None of the five players with significant Colorado connections competing in the final stage of Q-school earned LPGA Tour status on Sunday. But that doesn’t mean the results of the tournament in Daytona Beach, Fla., didn’t resonate in Colorado.
In fact, what happened in Daytona Beach had a major impact on the field of one of the bigger golf tournaments that will be held in the Centennial State in 2015.
Colorado — specifically, Boulder Country Club — will host the Pac-12 Women’s Golf Championships April 20-22. And considering four of the top six women’s golf teams in the Golfweek national rankings are from the Pac-12, suffice it to say that quite a few of the best women’s amateurs in the world will be coming to Boulder to compete in the spring.
But after what happened in Florida on Sunday, the field will be somewhat less stellar.
Golf is one of the rare college sports where it’s not particularly unusual for some of the best competitors to leave programs in the middle of the season. It happened two years ago when Jordan Spieth exited the University of Texas during the winter break. Closer to home, Sue Kim left the University of Denver women’s program in mid-season several years ago to go pro and eventually made it to the LPGA Tour.
And on Sunday at the LPGA Q-school finals, three Pac-12 women’s players — all among the best in women’s amateur golf — qualified for the LPGA Tour. All three immediately turned professional, thereby hastily ending their college careers. And, of course, that means that the Pac-12 Championships Boulder Country Club is hosting suddenly lost three of its top competitors.
And these certainly weren’t just any players. They include the No. 1 and No. 2 women’s college golfers in the country, according to Golfweek — senior SooBin Kim of Washington and sophomore Alison Lee of UCLA — along with No. 19 Jing Yan, Kim’s freshman teammate at Washington.
Lee, who played on the U.S. team for the Junior Solheim Cup at Inverness Golf Club in Englewood during the summer of 2013 (pictured above), shared medalist honors in the 90-hole LPGA qualifying finals on Sunday with Australian Minjee Lee.
“I don’t have any words to express how I feel right now,” Alison Lee said. “On the green when I made my putt for par and when I realized I got my LPGA card, I was just filled with joy. Then I got off, and I just thought about what it meant to be pro and I thought about my team and my school and my coach and it kind of did make me sad.”
Kim, meanwhile, tied for 11th place, also earning her LPGA card, while Yan placed 34th and gained conditional LPGA status.
No doubt the departures of those players will take a toll on Washington — the No. 1-ranked women’s program in the nation — and No. 3 UCLA. Lee won the Pac-12 Preview tournament last month — in her final college event, as it turned out. Kim finished a stroke behind Lee there, and won one fall tournament, while Yan won another.
Not having those players at Boulder Country Club in April certainly is a blow, but that doesn’t mean the field won’t still be packed with top players. Barring the unforeseen, the defending NCAA Division I champion (Doris Chen of Southern California) will be on hand, along with three other top-seven finishers from the 2014 national finals (Lauren Kim of Stanford, Manon Gidali of Arizona and Louise Ridderstrom of UCLA).
In fact, after the fall portion of the college schedule, eight of the top 18 ranked women’s college golfers in the country — not counting Lee, SooBin Kim and Yan — come from Pac-12 schools.
