The Pasadena City Women’s Championship starts Saturday, July 23, at Brookside Golf Course near the Rose Bowl, where everyone, spectator and player alike, will be watching whether anyone would be able to beat 12-year-old Alice Zhao, who set a 54-hole total of 202 during last year’s championships.
This will be a three-day event up to Monday, July 25.
The tournament was dormant from the end of the 20th century until Lew Murez, tournament director, revived it in 2018, the year his daughter Marnie took home the title. Last year, Zhao set the Brookside women’s track No. 2 record at 63, while runner-up Angelina Kim, from Long Beach State University, set a new No. 1 course record at 66.
With a total of 19 fewer, Zhao also set the 54-lowest hole score ever published in Brookside among all levels of amateurs and professionals.
The Pasadena tournament offers 36- and 54-hole options, the latter for those seeking a coveted amateur world rating and Southern California Golf Association points.
This year’s Championship Flight course features players between the ages of 13 and 62, with the most experienced golfers in duos.
Hana Choi of La Cañada Flintridge is the youngest player in the first division. She’s a year away from high school.
Juliette Oh, from Diamond Bar, will start high school this fall and is heading to Brookside after winning five shots at the SCPGA Junior Summer Series event in Pala Mesa at Fallbrook.
Like the Pasadena City men’s championship in March, women golfers will play 18 holes on each of two tracks at Brookside before a longer-term final round, the CW Koiner Course, also known as Course #1.
The Pasadena City Women’s Championship has a great history before it went to sleep for decades. Babe Zaharias, who went on to become an Olympian, often called the “greatest female athlete in history,” won the championship many times before the tournament went dormant. Lew Murez hopes it will re-establish itself as the leading women’s championship in Southern California.
To learn more about the Pasadena City Women’s Championship, visit www.sbplgc.com/PasadenaWomensAm.htm.
