Second Colorado Championship brings calls for more

Emma Bunch wins after a five-hole playoff 

By Jim Bebbington

In the end – after 72 holes of excellent golf and five holes of sudden death – it had become obvious that someone was going to have to win the ANNIKA Tour Brand Asset Partners Colorado Championship, no one was going to lose it.

Two players tied at the end of 72 holes, played out under ideal conditions over the last four days at Todd Creek Golf Club in Thornton. One was Emma Bunch, a newly minted professional golfer who had recently graduated from New Mexico State and won two ANNIKA Tour events this summer already as an amateur. The other was Tiffany Le, 23, a former UCLA golfer, who has three top-10 finishes this summer.

 

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Playing a sudden-death format, the two players tied for four straight holes. Each had hit good shots as well as shots which put their chances in dire doubt.  But in the end each hole ended in a tie, and the competition was moved to the course’s ninth hole.

There, with the long par 4 featuring a pin tucked in the front right corner, the champion finally showed herself. Bunch, who had carried her own bag through all four days, hit her approach shot to a narrow spit of land between a deep front bunker and a sloping fringe. One foot to either side and the shot would have ended up far from the pin or deep in the bunker. Instead it bounced straight toward the pin and finished three feet away.

After Le three-putted, Bunch calmly tapped in for a par and her first win as a professional.

Then, in a fitting end to a four-day event that had seen hundreds of neighborhood resident pour onto the course ever day as volunteers, Bunch told a crowd of 200 in a ballroom trophy ceremony she was shocked at how nice it was to play in the Colorado Championship.

“This is crazy,” the 24-year-old said. “I won a couple months ago and we had four people there to congratulate me.”

In just two years the event has clearly benefited from a deep well of support from the residents around Todd Creek. The tournament was brought here by Michael Meador and Steve Wright, co-founders of Brand Asset Partners, an Erie-based marketing and events company. Meador and Wright teamed with the club, which brought in residents from the surrounding neighborhood.

Dozens opened their homes to house players. The paths on the course were covered with golf carts that residents use to scoot around the neighborhood, with one ferrying a full keg of beer on ice strapped to the back.

“The (volunteer) turnout for this is more overwhelming than I can say,” Meador said.

The event has at least one more year at Todd Creek, but Wright said he’s very excited about what has already been accomplished since beginning just a year ago. “We really look forward to where this is going,” he said.

The event drew 130 players, making it the largest ANNIKA Tour field of the year. The ANNIKA Tour, named for LPGA great Annika Sorenstam, began in 2019 and added affiliations with the LPGA and it’s feeder tour, the Epson Tour, in 2021 when Sorenstam leant her name to it. Both Bunch and Le earned spots in the next Epson Tour event, and many of the players are headed to the LPGA Q-School qualifying series that begins in September.

Bunch won $10,000 for first place.

“More than anything it just proves that I can also win as a pro and I think that’s going to help me a lot… just further my career,” Bunch said.

She said the tournament support was second-to-none. “It’s been amazing,  the support we’ve had is unlike anything we’ve ever had,” she said. “All the people – I don’t even know how many people we had out there, it felt like thousands.”

 Colorado AvidGolfer Magazine is the state’s leading resource for golf and the lifestyle that surrounds it, publishing eight issues annually and proudly delivering daily content via coloradoavidgolfer.com.

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