Golf: Amateurs star on and off course

It'll be touch and go whether Michelle Wie can make it to Georgia in time for the amateur championships. Picture / Reuters

New Zealand amateur Claire Dury will be taking on a field of top Americans, but probably not superstar Michelle Wie, when she competes in the United States women's amateur championship at the Ansley Golf Club in Georgia next month.

Dury, from the Manawatu, has just completed her senior year at the University of California at Berkeley, where she was the leading player in the golf team. She was a late addition to the New Zealand side, who finished ninth in the world championships last year.

This month she was the leading qualifier for the US amateur from the regional event at Pasatiempo Club in Santa Cruz, California, with a round of 72.

She will join a field of 156 in the championship, which was first staged in 1895.

The field will be cut to 64 after two rounds of stroke-play, with the survivors playing 18-hole match-play before the 36-hole final on August 7.

Wie, the tall Hawaiian teenager who has been a regular contender on the LPGA professional circuit, was beaten last year in the second round of match-play.

She has entered this year, but is also due to play in the women's British Open at Royal Birkdale, which finishes the day before the amateur starts.

Unless she misses the cut in England, she may be unable to reach Georgia before her tee time on the first day.

Last year's winner of the US women's amateur, Californian Jane Park, was only 17 when she won. She had been runner-up in 2003.

Dury completed her university golf in style by leading her team to fifth place in the national university championships, their second top-five finish in a row.

Former New Zealand representative Enu Chung was a freshman member of the 2005 team.

Dury was equal sixth individual at the championships with rounds of 74, 73, 72 and 71 to earn a National Golf Coaches Association All-American honourable mention.

A psychology major, Dury also won honours in the classroom, with an honourable mention in the Pac10 conference academic list.

College coaches name around 30 golfers to first and second-team All American honours at the end of each season. Kiwi professional Marnie McGuire won first-team honours in her college days.

Former North Harbour representative Natalie Storck, who has completed her sophomore year at the University of Toledo in Ohio, has also excelled on the course and in the classroom.

Storck was named golf team MVP after finishing the season one stroke shy of the school record for lowest stroke average with a team-best 77.5.

She also maintained a 3.741 grade average in her studies for a fitness and business administration major, and was named a National Golf Coaches Association All-American scholar.

The criteria for selection are some of the most stringent of all college athletics. The minimum cumulative GPA is 3.50 and student-athletes must have competed in at least 66 per cent of the college's regularly scheduled competitive rounds during the year.

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BRAD FAXON was only 22nd in the British Open at St Andrews this week, but he made friends and earned lasting respect for the way he got there.

The 41-year-old, from Rhode Island, missed the American qualifying tournament for the British Open because it clashed with the charity tournament he runs for disadvantaged children in his home state.

So he flew to Scotland and competed against a big field of unknowns at Lundin Links to qualify the hard way.

The Scots made a fuss of him because winners of seven US PGA titles are not expected to put their reputations at risk in that way.

Faxon said he didn't do it to impress anyone.

He went because he wanted to play in the Open.

He faltered a little in the final round, but still took home a cheque for 47,276 ($84,000).

In Auckland in 1993 at the Air New Zealand-Shell Open at The Grange, he became one of the most popular of the series of invited American players.

He had just won the Australian Open but, as one of the best putters on the US tour, he was happy to give spectators a master class in how to putt out of the fringe.

His golf was pretty good, too.

He finished second, a shot behind Aussie Terry Price, level with another Aussie Open winner, Wayne Riley, and a young pro called Michael Campbell.

His reward? - a cheque for $17,835.