The Epson Tour, Road to the LPGA, returns to Beaumont for the IOA Championship presented by Morongo Casino Resort & Spa. The 54-hole tournament begins on Friday, March 24 and concludes on Sunday, March 26. This is the second event of the 2017 season and the first of a three-week West Coast Swing.
The field of 132 aspiring LPGA Tour golfers from the United States and 27 countries around the globe will compete for a tournament purse of $100,000. The winner will earn $15,000 and move towards the top of the early season Volvik Race for the Card money list. The top 10 earners on the final money list will earn LPGA membership for the 2018 season.
There are 127 professionals and five amateurs in the field.
The next three events are co-sanctioned with The LPGA of Taiwan (TLPGA). There are 12 players in the field this week from the TLPGA including 15-year-old Tzu-Yi Chang, the youngest in the field.
The first-round begins on Friday, March 24 at 7:20 a.m. from the first and tenth tees. There will be a cut made to the low 60 and ties following Saturday’s second round. The final-round will begin at 7:30 a.m. The trophy ceremony will take place on the 18th green immediately following play. Tickets to the IOA Championship are free while parking is also free and available on site.
2015 WINNER AT TUKWET CANYON FEELS ‘AT HOME’
Katie Kempter (Albuquerque, New Mexico) picked up her first career win at Morongo Golf Club at Tukwet Canyon in 2015. She is back this year to try to pick up her second win.
“It was so peaceful and yet so chaotic,” said Kempter when asked to reflect on the win Wednesday. “This place gives me a good feeling and the golf course sets up to my eye really well. It reminds me of a course back home that I play really well and I just feel at home here.”
Kempter won by making an up-and-down par on the second playoff hole. She made three straight birdies to end her final round to force the playoff.
“I remember looking at the leaderboard on 16 green and I was three back and I wasn’t thinking about making a run, but staying very in the moment,” said Kempter. “I remember making a great chip shot and then a five-footer for par. I thought if anyone can get it up-and-down it’s me. That has always been a strong part of my game.”
Kempter has nine career top 10 finishes on the Epson Tour. She finished 48th on the money list in 2016.
SEVEN YEARS LATER, STACKHOUSE NOW PLAYING AS PRO
Last month when Keith Pelley of the European Tour introduced “GolfSixes,” it was heralded by the media as an innovative new format and the latest movement to modernize the game. But it was actually seven years earlier that the LPGA Tour introduced the “Mojo 6”, a made for television six-hole match play event – described as “Raceway Golf” – that was held in Jamaica and broadcast on CBS. Today on the Epson Tour, two of the principals from that event were reunited at Morongo Golf Club at Tukwet Canyon in the IOA Championship pro-am.
Back in 2010, Joy Stephenson and Olympic swimming Gold Medalist Ed Moses of Mojo Marketing and Media, the title sponsors of the Mojo 6, were browsing Google to identify a sponsor exemption for the tournament – which could have gone to any female golfer in the world – when they came across a then 15-year-old named Mariah Stackhouse.
“The goal at that time was to somehow get more people interested in the women’s game,” said Joy Stephenson, who played in the IOA Championship pro-am on Wednesday with Stackhouse. “I think we made a difference in getting more people interested in the sport. The more we support women, the more girls will want to use sport and golf as an option for growth both personally and professionally.”
It came full circle on Wednesday as the then 15-year-old is now a rising star in the game of women’s golf.
“I remember Joy and Christina Kim coming to my school (North Clayton High School) and surprising me in my high school gymnasium, which was pretty cool because my classmates got to see it,” explained Stackhouse, who went onto star at Stanford before turning professional in 2016. “Getting to go to Jamaica and play against the best players in the world was amazing. I remember playing against Cristie Kerr and learning about her road to the LPGA.”
“The entire experience as a whole was really special,” continued Stackhouse. “Since it was match play, it added a level of excitement.”
Stevenson and Stackhouse have kept in touch over the years, but have only seen each other once since the Mojo 6 when Stackhouse was taking a visit to Stanford as a high school junior.
“Seeing Mariah now play as a professional shows what a great sport golf really is,” said Stephenson. “It’s great to see her growth from when she was young to where she is today to where you know she is going to end up.”
While Anna Nordqvist won the Mojo 6, Stackhouse won in her own right because she got to rub elbows with the creme of the crop.
“Very rarely are exceptions given out to high school players and the Mojo 6 allowed me to look at the best players’ games up close,” said Stackhouse. “To just be around them and to see that they are real people too was important. Getting to play against professionals humanized them for me and made the dream more real.”
Stephenson is still involved in the game of golf and hopes to reconnect with the LPGA in the near future. One of the partners in her firm passed away from a rare form of Bile Duct Cancer. After a round of golf, he went for a physical and doctors found the cancer and told him he had only six weeks to live.
“That made us more aware and we realized there were no markers for that type of cancer,” explained Stephenson. “We partnered with UCSF (University of California San Francisco), one of the leading cancer institutes in the country, to not only help find a cure for that cancer, but to find indicators.”
Realizing that more needed to be done to help educate people on their basic health issues before it is too late, Stephenson and Moses created Proactive Health Labs (phlabs.org) – a non-profit entity - to help educate the public on how to be proactive about their health.
Stephenson hopes to add the LPGA to a growing list of companies and organizations nationwide that are using Proactive Health Labs to help educate their employees or clients. Given the vision she displayed in identifying Stackhouse as a high school sophomore, it’s not hard to envision PH Labs growing from its current Southern California footprint into a nationally recognized brand.
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