Amy Lee Ties Course Record With First-Round 67 At B.C. Women’s Amateur Championship
By Brad Ziemer, British Columbia Golf
BALFOUR — Amy Lee had quite the experience playing in last month’s LPGA Tour-American Junior Golf Association event at Liberty National in New Jersey.
The AJGA held its own event alongside the LPGA Tour’s tournament so Lee, the reigning B.C. Junior Girls champion, got to rub shoulders with some of the game’s greats.
That included fellow Canadian Brooke Henderson. Each AJGA player at the New Jersey tournament was assigned a LPGA mentor and Lee got Henderson as hers.
“I played a practice round with Brooke and I felt so honoured,” Lee said. “She was like an angel, She was so nice and is so good at golf. She was striking the ball straight down the fairway close to 300 yards. It was a real honour. She gave me a couple of tips and we had a lot of fun.”
Lee also had some fun in the first round of that event when she recorded a hole-in-one. Fast forward about three weeks and Lee is still having fun. The 16-year-old Langley resident, who is just finishing Grade 10 at Walnut Grove Secondary, opened the 119th playing of the B.C. Women’s Amateur Championship at Balfour Golf Course with a course-record tying five-under 67. Brooke Henderson would have been proud.
After bogeying her first hole, Lee went on to record six birdies on a Balfour course that proved to be a considerable challenge for most of the field. Lee’s 67 gave her a four-shot lead over Vancouver’s Kaylee Chung. Lee was determined to not let that opening bogey rattle her. “It’s okay, it’s golf,” Lee said of that opening three-putt bogey. “Golf has its ups and downs. I’m pretty satisfied with the round.”
Lee said she rode a hot putter, especially on Balfour’s tricky back nine, which features large undulating greens. “I thought the back nine was harder, but I shot 32 on the back,” she said with a laugh.
“For me the challenges today were trying to get my irons precise. Some of the pin placements were tricky, they were up on a tier and trying to get the ball up on the same tier was important. There are some hard holes here, like 11 and 12, where you are just trying to get a par. After my first hole, I just tried not to make any bogeys. I putted really well today.”
The Mid-Amateur Championship for players aged 25 and older is also being contested at Balfour. Surrey’s Aram Choi leads defending champion Shelly Stouffer of Nanoose Bay by one shot after opening with an even-par 72. This is Choi’s first tournament since recently having her amateur status reinstated.
She played collegiate golf at the University of Washington and Portland State a decade ago before turning pro. She now works full-time as a social worker for Fraser Health. “This was my first tournament since last year,” Choi said. “It felt so weird, it was like, who am I, where am I, what am I doing.”
Stouffer leads the Mid-Master category for players aged 40 and older by three shots over Tina Papatolis of Issaquah, Wash. “I had a stretch of four 3s in a row (holes 13 through 16) which was nice,” said Stouffer, who will attempt to win her fifth straight B.C. Senior Women’s Championship early next month at Sun Peaks Resort in Kamloops. “I hung in there nicely today.”
Click HERE to see complete scoring from round one at The B.C. Women's Amateur.
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