U.S. Women’s Open to Resume Qualifying; Announces Colorado Location

The Ranch Country Club in Westminster is one of 22 sites announced for 2021 tournament.

By Anthony Cotton

With COVID-19, everything comes with an asterisk, but after a year of profound change due to the novel coronavirus, golf is continuing its move towards normalcy. On Tuesday, for example, the USGA announced that qualifying tournaments—cancelled last year because of the pandemic—would be returning this Spring for the 2021 Women’s Open, scheduled for June 3-6 at The Olympic Club in San Francisco. There was one Colorado course included in the 22 sites—The Ranch Country Club in Westminster. The one-day, 36-hole event will take place on May 10.

“Qualifying is part of the DNA of the USGA,” said spokeswoman Julia Pine. “It’s who we are, it’s a big part of the openness of our championships…it was a really difficult decision for us to cancel last year, but we feel really good about where we are now and we wouldn’t be returning to it unless we felt it was safe.”

On Wednesday, the USGA also announced 119 qualifying sites for the 2021 Men’s U.S. Open, with Collindale Golf Club in Fort Collins (May 4), Walnut Creek Golf Preserve in Westminster (May 10) and CommonGround Golf Course in Aurora (May 13) making the list. The 121st Open will be held June 17-20 at Torrey Pines Golf Club in San Diego.

Of course, some of the best stories are the ones that are the most unexpected, and to that end, Colorado has a special place in Women’s Open history—there have only been two occasions where a player who went through qualifying has won the championship; the first was Hilary Lunke in 2003.

The second came two years later, when, with the great Annika Sorenstam (whose first pro victory was the 1995 U.S. Women’s Open, played at the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs) halfway to capturing a Grand Slam of all four major championships, the appropriately-named Birdie Kim shocked the golf world by holing out from a bunker on the 72nd hole at Cherry Hills Country Club to win.

Last year’s tournament was originally scheduled for last June at the Champions Golf Club in Houston, but wasn’t actually played until mid-December. With qualifying cancelled in May; the USGA eventually went to an all-exempt field, with players added according to criteria including  being a former Open champion to winners of a variety of LPGA Tour events, to that circuit’s point race to the tour championship. One of the locations that had been slated to hold a qualifier was Riverdale Dunes Golf Course in Brighton.

The Ranch has held a number of qualifiers, most recently in 2018. It is perhaps best known as the course where Jennifer Kupcho played as a youth; now a rising star on the LPGA tour, Kupcho was exempted into the 2020 Open and eventually finished in a tie for 30th. In 2019, Kupcho went through qualifying to make the field, but wasn’t as lucky the previous year—playing, ironically, on her home course.

“She didn’t really play all that well, but I think she still finished sixth or something like that,” said Ed Oldham, the director of instruction at The Ranch. The most recent inductee to the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame, Oldham still works regularly with Kupcho. “I just think there’s always a little added pressure on you when you’re in that situation…but at the same time, you know that you’re going to be getting some of the best players in the country coming here to compete.”

And the world. At The Ranch in 2018, Robyn Choi, a native of Australia, finished first with a Swede, Jessica Vasilic, also making the field. In 2019, at Walnut Creek, Dottie Ardina of the Philippines and Ólafía Kristinsdóttir, a native of Iceland, who like Kupcho, attended Wake Forest University, qualified.

While the U.S. sites were announced, there’s still some question about whether qualifying will be conducted overseas, Pine saying the USGA is working with foreign countries, many of whom have varying guidelines on dealing with the coronavirus.

“We don’t know what’s feasible right now and we’re not going to put any pressure on ourselves or be in a rush to make a decision about that,” she said. “We do know we feel pretty good about the 22 qualifiers we have scheduled now…while last year’s all-exempt field was great, we did miss out on having that opportunity for someone who maybe wasn’t at all on the radar to emerge, and we’re excited to see those stories again.”

The USGA works in conjunction with local golf officials for its qualifying events; here, that would be the Colorado Golf Association. The CGA helped facilitate, not only its own schedule, but other notable events in the state, like the three CoBank Colorado Open championships, where Kupcho won her first professional event last June.

“We run about a dozen USGA events here,” said Ed Mate, the CGA’s Executive Director and CEO. “While I completely understood the reasons why the USGA took the approach that it did last year,  it’s really exciting for us to have their championships back on the radar,”

Pine said the success of local events across the country is part of the reason why the USGA feels so confident returning to qualifying this year.

“When the pandemic started, there was so much we didn’t know; we weren’t super familiar with terms like social distancing, we weren’t really comfortable with testing procedures—now, it’s kind of a way of life,” she said. “Now, the latter part of 2020 has shown us how we can return to golf safely, and local golf agencies have shown us they’re adept at all the health and safety measures that are needed and will certainly be in place at these locations.”

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