Spring Lake’s Anna Kramer to Defend
ST. CLAIR – St. Clair Golf Club is celebrating 100 years of golf this year and generously sharing its historic course for the 26th GAM Women’s Championship presented by the LPGA Volvik Championship Monday and Tuesday.
A field featuring the state’s top GAM women golfers will play 36 holes of stroke play over the two days on the course that dates to an original nine holes opening in 1917, a legendary Donald Ross makeover design in 1923 and redesign of five holes and additional elements added by prolific Michigan architect Jerry Matthews in 1994.
St. Clair has been a great partner and member club of the Golf Association of Michigan, having hosted the 2010 Michigan Women’s Amateur, qualifying for the U.S. Amateur in 2003 and last year hosting the GAM Net Match Play Championship.
In 1993 a contract was signed with Matthews Associates of Lansing for the design and construction of five new holes and the land-planning for Golfside (79 home-sites on 150 acres). The hole numbers were changed and the front and back nines reversed. The course, in the end a combination of Ross and Matthews design, was ready for the 1994 Invitational.
St. Clair plays to par 72 over 6821 yards from the back tees and 4,927 up front with seven possible tee positions. St. Clair is a full-service private golf club directed by General Manager John O’Donnell. The golf staff is headed by Scott Rich and Jeff Fisette is the course superintendent.
Anna Kramer of Spring Lake, who will be a freshman in the fall at the University of Indianapolis, will defend her 2016 title in the state’s premier women’s amateur stroke play championship.
Other top players in the field include Katelyn Chipman of Canton, the Grand Valley State University golfer who was runner-up in the recent Michigan Women’s Amateur Championship, Kerrigan Parks of Flushing, who is headed to Marshall University in the fall and was the stroke play medalist in the Michigan Women’s Amateur, Sarah White of Caledonia, a Texas State University golfer and semifinalist at the Amateur, Traverse City’s Anika Dy, who was also a semifinalist at the Amateur, and Stacy Slobodnik-Stoll of Haslett, a past champion (1998) and the head women’s golf coach at Michigan State University.
-Greg Johnson [email protected]
