NORTON, Massachusetts – Mass Golf today has announced its strongest team ever for the 2022 Griscom Cup, an interstate amateur golf competition alongside women from the New York and Philadelphia areas that will take place June 1-2 at Longmeadow Country Club (MA).
The Mass Golf squad is seeking to win back the Cup after the Women’s Metropolitan Golf Association (New York) earned it last year with a decisive victory at Union League Golf Club at Torresdale (PA). This year’s event takes place one week before the Mass Open returns to Longmeadow for the first time in 20 years.
Led by Shannon Johnson (Thorny Lea Golf Club), a 4-time winner of the Anne Marie Tobin Women’s Player of the Year Award, Mass Golf’s roster features eight amateur golfers from across the state, plus an alternate and co-captains: Sally DeGan and Chelsea Curtis. Following last year’s success, Johnson has opted to play in the Griscom Cup for the first time. She won last year’s Mass Women’s Mid-Amateur for the Keyes Cup and Mass Women’s Four-Ball for the Townshend Cup, made the final of the Mass Women’s Amateur, and the semifinals of the U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur.
Including Johnson, there are six individuals in the starting lineup who have won at least one individual Mass Golf or New England Golf Association women’s championship within the past 3 years. University of Virginia standout Rebecca Skoler (Pine Brook Country Club) won the 2021 Women’s Stroke Play Championship for the Baker Trophy; Megan Buck (Thorny Lea Golf Club) won the 2020 New England Women’s Amateur; Allison Paik (Cape Club of Sharon) won the 2020 Mass Women’s Amateur; Angela Garvin (The Ranch Golf Club) won the 2019 Mass Women’s Amateur and 2019 Mass Girls’ Junior Amateur; and Molly Smith (Vesper Country Club), the 2021 Girls’ Junior Player of the year, won the Ouimet Memorial Tournament (Women’s Division).
Meanwhile, Jennifer Keim (Bayberry Hills Golf Course) will compete on her fifth consecutive Griscom Cup team, while Christine Mandile (Winchester Country Club), a first-year member of the University of Richmond women’s golf team, will be a Griscom Cup rookie.
Chelsea Curtis (The Country Club) will serve in the alternate spot.
Paik, Keim and Curtis (2021 captain) competed on the team last year, while Buck returns from previous squads. Smith, a high school junior at Westford Academy, is the lone junior golfer on the team, but Garvin, Mandile, Keim, Paik, and Skoler are all players under age 24.
COMPETITION FORMAT
The three teams will compete in a three-way, Nassau-style match-play competition. Points are awarded for winning the front nine, back nine and the 18-hole round. On the first day, the matches will be foursomes (alternate shot), and on the second day, the players compete in singles matches. The event is played over two days, with the first day including a practice round in the morning. The team with the most points over two days will take home the Cup.
The Griscom Cup Matches date back to 1898, but 1902 marked the first year that teams from three states – Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania – competed in this inter-city challenge. The event was named after Frances Griscom of Pennsylvania and has been conducted every year with the exception of the World War II period (1942-1945), 1984 due to inclement weather, and 2020 due to COVID-19.
Most of the early Griscom Cup players were familiar with one another through their participation in the U.S. Women’s Amateur Championships. In fact, in 1900 Miss Frances Griscom defeated Margaret Curtis, from Boston, for the Women’s Amateur title. The next year, Boston petitioned to challenge for the Cup. Their petition was accepted in 1902, and in an interesting aside, that first three-city challenge was held at what was then called Baltusrol Links. The following year saw the beginning of the annual rotation of the tournament among the three cities.
Mass Golf is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization that is dedicated to advancing golf in Massachusetts by building an engaged community around the sport.
With a community made up of over 100,000 golf enthusiasts and over 360 member clubs, Mass Golf is one of the largest state golf associations in the country. Members enjoy the benefits of handicapping, engaging golf content, course rating and scoring services along with the opportunity to compete in an array of events for golfers of all ages and abilities.
At the forefront of junior development, Mass Golf is proud to offer programming to youth in the state through First Tee Massachusetts and subsidized rounds of golf by way of Youth on Course.
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