Suh earns medalist honor at 97th VSGA Women’s Amateur Championship

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By Chris Lang

RICHMOND — High Point University’s Danielle Suh, a VSGA uClub member from Herndon, posted the only under-par round at Meadowbrook Country Club on Tuesday during stroke-play qualifying at the 97^th Virginia State Golf Association Women’s Amateur Championship. Her 1-under par 71 netted her medalist honors, and she’ll be the top seed in the 16-player championship match-play bracket.

Suh will open play against Suffolk’s Faith Garcia. The round of 16 and quarterfinals are scheduled for Wednesday, and the semifinals and 18-hole championship match are scheduled for Thursday.

Suh finished one shot clear of James Madison University’s Kendall Turner of Chesapeake, who shot an even-par 71 and will open match play against No. 15 seed Elizabeth Coffren of the University of Delaware.

Junior golfers Kanchana Duangsam and Amber Mackiewicz rounded out the top four, each posting 1-over rounds of 72. Mackiewicz, the No. 3 seed, will meet 2022 VSGA Women’s Stroke Play champion Alexandra Austin in the round of 16 on Wednesday. Duangsam, the No. 4 seed, will square off against Longwood University’s Emma Landis.

THE STORY

Suh and Turner had one big thing in common on Tuesday—they each holed out from the fairway for a key eagle that defined their rounds.

Suh navigated Meadowbrook’s short but tricky layout with minimal damage on Tuesday, finishing with two bogeys, a birdie and an eagle on the par-5 15^th hole. She was 1 over for the round through 14 holes before holing her third shot on the 15^th.

“I hit my first shot in the fairway and my second was about 25 yards out,” Suh said. “I felt really good about that. I practiced that shot in my practice round the other day, and I hit it really clean. I saw it go over the top of the hill and it just kicked in the hole.”

Suh, a past VSGA Junior Girls’ champion, will start her third year at High Point next month. She’s coming off a sophomore season in which she finished tied for 2^nd at the Big South Conference Championship and nabbed second-team all-Big South honors.

The biggest reason for her improvement in year two?

“I think I had a lot of the nervous yips, just from transitioning from junior golf to college,” Suh said. “I’m just trying to be more aggressive, but safe aggressive. I feel like I’ve been holding back, and I think that’s been negatively impacting my game. So I’m just trying to trust my swing more.”

Suh has been competitive in this event in the past, including a semifinal appearance last year at Evergreen Country Club. She lost to Austin in extra holes, fueling her motivation to advance deeper this year.

“I just want to focus on myself,” Suh said. “It’s match play, so obviously anything can happen. So I’m just focusing on my own game and not worrying too much about anyone else.”

Turner’s eagle came on No. 6, when she holed out from 53 yards. She made the turn at 1-under before running into some early struggles on the back nine. After bogeys on three of her first five holes on the back, she recovered to go birdie-bogey-birdie and finish her round at even par.

“I played well,” said Turner, who was the 2021 CAA Player of the Year and in March 2022 set the JMU record for low round with a 66. “I’m feeling good about my game.”

As for the eagle, Turner said: “I hit my driver out safe and then I laid up with a 5-wood. I had 53 yards in, and I landed it 50 and it just kind of trickled in. I kind of saw it and tracked it and thought, wow, this is going to be really good. Then it just disappeared.”

Others advancing to the championship flight were: Vynie Chen, Katie Vu, Erica Whitehouse, Jillian Drinkard, Sydney Grimes, Annabelle Jennings, Katelynn Waclawski and Sky Sload.

Austin needed some late heroics to secure her spot in match play and keep her hopes alive of becoming the first woman since 1991 to win both the Women’s Stroke Play and Women’s Amateur titles in the same year. She was 8-over through 16 holes with eight bogeys before making birdies on Nos. 17 and 18 to sneak into the match play field.

At 29, Austin is the oldest player in the championship flight, with all other players either being recent college grads, college players, or high school players.

NOTES

• Suh and Vynie Chen, who is the No. 5 seed in the championship flight, will play for a familiar name next year at High Point. Past VSGA member Lynsey Hunnell was named the program’s sixth head coach on June 27 after three years as an assistant at Campbell University.
• Eight players who made play in last year’s VSGA Women’s Amateur reached the round of 16 this year: Mackiewicz, Landis, Chen, Jennings, Suh, Duangsam, Sload and Austin. Landis, Chen and Austin won matches last year, with Austin and Suh reaching the semifinals.
• Meadowbrook played more than nine strokes over par overall on Tuesday. Two holes yielded zero birdies: No. 3 and No. 16, the latter playing as the course’s hardest hole, a par-4 playing to a 4.89 scoring average.
• The Women’s Amateur features three consolation flights, and one interesting matchup will take place in the first flight, as Ashnoor Kaur will square off against Maria Isabella Errichetto. The two were partners at this spring’s VSGA Women’s Four-Ball Championship.

Lang is the VSGA’s manager of media and communications.