UCLA Has a New Champion : Kay Cockerill Is Surprise Winner in Amateur Golf

For another week, at least, Los Angeles will be the men’s and women’s amateur golf capital of the United States.

Sam Randolph of USC is the men’s champion, and although he has since turned professional, he remains the amateur champion until Sunday, when a successor will be determined in the 1986 tournament at Shoal Creek, Ala.

The women’s title will reside here much longer. It was won two weeks ago by Kay Cockerill of UCLA who defeated Kathleen McCarthy of Stanford and Fresno, 9 and 8, at Santa Cruz.

Kay who?

Kay Cockerill is a late-bloomer in golf who has a habit of sneaking up when least expected--and winning.

Her limited junior experience offered her no scholarship opportunities so she enrolled four years ago at UCLA as a walk-on. After a freshman semester as a member of the second team, Cockerill was elevated to the No. 5 position on the five-player varsity by coach Jackie Steinmann for her first tournament, the Lady Aztec, in San Diego.

Cockerill’s response? She won it.

During her years at UCLA, Cockerill won four other tournaments and was twice named to the All-American collegiate team. Nothing she accomplished, however, made her one of the favorites for this year’s U.S. Amateur. In two previous tries, she had failed to qualify for the match play. In fact, she had never made it past the quarterfinals of any match-play tournament she had ever entered.

In the Pac West Conference tournament, Cockerill finished sixth as Kristal Parker, her roommate and teammate, lost in a playoff to Arizona State’s Pam West. She was fourth in the NCAA tournament, three strokes behind Page Dunlap of Florida.

So, when she blitzed the field in the 86th U.S. Women’s Amateur, beating cross-town rival Flori Prono of USC, 2 and 1, in the semifinals and then drubbing McCarthy in the final, she raised a lot of eyebrows.

Kay Cockerill is 21, a 5-foot 8-inch senior from Los Gatos, winner of an NCAA postgraduate scholarship and a member of the Coaches Assn. Academic and Collegiate All-American teams.

Unlike Randolph, who left USC after his final college tournament to join the pro ranks, Cockerill plans to stay at UCLA for another year to get her degree in economics, and defend her amateur title next year. She may remain an amateur until 1988, when she would be eligible for the Curtis Cup matches in Scotland.

“I would really like to play in Scotland, especially on the Curtis Cup team,” Cockerill said.

The new amateur champion may be majoring in economics, but golf has given her a lesson in geography.

“Before I came to UCLA, I think I’d flown in a plane maybe once,” she said. “Now I’ve been all over the country, to the Orient twice, and next month I’m playing in Italy in the World University Games and then in Caracas, Venezuela, in the World Team Championship.”

While finishing her studies, Cockerill will be a graduate assistant coach at UCLA.

“I like having the U.S. Amateur champion as my recruiter,” Steinmann said.

Among the Bruin recruits will be Jean Zedlitz of Pleasanton, winner of the National PGA junior championship.

Cockerill didn’t take up golf until she was almost 16, when she played with her father, a wire news editor at the San Jose Mercury-News, and began taking lessons in the summer from Rick Walker at the De Laveaga course in Santa Cruz.

“I had good grades, and I knew I wanted to play golf, and I wanted to stay in California, but I had no credentials, so I checked around and decided on UCLA,” Cockerill said. “The coach was kind enough to let me play on the second team. Fortunately, when I got my chance to play in the Lady Aztec at Singing Hills, I won. That really got my foot in the door.”

The strength of Cockerill’s game is her work around the green, chipping and putting and getting out of trouble with a minimum of strokes.

“Those greens at Pasatiempo (site of the amateur) are really difficult,” said Steinmann, who was with her at the amateur tournament. “She was magic up there.”

Cockerill also believes that she was fortunate not to have to face an older, experienced player in any of her five matches.

“I met two girls from France and three college girls,” she said. “I felt more at ease, too, when I played Flori (Prono) and Kathleen (McCarthy) in my last two matches. I knew both of them and had played them before. Even though they had beaten me in the past, I felt comfortable playing with them and that was important to me.

“When I got past the double rounds and made it through the quarterfinals--the first time I’d ever done that--I thought, ‘Hey, I can win this thing.’ ”

Her toughest match was in the second round, on the afternoon of the first day, when she met Marie de Lorenzi-Taya of France.

“I was tired from the morning match and I didn’t know what to expect,” she said. “I didn’t play as well as I could have, but I concentrated well when it counted.”

Cockerill won, 3 and 2.

McCarthy, the 1985 Western Amateur champion from Fresno who entered Stanford with an outstanding junior record, was the favorite in the final. Her path to the championship round included victories over Curtis Cup players Danielle Ammaccapane and Kim Gardner, former winner Carol Semple Thompson and her Stanford teammate, Kathy Kostas.

“I played very well in the finals, I made a lot of birdies, but I think the turning point was a 10-foot putt I made for par on the 14th hole in the morning round,” Cockerill said. “I was three up at the time. I had a long putt for birdie that I ran about 10 feet by the hole. Kathleen already had her par so I had to make my putt to keep from dropping to two up. I made it and almost immediately went to six up before the break. In the afternoon I only lost one hole and came right back to birdie the next one.”

Cockerill’s winning margin, 9 and 8, was the largest in the final since 1961, when Anne Quast Sander beat Phyllis Preuss, 14 and 13.

“She deserved to win,” McCarthy said at the time. “She has come so far with her game. Kay has worked very hard and she’s a great person.”

McCarthy and Cockerill will be teammates on the U.S. team in Caracas, along with Leslie Shannon, the North-South and Western Amateur champion from Miami.

Cockerill also credits her Bruin roommate, Parker, and her coach, Tom Anton of the Woodley course, with helping her win the national title.

“Having Kristal (Parker) on the team all year pushed both of us,” Cockerill said. “We were always competing in practice for things like who would cook dinner, who would pay for the movies, little things like that. We rotated between No. 1 and No. 2 all season and really built up our games trying to beat each other.

“One thing, for sure, neither one of us are very good cooks. We only know about three things, and if you want our special, it’s always spaghetti. But it makes for tough competition on the golf course, deciding who’s going to make it.”