Spirit of the Game: Saki Baba’s Big Win

Saki Baba routed Monet Chun of Canada 11 and 9 on Sunday to develop into the second Japanese winner in U.S. Girls’s Newbie historical past.

The 17-year-old Baba gained the final six holes, ending the match with a birdie on the par-3 twenty seventh gap at Chambers Bay.

“It’s simply wonderful. I simply can’t imagine it,” Baba mentioned by a translator. “I used to be in a position to (play) my type of golf. Yeah, every little thing simply went easily.”

 Baba joined 1985 champion Michiko Hattori as the one Japanese winners.

“If she made a mistake, misplaced a gap, it woke her up and she or he bounced proper again,” mentioned Beau Brushert, Baba’s Chambers Bay caddie. “She didn’t let it get her down. She’s wonderful. She’s a variety of enjoyable to observe.”

 Baba was certainly one of 4 amateurs to make the reduce within the U.S. Girls’s Open at Pine Needles, tying for forty ninth. She shared medalist honors and reached the spherical of 32 within the U.S. Women’ Junior at The Membership at Olde Stone.

The margin matched the third-largest in a 36-hole closing within the occasion. Anne Quast Sander set document in 1961, beating Phyllis Preuss 14 and 13. Glenna Collett beat Virginia Van Wie 13 and 12 in 1928, and Babe Didrikson Zaharias routed Clara C. Sherman 11 and 9 in 1946.