AUGUSTA, Mich. – Gull Lake View Golf Club and Resort’s newest and most unique golf course, Stoatin Brae, will welcome a field of 80 golfers competing in the 24th GAM Women’s Mid-Amateur Championship next Tuesday and Wednesday.
In addition to the traditional Mid-Amateur Division of golfers over age 25 and the Senior Division for golfers over 50, golfers ages 19 to 24 have been added to the field for a fourth consecutive year to give them another GAM playing opportunity.
Three age-group winners will be identified via 36 holes of stroke play, and the overall low gross champion of the Mid-Amateur Division will have her name engraved on the Jeanne L. Myers Trophy.
Gull Lake View is one of the largest family owned resorts in the U.S., and the Scott family has impacted golf since 1963 when Darl Scott, an entrepreneur at heart and golf course superintendent by trade, decided to build and open his own public golf course.
Stoatin Brae is one of six courses the resort offers, and the name means grand hill in Scottish Gaelic. It hosted the GAM’s 2019 Women’s Atlas Trophy Matches and has hosted two GAM Senior Match Play Championships.
Stoatin Brae along with the resort’s Bedford Valley are the two courses in the resort collection that were not designed by the Scott family members who have extensive landscape architecture backgrounds.
Stoatin Brae is also a dramatic departure from the other five courses. It is located atop a unique bluff overlooking the Kalamazoo River Valley. It offers long-distance views over natural undulations and reestablished prairie grasses, and the wind is often in play. Brian Schneider, Eric Iverson, Don Placek and Brian Slawnik, senior associates for Renaissance Golf Design of Traverse City, collaborated with the Scott family on Stoatin Brae.
The resort’s lineup of courses currently includes Stoatin Brae, the Gull Lake West course, the East course, Stonehedge South, Stonehedge North and Bedford Valley.
Learn more at gulllakeview.com.
Last year at Oakhurst Country Club in Clarkston, Stacy Slobodnik-Stoll of Haslett won the Mid-Am title for an unprecedented 11th time. The women’s golf team head coach at Michigan State University has entered to defend her title.
Kimberly Dinh of Midland, last year’s Michigan Women’s Amateur champion and the 2020 Women’s Mid-Amateur winner, is also in the field.
Julie Massa of Holt, last year’s Senior winner, returns. She was also the 2013 Mid-Amateur winner. Joan Garety, the 2004 Mid-Amateur winner, is playing in the Senior Division.
Slobodnik-Stoll rallied from behind to win the championship a year ago. The then 49-year-old Michigan Golf Hall of Fame member shot a 3-under 33 on the back nine at Oakhurst to top Dinh by two shots.
In the 19-24 age-group division Alexa Hatz of Novi, a University of Detroit Mercy golfer and recent graduate, won. She is not returning and is starting her work career with Ford Motor Co.
