Medalist Maria Jose Marin completes epic comeback in round of 16 of US Women’s Am

Maria Jose Marin (USGA photo)

The longest day of play at the 2024 U.S. Women’s Amateur featured a mix of clear wins and hard-fought matches as both the round of 32 and the round of 16 were played on Thursday at Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Eight players stood out from the crowd, including two quarterfinalists from last year’s championship, a rising star (who is only a sophomore in high school) and five of the top 10 seeds in stroke play.

The most important match of the round of 16 was a tug-of-war between Furman graduate Anna Morgan and rising Auburn sophomore Anna Davis, two top-30 players in the world. Morgan won the first hole with par, but Davis came back to tie with a birdie on hole 2. The pair made six straight pars before Morgan broke the tie again with a par on hole 9 to move into the match with a 1-point lead. Davis then made a birdie on hole 10 and a par on hole 12 to take the lead for the first time after Morgan three-putted from less than 10 feet for bogey.

Morgan immediately tied the match with a birdie on hole 13, but a bogey on hole 15 opened the door for Davis to tie with three holes to go. After Morgan missed the fairway on hole 17, her approach shot from a flier lie in the rough landed in a back bunker, allowing Davis to two-putt for a 3-and-1 victory.

“I knew it was going to be a good match. I’ve never played her before, but I’ve heard she’s a great player,” Davis said of the top match. “I hate playing against good players, really high-level players early in the group. But it was good. It was a good match. We both played really well.”

“I made something good on one hole and on the next hole she made a putt, like, oh, my God,” Davis added. “It was a lot of back and forth, but it was great.”

On a course like Southern Hills, lag putting can take you very far, and in the middle of the first nine holes, the 2022 Augusta National Women’s Amateur champion really got going with the flatstick.

“Even when they weren’t going in, it just felt really good. My shot felt really good. It was about the fifth hole and I was hitting my lag putts really well too. I thought it was just a matter of time before they started going in,” she said of her putter. “Sometimes you just get into that rhythm and today it just felt hot.”

For the second day in a row, two matches ended in 7-and-6 victories, this time from two players making their U.S. Women’s Amateur debuts. Both top 15-year-old Asterisk Talley and rising University of Arkansas senior Kendall Todd won the first hole to easily advance to the quarterfinals.

“I’m playing really well, I just won a couple of weeks ago. The game feels really good,” Todd said. “I’ve just been patient with myself and not expecting – well, of course I expected to do well, but I’ve taken it slow and not pushed myself too hard.”

Talley has also played well and is now 13-1 in match play after winning the US Women’s Amateur Four-Ball Championship with Sarah Lim and finishing second in the US Girls’ Junior this season at the USGA Championships. Southern Hills is no easy test, but Talley passes it with flying colors, as the 10th-grader from Chowchilla, California, has yet to reach the 18th tee in match play.

“I think I just hit the ball inside 20 feet and try to get on the green and then — if you get a one-putt, that’s good, or if you get to 15 feet, that’s really good,” Talley said this week of her game plan. “You don’t try to get anywhere near the hole, you just try to get on the green anywhere and then if you make a putt, you make a putt and I feel like I’ve accomplished that.”

“I feel like my management has definitely gotten better. If you asked me last year, I probably would have been one of those people saying, ‘I’m going for every pin, I’m getting within a foot of every pin and making birdie on every hole,'” Talley said of her progress during that groundbreaking summer. “I’ve worked hard all year. I’ve played so much golf and practiced so much. My game has just gotten so much better.”

The first match to reach a playoff this week featured Adela Cernousek, rising senior at Texas A&M, and Lauren Kim, rising sophomore at the University of Texas, playing two extra holes. After both made bogey on the first playoff hole, the par-4 10th, Cernousek hit the green on the par-3 11th while Kim stayed too far off the back edge. Kim’s chip missed the hole just inside Cernousek’s ball. The France native scared the hole with her birdie putt, taking par and ultimately the win after Kim’s par attempt went wide left.

On Friday, Davis will face the top match of the round for the second straight year, this time against No. 1 seed and stroke play medalist Maria Jose Marin (2 p.m. ET). Talley will face Cernousek (2:10 p.m. ET), followed by Todd and Kelly Xu (2:20 p.m. ET). In the final quarterfinal match, Catherine Rao, who is in the quarterfinals for the third straight year, will face Rianne Malixi (2:30 p.m. ET), the 2024 junior women’s champion who has won her last nine USGA matches.

WHAT’S NEXT?

Friday’s quarterfinals begin at 2 p.m. ET. Peacock will broadcast the games live from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. Admission is free and the public is welcome to attend.

NOTEWORTHY

– All quarterfinalists will be exempt from participation in next year’s U.S. Women’s Amateur, which will be held August 4-10 at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort.
– All three players nominated for the USA Curtis Cup have already finished the competition: Zoe Campos (round of 64), Jasmine Koo (round of 32) and Catherine Park (round of 64). The remaining five members of the team will be announced at the end of the championship. The winner of the US Women’s Amateur, if she is American, will automatically receive a place on the team that will compete at Sunningdale Golf Club in England from August 30 to September 1.
– For the first time in 60 years, the first two rounds did not involve overtime holes. The last time was in 1964 at Prairie Dunes Country Club, a Perry Maxwell-designed club like Southern Hills. One match in the round of 16 went to a playoff in which Adela Cernousek defeated Lauren Kim in 20 holes.
– The University of Arkansas, with Maria Jose Marin and Kendall Todd, is the only college to have more than one representative in the quarterfinals.
– Catherine Rao reached the quarterfinals for the third year in a row, while Anna Davis reached the quarterfinals for the second year in a row.
– 2024 U.S. Junior Women’s Champion Rianne Malixi and runner-up Asterisk Talley both reached the quarterfinals. The two are on opposite sides of the bracket and could meet again in the final.
– Speaking of Talley: The 15-year-old is the only member of the US junior national team to make it to the quarterfinals. His teammate Scarlett Schremmer was eliminated in the round of 16.

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