Pasatiempo Member Sandy Woodruff Will Enjoy A Home Course Advantage

By Craig Smith, USGA

Santa Cruz, Calif. -- If the winning recipe for the 2004 USGA Senior Women's Amateur includes more than a teaspoon of local knowledge, then consider Sandy Woodruff among the list of contenders at Pasatiempo Golf Club in Santa Cruz, Calif.

When this championship comes to town from Oct. 9-14, Woodruff won't even have to get in her car. A longtime member, she lives on the 11th hole, some 500 yards from the first tee. More than that, however, this 55-year-old has won the women's club championship all eight times she has played in it. She also holds the women's course record with a 2-under-par 70, and is believed to have made the first-ever eagle 2 on the signature 16th hole.

Tiger Woods would have loved even a par on that hole when he last played the Western Intercollegiate there in 1996. He went 7-7-6 on the 16th and finished second by three strokes.

This will be Woodruff's fifth Senior Women's Amateur, and may be her best chance at getting beyond the quarterfinals. Her best finish at a Senior Women's Amateur came in her first, in 1999 at Desert Mountain Club in Scottsdale, Ariz. Her run ended when she lost the last hole to fall 1 down to four-time champion Carol Semple Thompson of Sewickley, Pa. Semple Thompson also stopped Woodruff in the second round in 2001. Woodruff lost her first-round match last summer.

She qualified for the October championship by finishing second among 13 qualifiers who played at Mira Vista Golf and Country Club in El Cerrito, Calif., in mid-September.

"I was excited to play well enough to qualify for this championship," said Woodruff. "To get the chance to play in a USGA championship at my home club is going to be something special."

Alister Mackenzie's Northern California gem was opened for play in 1929 and owner Marion Hollins invited the best women players in the world to her join her for a round of golf. The guest list included American great Babe Zaharias and Joyce Wethered, who is considered by many to be the top English female golfer of all time. Hollins, herself, won the 1921 U.S. Women's Amateur.

But the USGA didn't discover Pasatiempo until 1986, when local star Kay Cockerill won the Women's Amateur there.

With long, narrow sloping greens, Pasatiempo will reward only the best putters and chippers during the week of the championship. That list most certainly includes Semple Thompson, Pat Milton of Monroe Falls, Ohio, and Marianne Towersey of Newport Beach, Calif. -- all three advanced to the third round of match play against the younger and tougher field at the recent U.S. Women's Mid-Amateur.

Don't count out straight-hitting defending champion Marlene Streit of Canada, either. Streit, who became the USGA's oldest champion last fall when she won at age 69, will be inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame on Nov. 15.

But, don't be surprised if the final story for this championship says something about a "local girl makes good."

Craig Smith is the USGA's Director of Media Relations. E-mail him with questions or comments at csmith@usga.org.