Australia’s Sue Wooster runner-up at US Senior Women’s Amateur

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Lara Tennant arrived at Orchid Island Golf & Beach Club having won just one match in a USGA amateur championship in eight starts. Thanks to a week of solid ball-striking and coolness under pressure, the 51-year-old Oregon resident left as the 57th US Senior Women’s Amateur champion. Tennant never trailed overnight, defeating Melbourne’s Sue Wooster, 3&2, in the 18-hole championship match.

Tennant was able to build a cushion on the back nine by taking advantage of some late miscues by Wooster. Leading 3 up through 12 holes, Tennant found trouble on the par-5 13th, and settled for a conceded bogey. With the door open to pull closer, Wooster three-putted from 40 feet to keep Tennant’s lead at 3 up. On the next hole, Wooster hit her approach shot from 130 metres just over the green and chipped to eight feet. After Tennant missed a birdie try from 18 feet, Wooster wasn’t able to convert her par putt, putting Tennant 4 up with four holes to play.

Nerves might have played a role coming down the stretch for Tennant, the No.10 seed in matchplay. Safely on the green with her tee shot on the par-3 15th hole, she watched as Wooster lagged her lengthy birdie try to three feet, effectively giving Tennant two putts to win the match. However, she left her first putt from 40 feet 18 feet short, and she couldn’t make her par save. Wooster made par to extend the match and win her only hole of the day. Tennant found herself in a similar position on the next hole, the par-4 16th, when she hit her approach shot from the right rough to about 35 feet past the hole from 115 metres. She had no issues with her lag putting this time, cozying it up to concession range and sealing the victory.

Tennant led from the outset in the championship match, rolling in a 12-foot birdie try on the first hole. Her lead could have been even larger had Wooster, who struggled with her putter most of the day, not made a 40-foot, downhill birdie putt on the third hole. Tennant, who had hit her approach shot from 115 metres to nine feet, rolled in her birdie try to halve the hole. After seven straight halved holes, Tennant took a 2-up lead at the turn when she made a 20-foot downhill putt to save par on No.9 after Wooster couldn’t get up and down from the bunker fronting the green.

As the runner-up, Wooster receives an exemption into the 2019 US Senior Women’s Open, as well as a three-year exemption into the US Senior Women’s Amateur and exemptions into the 2019 US Women’s Amateur and US Women’s Mid-Amateur.

“I’m pretty stoked, you know,” Wooster said of her week in Florida. “Obviously I’m upset I lost because I wanted to win. If you said at the start of the week I would’ve been in the final, I would’ve been over the moon. I’m proud of myself. I think tonight I’ll sit back and feel I did pretty good overall.

“I don’t know if I had opportunities to eventually win it, but I could have put some pressure on her and I didn’t. I think I just couldn’t hole the putts today. I was just missing and I was probably just over-reading a bit, and nothing was working. I hit some nice shots in, I just couldn’t capitalise. When I three-putted No.13, I knocked my chances down a lot. That gave her a breather.”