Gutsy Comeback Earns Final Slot for Australian

Anchorage, Alaska, United States: Australian Sue Wooster and Canadian Shelly Stouffer each won two matches on Wednesday to earn their spots in the championship match of the 60th US Senior Women’s Amateur at Anchorage Golf Course.

Wooster authored a remarkable rally in her semi-final match against Christie Blasi, surging back from three-down on the front nine to win, 3&2, to advance to the final for the third time in four years.

Stouffer continued to cruise through the bracket, pulling away from Kathy Hartwiger in the semis with three straight winning pars, from the 12th to the 14th, to defeat the 2002 US Women’s Mid-Amateur champion, 4&3.

Prospects looked grim for 60-year-old Wooster in the early going. She bogeyed four consecutive holes – the second to the fifth, losing three of them – and faced a seemingly steep uphill climb against Blasi, who had made four birdies in her morning quarter-final victory over Sherry Wright.

How bad did things look for Wooster? No player in the entire championship had rallied from a three-down deficit – and it had been 103 matches since it last happened in the Senior Women’s Amateur (Round of 64, 2021).

But in less than an hour, Blasi’s advantage had evaporated. Wooster took four straight holes, all with pars, to seize a one-up lead. She dropped the 10th with a bogey but pulled ahead for good with a winning par on 13. She doubled her advantage with a birdie on the par-five 14th and closed the match with a par at 16.

“I think my experience paid off,” said Wooster. “My third final in the last four events, that’s pretty cool. Yesterday I played really well, it felt easy. Today was not as easy. It was a grind. I didn’t get the pace of the greens as well today. Hopefully that comes back tomorrow.”

Stouffer exacted revenge for last year’s semi-final defeat at the hands of Ellen Port, when she lost, one-down, at The Lakewood Club in Point Clear, Alabama. This year, Stouffer left little doubt, dispatching her opponents thus far with relative ease. She has not been extended past the 16th hole in any of her five matches and at one point, from the sixth hole in her Round of 32 match to the fourth hole against Hartwiger in the semi-finals, lost just one hole over a span of 41 holes.

“I haven’t felt nerves really all week,” said Stouffer. “It just seems normal. I love the course, it really suits me. I feel like I’m ready for this. I just want to keep going.”

Stouffer didn’t lose a hole in her morning quarter-final match against Judith Kyrinis, beating the 2017 champion, 3&2. In total, Stouffer has played just 72 holes in five matches, giving her an outside shot of challenging Port’s record mark of 85 (2012) for least holes played from a champion, with a dominant performance in the final.