Booth Continues Her Hot Summer

Kellee Booth of Coto de Caza continued her sizzling summer by taking medalist honors Tuesday at the Women’s North-South Amateur at Pinehurst No. 8 in North Carolina.

Booth, the No. 1 ranked women’s amateur in the nation, shot a two-day total of one-under-par 144 to qualify for the 32-player match-play field in her final tuneup for next week’s U.S. Women’s Amateur.

Defending North-South champion Beth Bauer was exempt from stroke-play qualifying and begins today’s first round as the top-seeded player.

Booth has won four national amateur tournaments this year, including the Trans-National and the Women’s Western in the last month. She is seeking her first North-South victory. She was runner-up to Laura Philo in 1995.

KUNG ON TOP AT JUNIOR

Candie Kung of Fountain Valley shot a second-round three-under-par 69 and won medalist honors in the U.S. Girls’ Junior Amateur championship at Green Spring Valley Hunt Club in Owings Mills, Md.

Kung (73-69--142) finished three shots ahead of first-round leader Aree Wongluekiet of Bradenton, Fla. (71-74--145) and is top-seeded in the 64-player match play field. Kung, runner-up in the 1997 tournament and quarterfinalist last year, plays Miranda Smith of Hideaway Hills, Ohio, today in the first round.

Angela Rho of Fullerton (78-75--153) also qualified for match play by finishing tied for 12th. She will play Kristi Larsen of Scottsdale, Ariz., in the first round.

Priscilla Park of Santa Ana (88-84--172) missed the match play cut by 10 strokes.

Defending champion Lee Anne Hardin of Martinsville, Ind. (80-82--162) also failed to make match play when she did not advance out of a seven-way playoff for the final two spots.

The second round is also today.

RON WON 2 OFF THE LEAD

James Oh of Lakewood is one of five players tied for the lead at five-under 66 at the Gleneagles Country Club in Plano, Texas, after the first round of the AJGA Lucent Technologies tournament.

Irvine’s Ron Won, who will be a freshman at Stanford this fall, is tied for seventh after shooting 68. Nico Bollini of Yorba Linda shot 69. The 72-hole tournament ends Friday.

LASERS GET NEW COACHES

Ben Burnett has been named coach of the Irvine Valley College men’s golf team and Mike Meissenburg will take over the women’s program.

Burnett and Meissenburg will replace Blakney Boggs, who was coaching both teams but left to pursue other interests.

Burnett was an assistant coach for the men’s team, which finished fifth in the Orange Empire Conference in 1999, its first season.

Meissenburg, who also coaches men’s tennis for the Lasers, takes over a second-year women’s program.

SCRAMBLING IN COUNTY

Qualifying for the Oldsmobile Scramble, billed as the nation’s largest pro-am tournament, comes to Orange County next week.

Five-player teams consisting of a professional and four amateurs will compete Aug. 9 at Yorba Linda Country Club and Aug. 11 at Coyote Hills in Fullerton for the right to represent Southern California in the national finals Oct. 6-10 at Walt Disney World Resort in Lake Buena Vista, Fla.

GOLF WAVES

Avid Golfer Magazine and PGA Tour radio have joined as partners on Golf Talk Radio, a weekly two-hour show that goes behind the scenes of the game.

Hosted by Chris Gibbs and Wil Barnes, the show airs Sunday afternoons on KPLS (AM 830) immediately following the PGA Tour radio broadcast of that week’s tournament.

Regular guests will include PGA Tour pros as well as local golf professionals.