Women's National Championships
September 27 -29, 2002

For the last three years, the Women's National Championships coincided with the USDGC. It was in fact coordinated by the same core staff. I commend the Charlotte/Rock Hill people for the immense effort it took to pull off both of these events for the past three years, however, I really think it is an improvement that the two events have been separated. They were not only separated by time, but also by location. This year the women's event was held in Peoria, IL nearly three weeks prior to USDGC. Now the women's event is truly spotlighted as it is a women's only event with no corresponding men's event. And now any women who might qualify for USDGC do not have to make the choice as to whether to play in the most prestigious event of the year (USDGC) or whether to play in the only women's major event of the year.

There were three days of competition on 4 different courses. The courses included Bradley - which has recently been redesigned and is now an incredibly fun course with many deuce opportunities; Washington - the least exciting of the courses, where the main obstacle is the wind; Northwoods - a new course with a few extremely good holes (#17 & #18), a few really tricky wooded holes, and a variety of trouble free holes in an orchard; McNaughton - this has always been a favorite of mine as it is beautiful and challenging even from the shorter tees that all divisions played.

There was a huge field (by women's standards): 18 pro women, 14 advanced, 5 intermediate, and 7 juniors. I fully expect next year to be even bigger and better.

Now as far as the competition goes, I played well the first day. I was driving extremely well - I mean extremely well. I wasn't putting very well, but I was getting my drives close enough that it didn't matter. On Day two I started to falter. My putting completely disintegrated. I missed a handful of putts where I was close enough to crack my head on the basket had I turned around and done the Nestea plunge. In other words I had the yips big time! It kept getting worse and worse. It was horrible.

Day three we played one round of 18 and then finished with a final 9. I wouldn't have believed it possible, but my putting continued to get worse. I was actually lucky to be able to hang on to second place. Des Reading played well and won. In advanced, Valarie Jenkins pulled ahead early and never looked back.