May 12 -- The LPGA Tour, which mourns the sudden, tragic death of 25-year-old Erica Blasberg, will welcome 15-year-old high-schooler Alexis Thompson to its ranks immediately following next month’s Curtis Cup.
Thompson, Golfweek’s 2009 women’s amateur player of the year, will join Curtis Cup teammate Jennifer Song in turning pro after the amateur matches that pit U.S. amateur women golfers against their counterparts from Great Britain and Ireland.
Too young? With speculation growing that Blasberg, a standout junior and college golfer, may have been depressed about her lack of success on the pro circuit, recently retired and former top-ranked women’s golfer Lorena Ochoa wondered if Thompson were turning pro too soon.
“I guess I’m afraid when the young players are 17 and 18 and they’re talking about playing professional golf,” Ochoa told Karen Crouse of the New York Times. “Maybe qualify your players so they find a balance in their life and they don’t want to play too young. So I say stay in college, go to college. Figure out what you want to do 100 percent so by the time you play three or four years you don’t burn out.”
Song, who won last year’s U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links (WAPL) championship at Red Tail Golf Club in Devens, MA, and was U.S. Women’s Amateur champ as well, is 20. Thompson, the 2008 U.S. Girls’ Junior champ, was only 12 when she became the youngest player to qualify for a U.S. Women’s Open in 2007.
Song’s and Thompson’s Curtis Cup captain, Noreen Friel Mohler, believed the youngsters on her team were up to the task of the amateur tilt.
Eat, sleep, drink golf. “They are young in age but not in experience,” Massachusetts native Mohler said during a media day last month at Essex County Club, site of the upcoming Curtis Cup. “Golf is their life. They eat, sleep and drink golf. They are eager and excited to be here."
This year’s Curtis Cup matches will take place June 11-June 13 at Essex CC in Manchester-by-the-Sea, MA. Click here to buy tickets for the 2010 Curtis Cup. The Golf Channel will televise the event live all three days. You may take a virtual tour of Essex CC here.
Stay tuned to Golf Examiner and Boston Golf Examiner for continuing coverage of the 2010 Curtis Cup.
LPGA Tour commissioner Mike Whan was in Boston earlier this week to help the Francis Ouimet Scholarship Fund honor Hall of Famer Annika Sorenstam. Read how Whan would love to have the LPGA return to The Hub.
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