2023 Richmond Women's City Amateur

SPONSORED BY

June 9, 2023

 

By VIC DORR JR.

 

Call it, for lack of a more precise description, a minor miracle.

 

A gloriously improbable shot at a make-or-break moment helped carry 19-year-old Fei Rosebro to a memorable triumph in Friday’s Richmond Women’s Golf Association City Amateur championship match at Lakeside Park. Her twist-of-fate victory at No. 10 reversed the flow of the match and started Rosebro, a rising sophomore at the University of Virginia, toward a 2-and-1 victory over Helen Im.

 

Rosebro was struggling as she prepared to hit her second shot at the par-4 10th. Im had won three consecutive holes to tie the match. Worse, Rosebro was in tactical trouble. She had badly missed the fairway with her tee shot and was facing an 80-yard second shot that offered few, if any, appealing options. The overhanging branches of a large oak tree threatened her from above. Two bunkers blocked overland access to the green. Rosebro hoped to somehow loft a shot onto the center of the green. She failed. But she also succeeded. Her shot, low and hot, seemed destined for the next county – if not the next area code. And indeed it might have traveled that far had the ball not struck the flagstick with a loud clang and bounced onto the fringe 10 feet away. Rosebro two-putted, won the hole and regained the lead. She also exhaled – literally and figuratively.

 

“I was so lucky,” said Rosebro, a former Veritas School standout who was competing in the City Amateur for the first time. “That shot was all luck. Every bit of it was luck. It changed everything, definitely. It got me laughing again. It changed my mood. I was able to relax a little bit. In a way, that shot kind of helped me hit the reset button for the rest of the match.”

 

To say the least. Rosebro, a Richmond Country Club member, made par on each of her final nine holes – a formidable accomplishment at Lakeside Park. Another noteworthy accomplishment: She earned not only the city championship but also the tournament qualifying medal.

 

“It feels wonderful. I’m still a little bit in shock, I think,” Rosebro said. “I’ll be honest: I was hoping I would be able to come out here and maybe win a couple of matches. I’ll never say ‘never,’ but I’ll say this: I doubted that I’d still be playing on Friday.”

Im, a 54-year-old native of South Korea, didn’t go quietly. She brought the match back to even with a birdie at the par-5 14th. Rosebro answered the challenge at the par-4 16th. Her third shot, a wedge from about 60 yards, left her with a 16-foot putt for par. She struck the putt solidly, almost emphatically. The ball ran straight and true and dived into the hole like a startled chipmunk into its burrow. Rosebro closed out the match on the next hole.

Said Danielle Kenny, Rosebro’s caddie and former high school teammate: “Fei’s mindset is very strong. She is not going to let a bad hole bother her. And when she needs to play aggressively, she’s not afraid to do it. Like on that putt at 16 – she knew she needed to go for it and she made it work.”

 

The championship flight final was a new experience for Im, too. She said she was “very pleased and very happy” with the quality of her play from Monday through Friday. But the big stage, she said, required a bit of adjustment.

 

“The first few holes, I was very nervous,” she said. “I couldn’t putt. Sometimes I was so nervous, I didn’t even know what hole we were on.”

 

Winning No. 6 with par, she said “helped a lot. Every time I’d win a hole, my nerves would go away, my confidence would come back and my swing would start to feel a little better.”

 

Im won three in a row and halved No. 9 with a five-foot putt before Rosebro delivered her stroke of fortune.

 

Next year’s 96th City Amateur will be played June 3-7 at Meadowbrook Country Club.