A cluster of friends and family started cheering for Katie Cranston as she walked out of the scorers\u2019 room in the clubhouse of the Mississaugua Golf and Country Club and up to the spectators\u2019 area.<\/p>\n
The 21-year-old from Oakville, Ont., had done it: she made the cut at the CPKC Women\u2019s Open.<\/p>\n
Cranston, who begins her senior year at Auburn University next week, shot back-to-back even-par 71s in the first two rounds of the Canadian national women\u2019s golf championship to become one of five Canadians to see the weekend. Making the cut on Friday ended years of frustration for Cranston.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m very happy because it\u2019s my fourth time playing, and last year I definitely was closer, so I\u2019m just really excited to get the chance to just go play free on the weekend,\u201d said Cranston, who missed the cut by two shots at last year\u2019s Women\u2019s Open at Earl Grey Golf Club in Calgary. \u201cBeing so close to home and having so many people come out, it\u2019s so much fun.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cranston birdied on No. 12 to get to even par on Friday, but then bogeyed on the par-4 16th hole to move up to 1 over. Around the same time, the projected cut line moved from 1 over to even par, putting her in danger of missing the cut.<\/p>\n
She recovered with a birdie on the par-4 17th hole and parred No. 18 to finish her day.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had no idea. I kind of thought in my head it would be 1 over,\u201d said Cranston, covering her mouth in surprise at how close she had been to not playing the third round. \u201cOnce I made that birdie, I felt pretty good. I definitely left myself a bit of a tester on 18, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
As the afternoon wave went out on the course the projected line again moved to 1 over, giving Cranston a bit of a buffer. Salimah Mussani, Golf Canada\u2019s women\u2019s head coach, said that Cranston had grown as a player.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the biggest thing that I\u2019ve seen out of Katie this year, in general, is a lot of maturity,\u201d said Mussani, who was in the group of friends and family waiting for Cranston outside the clubhouse. \u201cYou could see in the last two days that she\u2019s in control of what\u2019s going on here. Nothing really got away from her. She managed her emotions.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe bogeyed 16 today, followed it up with the birdie on 17. She went from plus 1 back to even, and then hit a great shot into 18 and gave herself an opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n
There were 16 Canadians in the field, 10 of whom were amateurs and six of those players were juniors. Brooke Henderson of Smiths Falls, Ont., was the low Canadian after shooting a 5-under 66 on Friday to rocket 33 spots up the leaderboard into a tie for fifth at 5-under overall, four shots back of leader Akie Iwai of Japan.<\/p>\n
Fifteen-year-old amateur Aphrodite Deng, from Calgary, shot a 2-over 73 to drop into a tie for 15th at 3-under overall. Monet Chun (68) of Richmond Hill, Ont., was tied for 29th at 1 under. Maude-Aimee Leblanc (68) of Sherbrooke, Que., was tied with Cranston for 49th at even par.<\/p>\n
Mussani said having five Canadians make the cut was a sign that women\u2019s golf in the country is in a very healthy spot.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got a lot of young girls coming up the pipeline, which is obviously exciting for me, because they\u2019ll eventually get to our program,\u201d said Mussani. \u201cWhether it\u2019s (the growth of recreational golf during the COVID-19 pandemic), or it\u2019s Brooke Henderson, or just participation in women\u2019s sports in general, it\u2019s exciting for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hamilton\u2019s Alena Sharp, Vancouver\u2019s Anna Huang and Savannah Grewal of Mississauga, Ont., didn\u2019t make the third round.<\/p>\n
Amateurs Lauren Kim of Surrey, B.C., Shauna Liu of Maple, Ont., Calgary\u2019s Tillie Claggett, Clara Ding of White Rock, B.C., Toronto\u2019s Vanessa Borovilos, Ruihan Wang of Markham, Ont., Michelle Xing of Richmond Hill and Joline Truong of Mississauga also missed the cut.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A cluster of friends and family started cheering for Katie Cranston as she walked out of the scorers\u2019…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":90855,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,48506,622,53521,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-90854","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-cpkc-womens-open","11":"tag-golf","12":"tag-golf-canada","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90854\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}