AZ Golf Insider - May 2020

Page 29

ARIZONA NEWS

AWARDS

Fitzpatrick earns AGA Women’s POY Eaton claims Senior title for record 7th time

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ikayla Fitzpatrick of Phoenix Country Club is the 2019 Arizona Golf Association Women’s Player of the Year. Fitzpatrick earned points during the 2019 season by winning the AGA Women’s Stroke Play Championship at Troon North, firing a 3-over 216 (71, 73, 72). She also was the qualifying medalist and semifinalist, recording a 5-under 67 in the Women’s Match Play Championship. Fitzpatrick attended Xavier College Preparatory in Phoenix, the girls high school golf powerhouse that has captured 36 team championships since 1974. She played under legendary coaches Sister Lynn Winsor and Tui Selvaratnam as a fouryear varsity player. Fitzpatrick was part of the Gators team that set a record low team score during the 2014 Arizona State Championship, going 9 under. During her time at Xavier, the team never www.azgolf.org

lost a single match and won every state championship. In 2015, Fitzpatrick was named the Arizona Interscholastic Association’s No. 1-ranked high school golfer and MVP after taking medalist honors on six occasions. Fitzpatrick was named the Junior Golf Association of Arizona Player of the Year in the girls division in 2014, recording 13 top-10 finishes and three wins. Following graduation from Xavier in 2016, Fitzpatrick attended Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she graduated summa cum laude in three years with a degree in business analytics. She is currently competing in her senior year for the Musketeers and working on her MBA with a concentration in business intelligence. Fitzpatrick will graduate with an MBA in May and plans to compete in the 2020 LPGA qualifying school in August. She was named the Big East Female Golfer of the Year in 2019.

AGA PHOTO

AGA PHOTO

Phoenix Country Club’s Mikayla Fitzpatrick garnered the Kachina as the AGA Women’s Player of the Year for 2019. Kim Eaton (below) of Apache Wells Golf Club was selected as the 2019 AGA Women’s Senior Player of the Year.

AGA Women’s Senior POY

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im Eaton of Apache Wells Golf Club has been named the 2019 AGA Women’s Senior Player of the Year for a record seventh time. Eaton earned points by winning the AGA Women’s Four-Ball Championship, finishing runner-up in the Senior Women’s Match Play Championship and finishing fourth in the Senior Women’s State Amateur Championship. Nationally, Eaton qualified for the 2019 U.S. Senior Women’s Open, the 2019 U.S. Women’s Senior Amateur and the 2019 U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur (as medalist), reaching the round of 64 at both the Amateur and Mid-Amateur. Eaton describes herself as a “country club brat” who grew up as the youngest of five children in Greeley, Colo. At the age of 12, she started play golf as an alternative to swimming. Eaton learned the game by watching talented family members. Eaton was fortunate

enough to learn from one of the best mentors in women’s golf, LPGA co-founder and tour professional Shirley Spork. As one of the 13 LPGA founders, Spork starred on the LPGA more than 70 years ago and helped create the LPGA Professional Division. Eaton is a former golf professional and Futures Tour member who played in the 1981 and 1983 U.S. Women’s Open and claimed her first national championship in 2010 at the D. Jones/Doherty Women’s Amateur. In her home state of Colorado, Eaton won at the junior, open and senior levels and was inducted into the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame in 2006. Eaton joins her uncle, Larry Eaton, in that Hall of Fame. In March 2017, Eaton participated as an amateur in the Legends Tour Walgreens Charity Classic at Grandview Golf Course in Sun City West, alongside a field of LPGA Tour players and Hall of Famers. She’s been an Arizona Women’s Golf Association Champion more than a dozen times. n

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