Unheralded Player Wins WSGA Women's Amateur

In her first championship ever, 22-year old Paige Gifford dominated a field of the finest Northwest women amateurs, winning the WSGA Women's Amateur Championship at Wing Point G&CC in Bainbridge Island, Wash.

Gifford shot a three-day total of 223 at the difficult Wing Point Country Club, eight shots better than runner-up Jordan Allyne, of Bellevue, Wash. Gifford, from Kent, Wash., never trailed in the championship, and closed with a solid 73. Plain-spoken, she reminds us of another Northwest champion, Joanne Gunderson Carner. Gifford celebrated her victory with the large group of friends who followed in her gallery. Allyne was the 2006 PNGA Junior Girls Player of the Year, and will be attending the University of North Carolina in the fall on a golf scholarship.

Gifford began playing golf at age 12. She didn't pick up a club between the ages of 17 and 20, and dropped out of Kentlake High School. Gifford decided to pick up the game again when she enrolled in Green River Community College, wanting to get her high school equivalency. She noted the college had a golf team and entered this championship in order to try to get some recognition. She got it.

"I've never played in anything like this before," said Gifford. "I wanted to play here because I'm looking for a place to play." She knows she needs to build a golf resume to get a college interested in her, and plans to play in more events this summer.

Gifford had never seen Wing Point before, and hadn't practiced much beforehand. The golf shop recruited a member of the private course to be her caddie, and the two never looked back.

Lisa Smego hit the ball back and forth on the uphill par-4 18th hole, never seeing the fairway, knocking it into a greenside bunker, and sinking a 20-footer for bogey. She didn't know at the time that the scrambling bogey would ensure her victory by a shot in the Senior Division. Smego also won in 2006.

"I’m glad I didn’t know," she said with a grin about her final putt. "Otherwise I probably would have chopped that up as well." For complete results of the championship, visit www.thewsga.org.