IGA Announces Changes for 2010 Championships
The Iowa Golf Association (IGA) will add playing opportunities for women members in 2010 and make some minor changes to the Iowa Amateur and IGA-IWGA State Parent/Child Championship.
IGA adds Women’s Division to
Mid-Am, Match Play
At the IGA annual meeting in November, 2009, the recommendation of
the IGA Rules and Competitions Committee to add Women’s Divisions to the
IGA Match Play and the Iowa Mid-Amateur was approved by the Board of
Directors. Final details were worked out over the winter and are
expected be
approved at the IGA’s March 6th board meeting.
The Match Play will have a stroke play qualifying round to determine seeding for the match play draw and is open to all ages. The size of the draw will be determined once entry numbers are finalized. The Women’s Division of the Iowa Mid-Amateur will be contested over 36 holes with no cut, and is limited to golfers age 25 and older.
“The IGA has nearly 4,000 women members and the addition of these competitive opportunities for women golfers is an important effort to serve our entire membership,” said Rules and Competitions Committee Chairman Tom Christensen. “Several women at IGA member clubs told us that they would like to have more options to compete in championship events so we are simply responding to those requests.”
“It will be interesting to see what kind of turnout we get for these events,” said IGA Executive Director Bill Dickens. “We want to emphasize that the Match Play is open to women of all ages and we hope that these events will appeal to a wide age group. Many college age players have to leave the state of Iowa to find enough summer time competition, so we think this fills a need.”
Along with the Mid-Am and Match Play, the IGA continues to encourage its women members to participate in the IGA’s series of one-day net tournaments called the IGA Members Net Tour (igamembersnettour.org).
Parent/Child to run
concurrent with IGA Father/Son
The IGA Father/Son and the IGA-IWGA Parent/Child will be held
concurrently as part of the IGA’s new “Family Weekend”. Holding the two
championships on different weekends in past years created an undue
burden on host club Jester Park and the IGA Staff.
“This change made sense for the host club because we no longer had to ask them to give up their golf course for one entire weekend and a portion of another”, said IGA Assistant Executive Director Chad Pitts. “Plus we easily have room for the added Parent-Child teams in August”.
The 2010 event will be August 14th-15th and the championships will remain distinctly separate events with separate prize winners. Parent/Child teams and Father/Son teams will not be paired together unless specifically requested. In addition, playing opportunities for both the Young Adult (child 11 or 12 years old) and the Junior Divisions (child 10 or younger) have been expanded. The Young Adult Division now can choose to play Saturday morning, Saturday Afternoon or Sunday morning while the Junior Division, which competes on the par-3 course, can play either Saturday or Sunday morning.
“With the events running concurrently, there are many additional playing choices for the Young Adult and Junior Divisions, and we feel it is important to give Moms and Dads as many options as possible to play with their sons and daughters”, said Pitts.
Iowa Amateur will not have
qualifying events in 2010
The 108th Iowa Amateur is being contested at Bent Tree
Golf Club in Council Bluffs July 23rd-25th and
there will not be any qualifying events in 2010. The IGA has scheduled
and subsequently cancelled qualifiers five of the past eight years. The
three years qualifiers were needed was when the championship proper was
in the Des Moines metro area.
With no qualifying events scheduled entry into the championship will be handled as follows: the field is limited to the first 156 players. Those players who meet one of the 18 exempt categories will be automatically entered provided they file an entry prior to the deadline. The remaining field will be made up of entries received on a first come, first served basis. All entries, both exempt and non-exempt, must be received prior to the July 15th entry deadline. All remaining entries will be put on a waiting list and those who do not get into the championship will be given a full refund after July 25th.
Complete information on all IGA championships will be published on the entry applications which are available March 1st at www.iowagolf.org.
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