Michigan Golf Journal July 2021

MIch Women’s Amateur SAGINAW – The Michigan Women’s Amateur Championship has been on the bucket list of Midland’s Kimberly Dinh since her undergraduate days as a golfer at the University of Wisconsin. The 28-year-old Senior Research Specialist for Dow Chemical checked it off in June, winning a tense 1-up title match against U-M golfer Mikaela Schulz of West Bloomfield at Saginaw Country Club. “It feels amazing,” Dinh said following the 105th edition of the state championship. “This was always one of my goals and I never quite got it done when I was in high school and college and playing all the time. I didn’t think I would play in it after that just because of everything else, but here I am and it’s amazing.” Dinh, who started playing again after graduate work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and won the GAM Women’s Mid- Amateur in 2020, made a six-foot birdie putt on the par 4 No. 16 hole off a 54-degree wedge shot to take the final lead in the match. “The match could have gone either way,” Dinh said. “We were pretty much trading shot for shot and ultimately it was going to come down to who was going to make the shot at the right moment.” Neither golfer had a bigger lead than 1-up through the match. They each won a single hole on the front nine to make the turn tied in the match. Dinh earned her spot in the final match with a 3 and 1 morning semifinal win over Ariel Chang of Macomb Township, last summer’s Michigan Girls’ Junior State Amateur Champion who is headed to the University of Detroit Mercy to play golf. Schulz, age 19, in the other semifinal fought off defending champion Anna Kramer of Spring Lake and the University of Indianapolis in another tense 1-up match. “I felt intensity and pressure in every match for sure, and it was a string of great matches, great competition,” Schulz said. “It was an honor to be competing in this championship.” Dinh said golf is different at 28, especially because she had to take vacation days to play this week. “So I took a third of them up,” she said and laughed. “It was worth it.” MGJ Kimberly Dinh Wins 105 th Michigan Women’s Amateur By Greg Johnson