The Round of 64 is in the books at the 71st U.S. Girls’ Junior Amateur at SentryWorld in Stevens Point, Wis.
Top seed Yuka Saso of the Philippines, who won medalist honors by five strokes on Tuesday, won her first match 6 & 4 over Kaylee Skoda of Cypress Calif., on Wednesday. Skoda was the last golfer to make the match-play field after surviving a 13-for-2 playoff, which concluded early Wednesday morning.
Since 2000, the stroke-play medalist(s) are 21-2 in the Round of 64.
The upset of the day was the No. 63 seed Carolina Hodge of Larchmont, NY taking out at the No. 2 seed Maddison Hinson-Tolchard of Australia in 19 holes.
Hodge the first of those 13 playoff participants to advance after being the only golfer to make birdie on the first extra hole.
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Other top-ten upsets: No. 61 seed Kendall Todd of Goodyear, Ariz., 3 & 1 over No. 4 YoonMin Han of Korea; No. 57 Michelle Morard of Huntsville, Ala., 6 & 4 over No. 8 Bohyun Park of Korea; No. 56 seed Kelly Xu of Claremont, Calif., 3 & 2 over No. 9 Erica Shepherd of Greenwood, Ind.
Shepherd in May won the USGA’s U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball title with fellow incoming Duke freshman Megan Furtney.
Xu admitted to be new to match play.
“I had to learn about match play by Googling it last night,” said Xu, who had never played the format until Wednesday. “I definitely like playing it more than stroke play.”
Other notable matches: Rose Zhang of Irvine, Calif., won her match in 19 holes over Sophie Guo of China. Isabella Fierro of Mexico knocked out Kynadie Adams of Nashville 3 & 2. Grace Summerhays of Scottsdale, the No. 42 seed, earned a first-round win over Sarah Arnold of St. Charles, Ill., 5 & 4.
Meanwhile, Alexa Pano of Lake Worth, Fla., the 50th seed, lost 4 & 3 to Grace Kim of Australia.
The Round of 32 and 16 are both scheduled for Thursday. The Round of 32 will start at 7 a.m. and the Round of 16 is set for 12:45 p.m.
