Kelly Xu's amazing hardware haul at LNGA Amateur Championship
Kelly Xu (LNGA photo)
Kelly Xu is going to have a few more bags to check at St. Louis' Lambert International Airport on her way home to Claremont, Calif.
The incoming Stanford freshman won three championship trophies at the rain-shortened Ladies National Golf Association’s 92nd Amateur Championship which wrapped up Thursday at Lake Forest Country Club in Lake St. Louis, Mo.
Not simply content with winning the Dorothy Pease Junior Trophy for competitors ages 18 and under, Xu's 36-hole total of 4-under 144 (68-72) earned her the George III Amateur Trophy awarded to the overall first place winner.
Wait - there's more.
Kelly Xu was the first female champion at Augusta National Xu, 18, partnered with future Stanford teammate Sadie Englemann of Austin, Texas to win the Howell Team Trophy with a 6-under score of 282 (140-142). Reagan Zibilski of Springfield, Mo, and Marissa Wenzler of Dayton, Ohio shared runner-up honors after finishing at 3-under par (69-72) (72-69).
“I had a lot of close shots, a lot of looks at birdie so I felt really good and had a really good mindset,” said Xu. “Today I had only eight holes left to play so it was harder to get into the groove of things…but it was fun.”
Xu will join another prized recruit, Megha Ganne, at Stanford in the fall.
Like Ganne, she is a first-team AJGA Rolex All-American who was named the 2021 Southern California Golf Association's Player of the Year in 2021 after she won the SCGA Women's Amateur Championship. She is currently ranked 10th in the AJGA girls' rankings.
With all due respect to 2019 ANWA winner Jennifer Kupcho, Xu also has the distinction of being the first female champion at Augusta National, winning the inaugural Drive, Chip, and Putt (7-9 age group) as a 9-year-old fourth-grader in 2014.
ABOUT THE LNGA Amateur
The inaugural event, held in 1927 at Blue Hills
Country Club in Kansas City, Mo. set off decades
of successful tournament across the United
States, conducted by an organization then
named the Missouri Valley Women's Golf
Association. A year later, the name became the
Women's Trans-Mississippi Golf Association,
evolving into the Women's Trans National Golf
Association by 1953 to include all states before
changing to the Ladies National
Golf Association in 2019. This
54-hole stroke play event spans the nation and
has been hosted at some of the country finest
courses,
including Persimmon Ridge in Kentucky,
Stonewall Links in Pennsylvania, and Eugene
Country Club in Oregon.
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