2022 Tournaments We’ll Remember: The Augusta National Women’s Amateur

Over the next two weeks, the SI Golf team will look back on 10 memorable tournaments from 2022.

The Event: The Augusta National Women’s Amateur

Site: Augusta National Golf Club, Augusta, Ga.

Dates: March 30-April 2, 2022

Result: Anna Davis wins by one shot over Ingrid Lindblad and Lattana Stone. 

Why We’ll Remember It: The Augusta National Women’s Amateur has been a hallmark golf event every year since its inception in 2019. But the 2022 tournament in particular provided some excellent drama and revealed a new young force in the women’s game: 16-year-old Anna Davis.

The ANWA, which is played the week prior to the Masters tournament, hosts its first 36 holes at Champions Retreat Golf Club, followed by a prestigious final round where only 30 players get to compete on the hallowed grounds of Augusta National Golf Club.

Davis may have emerged as a star following her victory, but throughout the final round she looked like an underdog as one of the youngest players in the mix. The experienced LSU junior Latanna Stone, on the other hand, seemed as though she had the victory under her belt when she began to pull away from the field with back-to-back birdies to cap off her first nine. Then Stone’s LSU roommate, Ingrid Lindblad of Sweden, entered the picture with an eagle on 15 up ahead.

But keeping a low profile with her iconic bucket hat and displaying nerves of steel, Davis started to climb her way up the leaderboard with back-to-back birdies on 12 and 13, dominating the famous Amen Corner. A four-under 68 gave Lindblad the clubhouse lead at even par for the tournament, but a clutch tee shot by Stone on the par-3 16th singled her out once again as the favorite down the stretch. She had a two-shot lead walking to the 17th tee.

It didn’t last for long—a soul-crushing double bogey put Stone at a tie with Davis, who made two seamless pars on 17 and 18 to take over the clubhouse lead from Lindblad. One of those featured what might have been the shot of the day: an expertly judged pitch shot to set up an easy up-and-down on her second to last hole.

Needing a par to force a playoff, Stone fell short. A bogey on 18 meant that Davis, the high school sophomore from Spring Valley, Calif., had just become the youngest ever winner of the event.

Davis’s underdog days were officially over after that. The champion went on to receive exemptions into seven LPGA events, including three majors. Davis made five of those seven cuts, solidifying the ANWA as a key identifier of the game’s future.