Jennifer Gu Carries Three-Shot Lead Into Final Round Of BC Women's Amateur
Jennifer Gu Is The 3rd Round Leader Of The BC Women's Amateur - Image Credit Brad Ziemer
By Brad Ziemer, British Columbia Golf
(June 22, 2023) COBBLE HILL — They played the third round of the B.C. Women’s Amateur Championship and absolutely nothing changed.
West Vancouver’s Jennifer Gu still has the three-shot lead she began the round with and Burnaby’s Meera Minhas is still second.
Both players had rounds of three-over 75 they weren’t satisfied with at an Arbutus Ridge Golf Club course that continues to play tough.
“I was battling my own shots all day,” said Gu, the 2021 Junior Girls champion who just finished her sophomore year at Kent State University in Ohio. “I didn’t have my swing today and I ended up shooting 75. I wasn’t too worried about what my competitors were doing today. I was just trying to keep my ball in play.”
Gu was coming off a tournament-low round of 70 in the second round when she feasted on the four par 5s at Arbutus Ridge playing them in five-under par. She didn’t even get a nibble on them during her third round.
“The course was just playing way harder today. Whoever the malicious man is who sets up the golf course in the morning saw that we were eating those pars 5s up,” Gu said with a laugh as she took a jab at rules chair Greg Moody, who happens to be a longtime friend and clubmate of Gu’s at Seymour Golf & Country Club.
“They all played longer, so they just weren’t as gettable and I just didn’t do anything special on them.”
Gu, who sits at two-over par through 54 holes, made two birdies in her round. One of them came on the 184-yard par 3 17th where her she drained a 20-footer that temporarily gave her a four-shot lead over Minhas, who bogeyed the hole.
But Minhas got one of those shots back when Gu’s tee shot on No. 18 bounced right and into a penalty area. Gu went on to make a bogey. “I got a bad kick, but it was a bad shot to begin with,” Gu said.
Like Gu, Minhas had something of a roller-coaster round. “I started out rough again,” said Minhas, who just finished her first year at Simon Fraser University. “But I parred the first hole for once. I drained a 20-footer up the hill.”
After making the turn at three-over for her round, Minhas battled back with back-to-back birdies on the 11th and 12th holes. “I knew I had to come back on the back nine, but 16 and 17 got me,” she said of the two holes she bogeyed on the back side. “I put my drive out to the right on 16 and into the ground under repair on 17. But overall, I am pretty satisfied because the pins were a lot harder today.”
Surrey’s Rebecca Kim sits third at seven-over par after a one-over 73 that could have been much better. Her round had shown considerable promise until it was derailed by a double-bogey on 14 and a triple on 17. Nanoose Bay’s Shelly Stouffer had the day’s best round, an even-par 72 that left her in 10th place.
Stouffer and Surrey’s Ha Young Chang lead the two-player better-ball competition heading into Friday’s final round. They sit at eight-under par, one shot better than the team of Rebecca Kim and Dana Smith of Campbell River.
Click HERE for complete 3rd round scoring.
CHIP SHOTS: A 36-hole zone competition was won by the Zone 3 team of Rebecca Kim and Ha Young Chang, both of Surrey. Their two-round total of 11-over par was five shots better than the second-place Zone 2 team of Natasha Kozlowski of Vernon and Kayleigh Trowman of Summerland.