BATON ROUGE – Both incoming freshman Raegan Denton and sophomore Ryleigh Knaub of LSU had strong showings in winning their round of 64 matches Thursday at the United States Women’s Amateur at The Honors Club in Ooltewah, Tennessee.
Both Denton and Knaub advanced easily with 5&4 victories in their opening matches to advance to the round of 32, which is scheduled for Friday morning.
The pair advanced through two rounds of stroke play qualifying to advance to match play in one of the country’s most prestigious women’s amateur golf events.
In the match that ended after the 14th hole, Denton, from Australia had seven birdies on the card with five of those good enough to win holes.
After tying the first hole with birdie 3s and the first par 5 on the second hole with pars, Denton took the lead for good with a two on the par 3 third hole and a three on the par 4 fourth hole. She was 2UP at the turn and then won the 11th, 12th and 14th holes to close out the match.
Knaub, from Debary, Florida, was 2-under through the 14 holes of her match and basically took control of an even match with pars on the par 4 fourth, the par 4 fifth and par 5 sixth to go 3UP through six holes.
The match stayed that way as Knaub continued to post pars over the next five holes before a birdie 3 on the 12th hole and a par on the par 4 13th hole upped her lead to 5UP and she closed the match with a par on the par 3 14th hole.
In the Friday AM matches, Denton will face Pimchompoo “Pinky” Chaisilprungruang of Thailand, who plays her college golf at Charlotte. Denton is ranked 47th in the World Amateur Golf Rankings presently, while Chaisilprungruang comes in No. 66.
Knaub faces 17-year-old Anna Fang (51st in the World Amateur rankings) of San Diego, California in her round of 32 match.
Chaisilprungruang won her first-round match 2&1 over another Australian, Jazy Roberts, while Fang was a 2&1 winner over Mary Miller.
If Denton and/or Knaub advance, they will play their round of 16 match on Friday afternoon.
The round of 32 matches will be broadcast on The Golf Channel at 9:30 a.m. on Friday with the round of 16 matches shown live on Golfchannel.com and tape delay later Friday evening on The Golf Channel.