MUSKEGON – Muskegon Country Club and its classic Donald Ross-designed golf course will host the top female Golf Association of Michigan members in the 29th GAM Women’s Championship Monday and Tuesday.
Recent Michigan Women’s Amateur Champion Anna Kramer of Spring Lake, a bag attendant employee at the host club, will head a field of 76 golfers playing 36 holes over two days.
The Donald Ross-designed Muskegon Country Club course has hosted several GAM championships and USGA qualifiers, including the Michigan Amateur Championships of 2005 and 2013, the 2017 GAM Senior Championship, the 2018 GAM Women’s Championship and the 2019 GAM Championship for men.
The club was founded in 1908 on 130 acres of sand dune overlooking Lake Michigan and features rolling terrain and fescue lined fairways. It can play up to 6,697 yards from the back tees, and in Ross fashion features challenging green settings.
The course was originally laid out by noted designer Thomas Bendelow, but in 1920 was redesigned by Ross. In the last 10 years the club has concentrated on removing some trees and returning the design to the original setting Ross intended.
Stephany Pawlowski is the director of golf at MCC, and Jeff Hopkins is the superintendent. Learn more at muskegoncc.com.
Last year at Saginaw Country Club, Sarah Shipley of Hastings and the University of Kentucky shot a final-round 70 and won by four shots. She did not enter this year’s championship.
In addition to Kramer, who won the 2016 GAM Women’s Championship, this year’s entry list includes Yurika Tanida of East Lansing, last year’s GAM Women’s Player of the Year and a Michigan State University standout who tied for second a year ago, Haylin Harris, another MSU standout, Katie Chipman of Canton and Grand Valley State University, last year’s Michigan PGA Women’s Open winner Anika Dy of Traverse City, five-time GAM Senior Women’s Player of the Year Julie Massa of Holt and 1998 winner Stacy Slobodnik-Stoll, the head women’s golf coach at Michigan State.
Tanida, Harris and Chipman played in the U.S. Women’s Amateur Championship last week.
Other interesting entrants are Aya Johnson, the 2016 Michigan Women’s Amateur Champion whose family belongs to Muskegon CC, University of Northern Illinois women’s golf coach Kim Kester, who is originally from Grand Rapids and 13-year-old Lauren Timpf, a two-time age group champion in GAM tournaments this summer who reached the quarterfinals of the recent Michigan Women’s Amateur.