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By Chris Lang
SPOTSYLVANIA — Natalie Easterly had a simple answer to the question
of why she and Amy Ellertson have had so much success as four-ball partners in
recent years.
“Lots of love and tolerance,”
Easterly said with a smile.
Whatever the formula the two
have, it continues to work. The only winners the senior division of the
Virginia State Golf Association’s Women’s Four-Ball Championship has ever
known, Easterly and Ellertson are in prime position to four-peat after posting
a 6-under-par 66 in the first round of the 4th edition of the event,
held Friday at Fawn Lake Country Club.
They’ll enter Saturday’s second
and final round with a five-shot edge over Springfield’s Diane Garstka and Leesburg’s
Allisyn Terry, who returned a 1-under-par 71 on a cool, cloudy day.
In the regular division, the
defending champions also head into Saturday with a lead. Ashburn’s Lauren
Greenlief and Suffolk’s Shabril Derco posted a 7-under-par 65 and will take a
two-stroke lead into the second round over teenagers Danielle Suh of Herndon
and Tatum Walsh of Midlothian.
The second round will begin at
8:30 a.m. Saturday with a shotgun start for all competitors.
Easterly and Ellertson weren’t
quite as dominant as they were last year at Ford’s Colony, when they opened a
nine-stroke lead after the first day en route to a 13-shot victory. But they’re
still in control of the senior division thanks to a solid round that featured
six birdies and no bogeys.
Ellertson, fresh off making the
cut at the U.S. Senior Women’s Open, contributed four of those birdies. She
said the experience of playing four rounds in a USGA championship at Pine
Needles is something she won’t soon forget.
“It was so fun,” she said. “You
play with the winner (Helen Alfredsson) for two days and then follow that up
with two U.S. Open champions on Saturday and Sunday, I was like a kid in a
candy store. It was great.”
In addition to last year’s VSGA
Women’s Four-Ball title, Ellertson and Easterly won the Women’s Trans National
Golf Association Four-Ball Championship in Arizona. Easterly said the side will
take a “one-shot-at-a-time” approach to the final round.
“It’s a tricky little course, a
lot of hazards,” Ellertson said. “We played steady. Hopefully we do the same
thing tomorrow and we’ll be fine.”
Greenlief and Derco are
partnering in the event for the second straight year. Greenlief won in 2017
with Alex Austin, but Austin turned professional later that summer. Greenlief
and Derco grew up together playing at Fairfax’s International Country Club, and
they’ve found plenty of success together in this event.
Greenlief and Derco handled Fawn
Lake’s par 5s, with Greenlief recording two eagles and a birdie. They only one
they didn’t score on was the par-5 6th, where Derco recorded a par.
“We just wanted to take
advantage of those,” Greenlief said.
Greenlief and Derco will get
competition Saturday from the younger players chasing them. Suh and Walsh
turned in a bogey-free scorecard for their 5-under 67, with Suh posting
back-to-back birdies on the front nine and Walsh adding three birdies on the
back.
Suh was in the exact same
position last year at this event, though with a different partner. Suh and
Skylar Sload shot a first-round 67 to start the second round two shots behind
the leaders before Greenlief and Derco shot a 3-under 69 to finish four shots
clear of the field.
The Women’s Four-Ball
Championship also features a net division where competitors are not eligible
for the overall championship. There was some excitement in that bracket, though,
as Mutsuko Hayworth, a member at The Gauntlet Golf Club made a hole-in-one on
the par-3 8th hole, using a 4 hybrid from 123 yards out.
Chris Lang is the Editor of Virginia Golfer Magazine and Manager,
Digital Media for the VSGA.