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The last year was chock-full of entertaining golf. What stood out the most from the Ryder and Solheim cups, many major championships and million-dollar made-for-TV events? How about a 6-and-4 junior match just outside the nation’s capital.
If you weren’t lucky enough to be in the gallery back in July at Columbia Country Club in Chevy Chase, Maryland, for the 72nd U.S. Girls’ Junior, then Rose Zhang’s big win might seem pretty pedestrian. No matter the outcome, history was going to be made in the 36-hole final. And just like books and their covers, you can’t judge a match purely by its score. Just ask Bailey Davis. The local Maryland talent was aiming to be the first Black American female to win a USGA championship, but her 6-and-4 defeat was more telling of her character than ability (not to mention Zhang’s talent).
An incoming Stanford freshman at the time, Zhang, who went on to win her first three college starts for the Cardinal this fall, opened the morning play with a bogey-free 6-under 64 (with match-play concessions) and went to the lunch break with a 4-up lead. Davis played well, carding an even-par 70 – a score that might be good enough to hold a lead in previous U.S. Girls’ Juniors – with just one real blemish, a double-bogey on the par-5 12th.
“Bailey was making almost every putt she looked at, and I just had to stay patient and keep up with her. said Zhang. “That’s what you have to do with your opponent, and I think that I did that pretty well.”
Davis cut the lead early in the afternoon and hung around for a few more holes before Zhang started doing what she does best: make birdies in abundance. Zhang rattled off three birdies over four holes to take a 6-up lead through 26 holes. Eventually up five with five to play, Zhang’s last opponent of the marathon week was Mother Nature, who stopped play for three hours before Zhang closed out the match on the 33rd hole with, you guessed it, a birdie after hitting the flagstick with her…
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Source : yahoo
