Kansas Women's Amateur

100th Anniversary

1919-2019

 

Welcome to the 100th anniversary of the Kansas Women’s Amateur Golf Championship at Prairie Dunes Country Club, Hutchinson.  The Kansas Golf Association Women’s Competitions Committee is delighted to partner with Prairie Dune Country Club and grateful to the Prairie Dunes Board of Directors, members and professional staff for agreeing to host the Kansas Women’s Amateur Championship and what is sure to be a strong field of amateur female golfers.

 

               Designed in 1937 by Perry Maxwell, Prairie Dunes Country Club has hosted numerous Kansas, regional, national and international golf championships for women, men, junior and senior amateur golfers.  Writer Mal Elliot described the Prairie Dunes layout as Scottish links without the sea because water is not often in play.  Other challenging issues are abundant on this beautiful historic course—narrow fairways, several tree-stands, namesake prairie sand dunes and the infamous rough (gunsch) consisting of some tall fescue but more numerous cactus, yuccas and plum thickets.

 

               The 2018 Kansas Women’s Amateur champion Emma Whitaker will be joined August 5-6 by a field of competitors who inaugurate the second century of women’s amateur championship golf in Kansas. While the 1919 inaugural championship originated by the Kansas Women’s Golf Association (KWGA) and hosted at Topeka Country Club, was contested by match play; the KWGA Board of Directors decided to “modernize” the format for the 1968 Amateur and subsequent Kansas Women’s Amateurs with stroke play format. 

 

Mrs. H David (Sally) Sterrett of Hutchinson Country Club was the 1919 Women’s Amateur champion, successfully defending in 1920, 1921 and 1922.  Sterrett missed the 1923 Kansas Amateur to compete in a national championship; but returned in 1924 and 1925 to reclaim the Kansas Women’s Amateur title.  Sally Sterrett’s six Kansas Amateur titles is a Kansas Women’s Golf record, followed by Natasha Matson Fife (1956, 1957, 1959, 1960, 1962) and Karen Schull MacGee (1972, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1978) at five titles each, with Margaret Hipple (1926, 1927, 1928, 1929), Mrs. Charles (Patricia Beyer) Newbold, and Tillie Becker (1941, 1949, 1950, 1951) at four titles apiece.  Marilyn Smith (1946, 1947, 1948), Judy Bell (1952, 1953, 1954), Cathy Stevens (1987, 1996, 1997) and Courtney Mahon (2003, 2004, 2005) hold three titles each. 

 

The Kansas Women’s Amateur Championship has been contested every year since 1919 except for the World War II years of 1942, 1943, 1944 and 1945 when the war effort and rationing necessitated suspension of the Kansas Women’s Amateur Championship.

 

 

 

 

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Spectators - please enter 19KSWMSAM in the GGID box on the app to view live leaderboard