BATON ROUGE — LSU golfer Meredith Duncan entered her senior season looking for two things after winning three major amateur titles in 2001: first-team All-America honors and a spot on the women’s amateur Curtis Cup team.
She received her first-team All-America honors 10 days ago in Auburn, Wash., at the banquet at the conclusion of the 2002 NCAA Tournament, becoming just the fourth female LSU golfer so honored with a first team citation. Now this week, the United States Golf Association has announced that Duncan and two of her SEC colleagues will be part of the eight-player team which will face a team of amateurs from Great Britain and Ireland in the biennial Curtis Cup Match, Aug. 3-4 at Fox Chapel Golf Club in Pittsburgh, Pa.
This will be 32nd time the Curtis Cup has been competed for with the U.S. leading the series, 22-6-3, having won the last two renewals.
Duncan, from Shreveport, puts the Curtis Cup in the one open spot in an impressive summer schedule which is expected to be her final as an amateur player before she attempts to qualify for the LPGA. The winner of the LPGA’s Diana Shore Award as the nation’s college golfer and the Nancy Lopez Award, as the nation’s top female amateur, will be joined on the Curtis Cup team by Angela Jerman of Georgia and Courtney Swaim of Auburn. Duke’s Leigh Anne Hardin, who won the East Regional at the University Club in Baton Rouge, is also on the team.
Rounding out the eight-player team are Emily Bastel of Michigan State, Mollie Fankhauser of Ohio State, Laura Myerscough of Arizona and the legendary 53-year-old Carol Semple Thompson, who will play in a record-setting 12th Curtis Cup. The USA team will be captained by Mary Budke, a former U.S. Women’s Amateur Champion.
Duncan is expected to attempt to defend all-three of the amateur titles she captured in 2001, starting with the Women’s Western Amateur, which begins June 17 in Bluefield, Va. Duncan is the two-time defending champion of the Western.
From there she goes on to Pinehurst, N.C., for defense of the North-South Amateur Championship. The event begins on June 23 with qualifying for which Duncan is exempt as champion.
In July, she will play, thanks to her amateur title, with an exemption in the United States Women’s Open in Hutchinson, Kan., July 4-7 before joining her Curtis Cup teammates for the ESPN televised competition between the countries, Aug. 3-4. Finally, will come defense of women’s amateur golf’s prize possession, the Robert Cox Trophy, which goes to the champion of the U. S. Women’s Amateur. Duncan’s defense begins August 12 in Scarborough, N. Y.