EAST LANSING – Spring Lake’s Anna Kramer lost the first hole of the championship match Wednesday afternoon, but tied it up on the second hole and charged on to win the 104th Michigan Women’s Amateur Championship presented by Carl’s Golfland.
The 21-year-old University of Indianapolis golfer capped a week where she was stroke play medalist and the top seed for match play by beating 2018 champion Kerri Parks of Flushing and Marshall University 5 and 4 on the Forest Akers West Course at Michigan State University.
“I’ve wanted to win this one for a while, and I do love this tournament,” she said. “It’s one of my favorites to play in and I’ve tried a few times. It’s a sigh of relief really. It was a long week, but I took it one day at a time, got through stroke play and played it one shot and one match at a time and tried not to think about what could happen. This is really so special.”
In the morning semifinals Kramer beat Midland’s Kimberly Dinh, a former University of Wisconsin golfer, 4 and 3, and Parks topped recent Brighton High School graduate Annie Pietila 4 and 2.
Kramer started the championship match with a bogey on the first hole to fall behind, but then won three consecutive holes and pulled away as Parks struggled.
“So when I lost the first hole that was the first time I’d been down all week in a match,” Kramer said. “Then we kind of had a quick change in a couple of holes and the momentum switched. I was like, let’s go and just kind of try to keep it going steady, do my thing and let Kerri have the hiccups.”
Parks, who will be 21 Saturday and last week won the West Virginia Women’s Amateur, said she definitely didn’t play her best in the final match.
“I was tired and with my asthma it made it a little difficult today because of the humidity, but, you know I did my best and it just wasn’t my day today,” she said. “I was a little bit off with my (putting) stroke, and Anna played great all week. I wasn’t going to beat her today.”
Kramer, who won the GAM Championship in 2016, was presented with the Patti Shook Boice Trophy for winning the Amateur Wednesday and joked she might take it back to her apartment in Indianapolis in the fall. First, she will take it home for one year and perhaps show it off at Spring Lake Country Club where she is a member with her family and Boice, the seven-time former winner of the Amateur.
“It’s hard to win this I know that, and that makes it really special,” she said of the championship. “Winning here is kind of special, too. I won state here in high school (2015 Division 3 individual title) and I just felt great about this tournament being here. I like the golf course, it was in great shape and I was just excited to be playing a place where I had won before.”
Parks is headed back to Marshall where she is doing research work with a professor, and Kramer plans to play in the GAM Championship Aug. 10-11 at Muskegon Country Club where she works as a golf bag attendant.
“I’ve played well all summer so I was confident for this week,” Kramer said. “It was a grind, and Sunday’s rain delay (five hours) was tough to deal with, but I kept getting the lead in my matches and moving on.”
