Marquee Matchups Highlight Round of 64 at Bel-Air C.C.

Since the 123rd U.S. Women’s Amateur is taking place not far from Hollywood at Bel-Air Country Club, which lists a number of celebrity members, there are five Round-of-64 match-ups on Wednesday that would make any scriptwriter grin with envy. It gets started at 10:40 a.m. PDT with 2022 USA Curtis Cup competitors Amari Avery and Latanna Stone squaring off. Stone shared runner-up honors in the 2022 Augusta National Women’s Amateur and Avery, a rising junior at the University of Southern California, has been making headlines since she was featured in the Netflix documentary “The Short Game” 10 years ago. She went 3-1 in her Curtis Cup matches at Merion last year. Forty minutes later, reigning U.S. Girls’ Junior champ Kiara Romero faces 2022 U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball champ Thienna Huynh. At 12:40 p.m., the past meets the present as 2023 USC grad Malia Nam faces incoming Trojan freshman and 2022 U.S. Women’s Am semifinalist Bailey Shoemaker. At 1:30 p.m., 2022 ANWA champion Anna Davis, who is No. 5 in the latest Women’s World Amateur Golf Ranking®/WAGR®, takes on University of Virginia All-American Amanda Sambach, who is ranked No. 22. And at 1:50 p.m., Stanford teammates will become foes as Kelly Xu meets 2022 USA Curtis Cupper Megha Ganne, the low amateur in the 2021 U.S. Women’s Open. Xu, the first female champion at Augusta National (won ages 7-9 division of inaugural Drive, Chip & Putt in 2014), hit the opening tee shot of this year’s U.S. Women’s Open at Pebble Beach.