Ziemer's B.C. Golf Notes: Vanessa Zhang cruises to record-setting Ivy League Championship
More Ziemer's Notes: Surrey council rejects redevelopment plan for The Hills At Portal; Taylor-Hadwin team up once again in New Orleans; Jeevan Sihota makes it three straight wins on Vancouver Golf Tour; UBC, SFU head to conference championships
By Brad Ziemer, British Columbia Golf
(April 21, 2025) - Lots of birdies and very few mistakes added up to a record-setting performance for Vancouver’s Vanessa Zhang, who went wire-to-wire to win the Ivy League Championship at Royal Palm Golf Course in Naples, Fla.
Zhang, who is completing her first season at Harvard University, made it look easy as she recorded rounds of 68, 67 and 70. Her 11-under total set an Ivy League Championship record and beat the field by five shots.
Zhang’s win did not come as a huge surprise as her game had been trending well this spring. “It is really exciting because I feel like I have been close,” Zhang said in a telephone interview.
“I came second at our first (spring) tournament, then eighth and then second again. I kept telling myself, it’s going to come, it’s going to come. And I was, like, if there’s ever a time to do it, it’s now. It was really special to get it done with my team.”
The win gives Zhang an opportunity to play as an individual in next month’s NCAA regionals where she will have an opportunity to play her way into the NCAA Championship tourney.
No matter what happens the rest of the way, Zhang said her first year at Harvard has been an incredible experience. “It’s really been everything I could ask for,” she said. “I don’t think I could be happier anywhere else. I am really happy that I chose Harvard.
“I think it’s really the people here that make it great, my support system is really so special to me, my coach, my team and also the friends I have made off the golf course. Each of them has something really special about them that always makes me want to keep learning and be a better version of myself.”
Zhang’s teammates, who include fellow British Columbians Bonnie Zhai of Surrey and Michelle Liu of Vancouver, won’t be travelling to the NCAA regionals. Harvard finished second to Princeton in the team competition at the Ivy League Championship, which ends their season.
All of her teammates stormed the green when Zhang clinched the individual title and doused her with water. Lots of it. “I hugged my playing partners, turned around and it was like Splash Mountain,” Zhang said with a laugh. “There was so much water everywhere I turned.” Zhang, who made 16 birdies during the week, will find out on April 23 what regional site she will be playing at.
Vancouver’s Victoria Liu, a senior at Princeton University who is a two-time Ivy League champion, finished fourth in the individual competition to help the Tigers win the team competition and advance to regionals.
HOUSING BID DENIED: A bid by the owners of The Hills at Portal Golf Club to turn part of the course into a residential housing development has been rejected by Surrey council. The golf club’s owners, Randy Bishop and Joe Haley, were seeking council’s support to have the property excluded from the Agricultural Land Reserve. Council voted against supporting their exclusion application at a lively public hearing last week.
Bishop and Haley bought the century-old course, formerly known as Peace Portal, in 2021. They had proposed removing a portion of the golf course property from the ALR for residential development and donating the remainder to the City of Surrey for use as a park. A large contingent of neighbourhood residents and golfers turned out at the public hearing to oppose the project. The Semiahmoo First Nation also voiced its strong opposition.
TEAM ABBOTSFORD: Nick Taylor and Adam Hadwin are teaming up for the third straight year at this week’s Zurich Classic of New Orleans. The Abbotsford duo have an impressive history at the two-man team event. They were solo second in 2023 and were 10th last year when Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry won the championship. McIlroy and Lowry are back to defend their title. Surrey’s Adam Svensson is paired this week with Australian Cam Davis.
Taylor is coming off a tie for 49th finish at the RBC Heritage, a Signature event played at Harbour Town Golf Links in Hilton Head, S.C. He earned $48,000. Hadwin tied for 61st in the 72-man field and made $41,500. Svensson tied for 24th at last week’s Corales Puntacana Championship in the Dominican Republic and earned $37,000.
TOUGH FINISH: Merritt’s Roger Sloan was just two shots out of the lead midway through his final round but faded down the stretch and tied for 25th at the Korn Ferry Tour’s LECOM Suncoast Classic in Lakewood Ranch, Fla. Sloan finished the event at 10-under par, eight shots behind winner Neal Shipley of Pittsburgh.
Vancouver’s Stuart Macdonald had a nightmarish start to his final round, playing his first two holes in seven-over par, and tied for 65th at two-under par. Macdonald and Sloan are both in the field for this week’s Vewritex Bank Championship in Arlington, Tex.
TITLE CHASE: It’s conference championship week for the University of B.C. and Simon Fraser University. The UBC women and men are competing at the Cascade Collegiate Conference Championships in Portland, while the SFU men and women are at the Great Northwest Athletic Conference Championships in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. The SFU men are coming off an eighth-place finish at last week’s 15-team Hanny Stanislaus Invitational in Turlock, Calif. Danny Im led the Red Leafs with an 11th-place finish in the individual competition.
THE DOMINATOR: Victoria’s Jeevan Sihota is dominating the start of the Vancouver Golf Tour season. Sihota registered his third straight victory this past weekend by winning the Gatekeeper Systems GreenTee Open in Langley. Sihota shot rounds of 64 and 68 to finish the event at 12-under par. That was seven shots better than runner-up Kevin Stinson of Mission. Sihota earned $2,700 for the win.
TOP-10 FOR KIM: Surrey’s Lauren Kim tied for fifth at the Southeastern Conference Championships in Belleair, Fla. Kim, a University of Texas sophomore, completed the stroke-play portion of the event at four-under par. That was five shots behind winner Caitlyn Macnab of Ole Miss. Texas advanced to match play but the Longhorns were eliminated 3-2 in the quarter-finals by Arkansas. Kim was one of two Texas players to win their match.
NAME CHANGE: Ellie Szeryk earned her first professional win at last spring’s B.C. Women’s Open at Pitt Meadows Golf Club. She won another championship last week as Eleanor Vorster, the name she began using when she married fellow pro Martin Vorster of South Africa earlier this year. Vorster is a dual Canadian-U.S. citizen whose sister Maddie Szeryk won the 2017 B.C. Women’s Amateur Championship at Vernon Golf & Country Club. Vorster won the Taco Bell Natchez Classic in Mississippi on the Annika All Pro Women’s Tour by six shots with a 54-hole total of 14-under par. Port Coquitlam’s Yeji Kwon missed the cut.
CHIP SHOTS: The PGA Tour Americas circuit resumes this week at the KIA Open in Quito, Ecuador. Coquitlam’s A.J. Ewart, Chris Crisologo of Richmond and Lawren Rowe of Squamish are all in the field. . .The Epson Tour returns from a lengthy break for this week’s IOA Championship in Beaumont, Calif., where Vancouver’s Leah John and Yeji Kwon of Port Coquitlam are in the field.