They didn’t need carts with lights at San Diego Country Club this time.

C.Y. Wu took care of that.

Tangled up in the longest scheduled 18-hole match in the 117-year history of U.S. Golf Association events, and with the sun down and the light fading on Friday, Wu ended her U.S. Women’s Amateur Championship playoff on the 30th hole by making a 25-foot par putt to beat Lauren Stephenson.

It was on Tuesday that Wu, a 13-year-old from Chinese Taipei, advanced out of a playoff by making par by the light of golf carts pulled up to the 11th green.


Standing by the 18th green on Friday as the women played their 12th extra hole, USGA championship director Shannon Rouillard said she was ready to call play and extend the playoff until Saturday morning.

It appeared she would need to do that when both women missed the green on their approach shots, and Stephenson coaxed her putt down to 3 feet before Wu lined up her attempt.

Wu calmly stroked the shot and it fell in, drawing a roar from the couple hundred people who stayed to watch the scintillating golf.

The previous record of holes needed in USGA match play was 28. The record for the Women’s Am was 27.


The players ended up doing loops like NASCAR racers. They made three circuits of the playoff holes – 10, 11, 17 and 18.

“I didn’t want to lose,” the diminutive Wu said simply of why she hung in with the 20-year-old Stephenson despite being regularly outdriven by 30 to 40 yards and having longer putts for nearly all of the playoff.

The putt that will be most remembered came on the 26th hole – which was played on the difficult 18th at San Diego CC. Stephenson rifled an iron shot to 3 feet and it seemed all but certain she would win because Wu left herself 70 feet short of the hole on her approach.

Wu looked over the putt with her caddie, Scott Patel, a San Diego CC member who was the club champion in 2015.


“I’ve played here so much. I told her, ‘Hey, it’s just a straight putt. There’s nothing to it. You have to make it’ “ Patel said.

What happened next?

“Sensational,” Patel said.

Wu’s putt rolled up near the hole and then looked like it would lose steam. But with one final rotation, it dropped in.


Stephenson was among the first to smile and offer a golf clap.

“That putt – I mean, that’s going to be on TV and you’re going to see it forever,” Stephenson said. “That was crazy.

“it stinks to lose, but at the same time, you’re never going to experience something like that again, and we both played great all day, so you can’t really be too upset about it.”

Stephenson missed five putts of 10 feet or closer from the 17th hole on. Any one of them would have ended the match.


“If Lauren had her putting going, the match would have been over,” Patel said. “Lauren helped her out.”

Wu’s victory gave her another piece of history. She will be the youngest player to compete in the semifinals of a USGA event. She is set to take on Sophia Schubert, a 21-year-old from Oak Ridge, Tenn., who beat Mexican 16-year-old Isabella Fierro 3 and 1.

The other semifinal pits two Pac-12 standouts -- UCLA’s Lilia Vu, the No. 5-ranked amateur in the world, and Stanford’s Albane Valenzuela, who is No. 3.

In the quarterfinals, Vu didn’t make a birdie in beating 14-year-old Lucy Li 4 and 3, and Valenzuela defeated USC’s Robyn Ree 4 and 3.


Wu is being hosted this week by Ernie Huang, a prominent figure in the San Diego golf community who has helped other golfers from Asia, including former world No. 1 Yani Tseng.

Huang said Wu first came to San Diego as a 10-year-old to compete in Junior World. Last summer, she qualified for the U.S. Women’s Am, but had to pull out with a knee injury.

Huang said that when he told Wu that she couldn’t play, she shrugged and said, “OK, I’ll do it next year.“

Wu came to San Diego CC last week to get in some practice and played with Patel. After a couple of rounds, it was decided he would be her caddie. The hotel owner has become fond of Wu in a short time.


“I’ve tried to make it easy on her,” Patel said. “We talk about her favorite foods. She says she has 14 boyfriends in her bag. Every single club in her bag is her boyfriend.”

On the other side of the bracket is another international in Valenzuela.

The Swiss 19-year-old was exempt for last year’s tournament, but she had something more enticing to do: go to the Olympics and play in golf’s return to the Games in 112 years.

The USGA moved up its women’s championship last year to the first week of August to avoid a conflict with the Olympic tournament, but that didn’t account for the opening ceremonies being on Aug. 5, with the Women’s Am ending on Aug. 7.


There was very little deliberation on Valenzuela’s part about which she would choose.

“I was like, well, I cannot miss that,” she said of marching into massive Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, under her country’s flag. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

The Olympics turned out to be everything she hoped, and the young woman with citizenships in four countries played impressively, finishing tied for 21st as one of only three amateurs in the field.


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tod.leonard@sduniontribune.com; Twitter: @sdutleonard