2024 Women's Amateur Preview
Many of the top female players in Pennsylvania will be in an outstanding field playing for four titles when the 88th Pennsylvania Golf Association’s (PAGA) Women’s Amateur takes center stage at Waynesborough Country Club in Paoli July 22-24. The event is sponsored by DICK’S Sporting Goods.
An outstanding field of 112 players will compete for championships in the Amateur, Mid-Amateur, Senior and Super Senior competitions in the three-day event with multiple defending champions and a field littered with past champions, former players of the year and players with multiple trips to USGA national tournaments. Adding to the deep draw are many collegiate players representing all three NCAA divisions as well as some of Pennsylvania’s most talented junior competitors.
Featured groups will highlight the first day’s play with morning and afternoon waves set to go off tees 1 and 10 beginning at 8 a.m. Monday. The Amateur Division will play 54 holes over the three days, while the Mid-Amateur, Senior and Super Senior Divisions will be decided in 36 holes covering the first two days.
Duke University’s Rylie Heflin (Biderman Golf Club) is the defending champion in the Amateur Division and returns to try to hold onto her title. The current PAGA Player of the Year was one of only two players under par in last year’s tournament at Sunnehanna Country Club along with Purdue University’s Natasha Kiel (Jericho National Golf Club). Both players finished at -1 through 54 holes before Heflin birdied the first playoff hole to win the crown. Kiel also is entered in this year’s event.
Yardley Country Club’s Jackie Rogowicz, the 2019 and 2022 titlist, will also contend for the amateur top spot as will Penn State’s top player Michelle Cox (Lehigh Country Club), both of whom have qualified for this season’s USGA Amateur. The list grows with Florida Southern’s Clare Gimpel (Manufacturer’s Country Club), half of the 2024 PAGA Four-Ball runner-up team, Delaware’s Mary Dunigan (Kennett Square Country Club) and Lehigh’s Stefania Fedun (French Creek Country Club), who paired to win the Four-Ball championship, and Bowling Green’s Ava O’Sullivan (Applecross Country Club), half of the Four-Ball’s third-place team.
Bucknell Golf Club’s Hannah Rabb, the runner-up in the last three PAGA Junior Girls’ Championship, and Rhianna Gooteratne (The 1912 Club), the reigning PIAA AAA state high school champion add an interesting twist and more youthful talent to the field.
In the first day’s morning session, some of the state’s best senior and super senior players in the state get on the course early. The Super Senior’s featured groups include Alexandra Frazier (Gulph Mills Golf Club), Barb Pagana (Huntsville Golf Club), Liz Haines (Merion Golf Club), and Noreen Mohler (Northampton Country Club).
Frazier heads the group as the 2023 champion in the event and as last season’s PAGA Player of the Year when she competed in the USGA, British and Canadian Senior Amateur championships. Pagana lost in a playoff to Frazier in last year’s Pa. Amateur and was the 2021 and 2022 Player of the Year, sharing the latter title with Haines, who is a three-time Super Senior Amateur champion, while Pagana has captured the title twice. Mohler is a previous Senior Amateur winner accomplishing the feat three times.
Karen Siegel (Commonwealth National Golf Club) will defend the 2023 title she won in the Senior Division. The reigning PAGA Senior Player of the Year will face stiff competition from Lisa McGill (Sunnybrook Golf Club), the 2018, 2021 and 2022 title winner among others.
An interesting battle for the Mid-Amateur top spot could also take place as last year’s winner Allison Wix (Country Club of Harrisburg) will defend against Katrin Wolfe (Northampton Country Club), who has finished as the runner-up in each of the last four Mid-Amateur competitions, and Katie Miller Gee (Green Oaks Country Club), the winner of three-straight championships in 2020, 2021 and 2022.