Erica Shepherd’s quest to win another USGA championship event came up short on Wednesday.
The Center Grove junior and playing partner Megan Furtney were eliminated in the semifinal round of the U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball tournament, losing 3 and 2 to Katrina Prendergast and Ellen Secor.
After leading for most of the first three rounds in the match-play portion of the event, Shepherd and Furtney got down early on Wednesday and could never sustain enough momentum to come all the way back.
"We birdied the first hole, so it’s not like we really started off slow," Shepherd said. "It’s just that the birdie putts that had been falling the last three or four days just weren’t falling today. We still played good. I think the other team just played a little better than us."
Shepherd and Furtney fell behind with a second-hole bogey but drew even with a birdie on the fifth. Prendergast and Secor, though, won both the seventh and eighth holes to reclaim the lead for good, then went up by three on the 11th.
Facing a steep uphill climb, Shepherd and Furtney fought back immediately with a birdie on the 12th hole, but a birdie on 14 from Prendergast and Secor again made it a three-hole margin with four holes to go, and that lead held up.
"Being down three is something that I’ve come back from before at the Girls Junior, so it’s not impossible," Shepherd said. "But it’s hard when they aren’t giving you the chances. They were still making birdies coming in. They just didn’t stop making birdies, so there were really no opportunities for us to get back those three holes."
Up next for Shepherd is the Thunderbird International Junior in Scottsdale, Arizona, May 25-28. Shepherd will go straight from there to the U.S. Women’s Open, which begins May 31 at Shoal Creek in Alabama. This will be the second Open appearance for the 17-year-old, who also qualified in 2016.
Because of her busy schedule, she’ll be taking her final exams early.
Despite the loss, Shepherd enjoyed the experience of playing with a future Duke teammate in Furtney.
"I’ve never really played that much with a partner before," she said, "so just having that experience for us to come back next year and hopefully get further and win, I think that’ll be good for us."
