It’s like deja vu for Vancouver’s Nonie Marler. The Marine Drive Club member is sitting atop the Canadian Women’s Mid-Amateur leaderboard for the second year in a row after shooting her second consecutive one over par 73 on Wednesday afternoon at Breezy Bend Country Club in Winnipeg.
“Today I was very solid and competent in my game. Yesterday sort of laid the ground work, so today I knew all I had to be committed to playing my own game and just staying within myself,” said Marler during a post-round interview.
The two-time BC Women’s mid-amateur champion also had a one stroke lead going into the final 18 holes last year in Bromont, Quebec, only to wind up losing in a playoff to provincial rival Christina Spence Proteau of Port Alberni.
“I’ve been there and done that. Last year I hadn’t, so it was new to me. You just have to feel the situation and now that I know the outcome and how to play through that,” explained Marler who birdied two of her first four holes on Wednesday after finishing her opening round Tuesday with three straight bogeys. “You have to compartmentalize. You can’t change the past. I started today on number one and I was just like, ‘Okay what’s ahead of you here today and what can you do, and how can I better myself?’ And I was two under through seven.”
While Spence Proteau is very much in contention for a seventh career Canadian Women’s Mid-Amateur title at just two strokes back after a three over 75 on Wednesday, Marler will also have to contend with another defending champ in Shelly Stouffer of Nanoose Bay, B.C. as well as Etobicoke, Ontario’s Terrill Samuel who are only one stroke off the pace – but tied for the lead in the Senior Division.
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Stouffer is coming off of a win in the U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur last month in Anchorage, and then a tie for 29th place in the U.S. Sr Women’s Open which wrapped up last weekend near Dayton, Ohio.
Samuel also has plenty of momentum after becoming the third Canadian to win the R & A British Senior Women’s Amateur crown in early July in Dornoch, Scotland.
“We played at Royal Dornoch. Put it on your bucket list, it’s an amazing golf course,” said the 61-year-old member of the Weston Club in Toronto, who played her way into contention on Wednesday, by shooting only the third even par 72 of the tournament, joining first-round leader Leanne Richardson of Indian Mountain, N.B. and Kitchener’s Brooke Sharpe for low-score honours of the 2022 championship through 36 holes.
Sharpe struggled on Day One with an 83, but moved up 18 places on the leaderboard following her second-round 72.
“I was really trying to focus on my wedges on the range when I was warming up and just really dialling up my numbers because I knew I was going to have a lot of wedges in the greens today. I had a better feel for the course,” said the 27-year-old former NCAA Division 1 member of the University of Detroit Mercy Titans golf program.
“My putting was actually great yesterday. So I just focused on my putting again today, dialled in the wedges, and it went a lot better.”
2001 Manitoba Junior Golf Champ Tanis Walch, playing in her first competitive tournament in a decade, is in a very respectable sixth place going into Thursday’s final round. The former Tanis Hastmann is now a professor at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks and has scraped off all the rust by shooting scores of 76, 75 to stay within five shots of the lead at seven over 151.
The top golfer among the current local contingent of Manitobans entered in the tournament is Charmaine Mackid of the host course who bounced back from an opening day 80 to shoot 76 on Wednesday for a 36-hole total of 12 over, 156.
B.C. won both Interprovincial Team titles quite handily, finishing 14 strokes ahead of Ontario in the Mid-Amateur competition and 15 shots up on Quebec in the seniors division.
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