third shot but came up way short and missed the putt.
“I know if I made my putt we were going to do it with Jason and Marty (Jertsen) dormie behind me,” Beach said. “Time stood stillwith the thoughts I had going into the week: ‘O.K., here it is.’ It went in the heart and just about threw my shoulder out with a fist pump.”
Caron soon finished off his opponent, David Dixon, 3-and-2, to clinch.
“I went up the hill and everyone was hugging and high-fiving,” Caron said. “I’d love to go to another one, I’ll tell you that”
Alicia Dibos
A native of Peru and the Director of Instruction at Winged Foot, Dibos’ August victory in the the LPGA Teaching and Club Professionals National Championship at Pinehurst No. 8 was the highlight of a great summer that included a top 40 finish at the Women’s Senior Open at Pine Needles in May and a tie for 16th at the Senior LPGA Championship at the Pete Dye Course at French Lick, Indiana, in October.
“Three majors, three good positions,” Dibos said with satisfaction.
Dibos roared from behind with a closing 68 for a two-shot victory at Pinehurst, notching four birdies on the back nine of her final round.
“In truth, I could have shot lower,” she said. “I was hitting the ball really well. But I kept my cool over the last few holes to get in. I’m very proud of the way I played and the way I went through all the emotions of winning a tournament of that caliber.”
Dibos called the Pinehurst greens “terrifying” but she was able to prepare for and master them after putting on similar greens at neighboring Pine Needles. There, she opened with an 83 and came back to make the cut with a second-round 71. At French Lick, she battled chilly, 30-mile per hour winds to get a top-20 finish in a field studded with legends. Of course, Dibos is used to that at Winged Foot.
“If you have a course to practice at and it’s called Winged Foot, what can be better?” she asked. “At Winged Foot we’re always playing from little money and I don’t want to lose my $20. The members make me grind for it.”
Ina Kim-Schaad and Talia Campbell
The U.S. Women’s Mid Amateur finalists had a lot in common. Both live in New York City and both had put golf on the back burner to pursue their successful careers.
Kim-Schaad’s 3-and-2 win in the final came after she had been away from golf for 11 years. Campbell hadn’t played more than once a month since she graduated from Notre Dame in 2016.
Kim-Schaad’s husband, Ian Schaad, who caddied for her all week at Forest Highlands Golf Club in Flagstaff, Az., got her back into golf when they started dating three years ago.
“I was just playing once or twice a year, maybe,” said Kim-Schaad, who was runner-up in the 2000 U.S. Girl’s Junior. “I just was moving on to the next chapter in my life. I had a great job working Monday through Friday and I just had other priorities. I wanted to travel and do other things on the weekends.”
Becoming competitive again, she said, “was definitely not like riding a bike. It was a lot harder. All golf addicts knew it’s all consuming. I threw myself back into it after a while. It wasn’t immediate.”
Campbell, meanwhile, hadn’t picked up a golf club until this past summer when she’d trek out to play at Bethpage Black.
“Even then, New York golf is not easy between eight-hour rounds on the public courses and finding a way to get out there,” she said. “My goal is one round per month in the summer. It’s definitely enjoyable anytime that happens. I fulfilled that goal this year and obviously in September I exceeded it thanks to the Mid Am.”
Campbell’s swing, she said is based more on feel and timing,
“I just go out there and swing it, the whole hit it and chase mentality. I just take whatever what the course and my swing is giving me that week,” she said.
At the Mid Am, she played a fade all week when here usual ball flight is a draw. Still, she found herself getting sharper and sharper.
Kim-Schaad, meanwhile, followed her strategy of playing conservatively during the stroke play portion and aggressively in match play, with so many risk-reward holes on the course.
In the final, she got off to a 2-up lead on the first three holes and was never tied.
“It was disappointing just because I lost but Ina played so well, it numbed the sting,” Campbell said. “I didn’t even get off to the best start but even after the first few holes when I was starting to straighten my irons and really dial it in, she was just as dialed in and there was really never a great opening for me to dig out of the hole. She definitely won it. I don’t feel like I gave it to her.”
Kim-Schaad’s win earned her several exemptions, including next year’s U.S. Women’s Open. She’ll definitely be teeing it up more often at Deepdale and Bayonne, where she plays most of her golf.
“Bigger stage, more comprehensive tournament schedule so it will be a good challenge,” she said.
Megha Ganne
The 15-year-old from Holmdel, N.J., a First Tee of Metropolitan New York participant since she was seven years old, burst further onto the national scene and provided a glimpse of her bright future in 2019, highlighted by her qualifying for the U.S. Women’s Open and reaching the semifinals of the U.S. Women’s Amateur.
It all started at Augusta National, where Ganne was runner-up in her age group at the national Drive Chip and Putt Championship. Just two weeks later, Ganne won medalist honors at Open Sectional Qualifying at Forsgate Country Club, shooting even-par 70-72-142 to beat out a field of 40, including eight professionals. Although Ganne missed the U.S. Women’s Open cut at the Country Club of Charleston, she shook off the nerves of a first round 81 to shoot 72 in the second.
Two months later she returned to the national stage and made a great run at the Women’s Am, where she qualified for match play with rounds of 73-73, two-over, and then won her first three matches by a 1-up score in 18, 19, and 20 holes respectively. In the quarterfinals she kept her remarkable run going by defeating Caroline Canales, 3 and 2, then fell just short in the semis, losing on the 19th hole to Albane Valenzuela, a rising Stanford University star who is currently #2 in the Women’s World Amateur Golf Ranking. Ganne overcame a two-hole deficit against Valenzuela with an eagle and two birdies over the last five holes to tie, but could not match Valenzuela’s birdie on the first extra hole.
“I’m ready to be back here again, and I’m ready to go to the final and win it in the coming years,'' Ganne said afterwards. “I know that I have everything it takes. I’ve just got to test my game against really good players and I got to compare and see where they’re better and where I’m not, and I’m ready to work on those this winter, and I’ll be back next year.”
Sandwiched in between the Open and Amateur was her only even mildly disappointing result, at the U.S. Girls’ Junior, where she tied for 14th in stroke-play qualifying, but lost her first match on the 19th hole.
For Ganne, the 2020 season can’t come soon enough. “Since I played in the U.S. Women’s Open, I have a lot more confidence in myself. I now get on the first tee with 100 percent focus instead of those unnecessary nerves,” she says.