USGA brings two more national championships to Puget Sound

2023 U.S. Women’s Four-Ball

May 12-17 • 2023 • The Home Course

Two-person best ball Saturday & Sunday

The USGA, established in 1894 and which branched out to Washington state in 1922, will feature its newest and most improved golf event at The Home Course next May: the 2023 U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball Championship.

The event, which began for women in 1977, was once called the U.S. Amateur Public Links. That titled event ended after 2014, then hosted at The Home Course when Furnie ‘Alice’ Jo defeated Seong Eun-jeong, both of South Korea, 3 and 2.

The USGA then revamped its ‘Links’ format the subsequent year to a two-person best ball style, for both women and men (who started their competition in 1922). This will be the eighth edition of the women’s event.

“It’s a two-person best ball,” said Home Course GM Justin Gravatt. “You have teams of two women, both playing their own ball. Lowest score wins the hole.”

The event, running from May 12-17, begins with a field of 64 teams playing two days of stroke play, 36 holes. That then narrows to a field of 32 teams playing match play rounds over the next four days.

“It’s a lot of golf,” Gravatt said. “Some days, they’re playing 36 holes. The winner might have to play nine rounds in six days.”

That’s probably why the grueling schedule leads to so many junior players making up most of the contestants. At the Four-Ball championship last year played in Puerto Rico, 80 percent of the field was 18 years old or younger. A total of four teenagers advanced to the finals. At The Home Course Four-Ball qualifier last summer, a pair of 13-year-olds, Angela Zhang of Bellevue and Alice Ziyi Zhao of Irvine, Calif., won the event. They combined for a 7-under 65.

“It’s becoming a younger crowd,” Gravatt said.

Besides the two women’s events, The Home Course has co-hosted (with Chambers Bay) a pair of other USGA events: the 2010 U.S. Amateur stroke play, and the 2021 U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship. “The USGA was pleased with our (hosting),” Gravatt said. “We got back another soon after.”

This DuPont property has followed a long and varied course over the decades. When the USGA began operations in 1894, Washington had been a state for just five years. The land was held by various Native American tribes, and Hudson’s Bay Co. built a fort. There was evidence that a crude six-hole golf course was laid out around the fort.

The E.I. DuPont de Nemours Co. constructed a plant in 1906 to manufacture explosives. Weyerhaeuser took over in the late 1970s. The property was cleaned up and the golf course became part of the master plan.

2027 U.S. Women’s Senior Amateur to be played at Tacoma Country and Golf Club

Female golfers will have another championship in the Northwest five years from now. Tacoma Country & Golf Club in Lakewood was awarded the U.S. Senior Amateur by the USGA this past summer. The event will be Aug. 19-22, 2027.

This will be the ninth go-around for the Senior event. It’s also the fifth USGA women’s event hosted by the club. The previous events were the 1961 U.S. Women’s Amateur, the 1984 U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur, the 1994 U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur, and the 2007 U.S. Girls’ Juniors.