|
Chun in Manoa Cup
Mari Chun entered the Manoa Cup purely as a learning experience before she heads off to college.
Her education will continue at least another day after becoming only the second female to qualify for the state amateur match-play championship.
Chun was among 98 players attempting to qualify for the 97th event yesterday at Oahu Country Club, and her round of 6-over-par 77 earned her the 31st seed in the 64-player field.
Michelle Wie was the first female to qualify for match play in 2001 and became the first to advance to the second round the following year.
"I never even thought about it," Chun said of the historical impact of her round yesterday.
"I wanted to come here and be out of my comfort zone and see how well I can adapt. That's what it's going to be like in college."
The Manoa Cup field will be cut to 16 in the first two rounds to be held today. Chun faces No. 34 Raymond Tendo in a first-round match this morning.
Chun, who recently graduated from Kamehameha and will enroll at Stanford in the fall, won the state women's match-play championship at OCC last year and captured the Jennie K. Wilson Invitational in a playoff last month.
A scheduling conflict will prevent her from defending her women's match-play title, which was part of the reason she entered the Manoa Cup.
It took a bit of prodding from her mother before she finally decided to tee it up with the men.
"At first I was like, 'Nah I'm not even good enough, how can I even get in,' " she said. "But she convinced me and I realized that it's a really great learning experience."
She didn't have much opportunity to practice over the last month as she made up schoolwork she missed due to her golf commitments, and said her swing isn't quite at top form.
Chun started her round on the back nine and bogeyed the 16th, 17th, and 18th. But she steadied herself on the front side with eight straight pars, before closing with a bogey on No. 9.
As she enters match play, Chun expects to be shorter than her opponents off the tee, but is hoping to make up for the difference in distance with her irons and short game.
"I have to be more aggressive," she said. "If I'm going to be hitting first on my second shot I'm going to have to put some pressure on somehow, so I'll have to try to be a little more aggressive going for pins."
T.J. Kua, who just completed his freshman year at Kamehameha, posted the day's low score with an even-par 71.
The 15-year-old finished tied for second in last month's HHSAA championship and faces Michael Jay Sato in his first-round match.
Kua spent some time on the practice green prior to his round yesterday and the extra work paid off.
"I heard the greens were super fast, I've never played on greens like that before," Kua said. "I figured if I stayed around 75 that was going to be a good score."
Five previous Manoa Cup champions -- Brandan Kop (1983, '96, '97 '98), Guy Yamamoto (1985, '92), Dick Sieradzki (1990), Travis Toyama (2002) and Kellen-Floyd Asao (2003) -- also qualified yesterday.
Ryan Perez's 78 would have been good enough to make the match-play field. But his score didn't really matter. As the defending tournament champion, Perez is automatically granted the top seed and plays Duane Pacheco today.
"I was just fooling around out there," said Perez, a member of the University of Hawaii golf team. "I wasn't expecting to shoot a spectacular round. I was just trying to put myself in positions where I could get a feel for the tough putts.
"I like match play. If you have a bad hole you can recover on the next one."
Pacheco, Sato and Michael Field earned the final three spots in the field by surviving a seven-man playoff after finishing with scores of 82.
E-mail to Sports Desk
[News] [Business] [Features] [Sports] [Editorial] [Do It Electric!]
[Classified Ads] [Search] [Subscribe] [Info] [Letter to Editor]
[Feedback]
