Prono Advances to Semifinals at Santa Cruz Golf Tournament

Danielle Ammaccapane got off to a fast start in her quarterfinal match and, for the second consecutive year, earned a berth in the semifinals of the U.S. Women’s Amateur Golf Championship.

“I was tired this afternoon. But I won the first three holes and was never less than 2 up. That sure helped,” she said Thursday after joining three other golfers from Pacific-10 Conference universities in the Final Four of the event at the Pasatiempo Golf Club course.

She will meet Kathleen McCarthy of Stanford in today’s semifinals, and Flori Prono of Southern Cal will play Kay Cockerill of UCLA.

Prono, a Southern Cal senior from Granada Hills, and McCarthy, a Stanford senior from Fresno, both were 3 down on the back nines of their quarterfinal matches and won 1 up.

“I feel like I’ve been through a hurricane,” Prono said after beating British golfer Trish Johnson with a birdie on the first extra hole of their match.

Ammaccapane, who won the 1985 U.S. Women’s Public Links title, lives in Phoenix and is a senior at Arizona State. She beat Caroline Keggi of Waterbury, Conn., 4 and 2, in the quarterfinals after defeating Dana Arnold of Modesto earlier Thursday.

Cockerill, who lives in Los Gatos, only eight miles from the Pasatiempo course, won 1 up over Indiana University golfer Michele Redman and never trailed in the quarterfinal match. Redman blew a chance to pull even by missing a 1 1/2-foot putt at the 16th hole.

Johnson had eliminated Japan teen-ager Michiko Hattori, the defending champion, a day earlier.

McCarthy’s comeback was against 37-year-old Carol Semple Thompson, who won the U.S. Amateur title in 1973 and the British Amateur a year later.