Cohen Qualifies for U.S. Women’s Amateur

Alternate becomes fifth player in field with Colorado ties.

Jon Rizzi

Centennial’s Mackenzie Cohen has had many close calls this summer.

In June’s CWGA Match Play Championship, she lost 1 up to finalist Brittany Fan.

The following week in Nashville, she made it to the championship flight of match play in the Western Women’s Golf Association Amateur Championship—only to lose 1 up again.

And on July 13, the 20-year-old junior-to-be at Memphis’ Rhodes College shot a 72 during the U.S. Women’s Amateur qualifier at Westminster’s Heritage Golf Course at Westmoor. Her score left her one shot shy of qualifying for the event and put her in the limbo of being an alternate.

Two weeks later, she got a call that wasn’t close.

Last Friday during a round at Inverness Golf Club in Englewood, Cohen’s phone rang with an unfamiliar number from New Jersey. “I let it go to voicemail,” she says. “When I checked it, it was the USGA inviting me to compete in the Amateur. It took about two seconds for me to call back and say yes.”  

The event, which will take place August 10-16 at Portland Golf Club in Oregon, will mark Cohen’s first USGA event. She’ll join a field that includes Westminster’s Jennifer Kupcho, who’ll be competing in her seventh USGA event, Hannah Wood (competing in her sixth), and fellow first-timers Erin Sanger of Longmont and University of Colorado junior Esther Lee.

No stranger to the spotlight, Cohen won the state’s 2012 5A championship while a junior at Cherry Creek High School.

Last May she won the Southern Athletic Association Conference Championship and earned conference Player of the Year honors. In the opening round of the Division III NCAA National Championship at Mission Inn Golf and Tennis Resort, she recorded an ace on the par-3 eighth hole of the Campeón Course en route to helping the Lynx to a fifth-place finish in the event. The Women’s Golf Coaches Association named her a Division III All-American Second Team for the 2014-2015 season.

She also recently finished third in the CWGA Stroke Play Championship at Pinehurst.

In Portland, she’ll be playing in the third-oldest national championship in the country. Dating to 1895, the U.S. Women’s Amateur counts among its champions Colorado Golf Hall of Famers Babe Didrikson Zaharias, Jill McGill and Barbara McIntire, who won it twice. Other notable winners include Julie Inkster, Patty Berg, JoAnne Carner, Grace Park and Morgan Pressel.

“I’m going to make the most of the experience,” Cohen says. “It’ll be fun to see how I stack up against the competition.”