Shannon Kennedy Wins Michigan Women’s Amateur on Final Two Holes
By Tom Lang
SOUTHFIELD, Mich. – Shannon Kennedy does not need to wait until ‘next time.’
She’s now the 2024 and 108th Michigan Women’s Amateur champion.
Shortly after earning that special title, Kennedy, age 21 and a Michigan State golfer who prepped at Birmingham Marian, indicated she was so far from a good frame of mind at this event the last couple years she thought a title would have to come ‘next time.’
“I missed the (stroke play) cut at this tournament a couple years ago and I think that was, honestly, a really big turning point in my career,” she said. “I said to my dad, ‘I’m done; like I don’t even want to do this anymore, it’s embarrassing.’ I’m a college golfer at Michigan State … I said to myself you should be winning this tournament, not missing the cut.’
"And my dad said to me, ‘look Shannon, you have the rest of your life to play golf. It doesn’t matter if you miss the cut, make the cut, you can still play golf the rest of your life. From then on I’ve tried to have the mentality I’m going to play in the Michigan Amateur as many times as I can for the rest of my life. If I don’t win it now I can get it the next time.”
Well, she won it now – a 2-up victory over recent high school grad and MHSAA state champ Elise Fennel of Caledonia who is on her way to play golf at Illinois State.
Kennedy credited her ball striking all week as her strength and that standing over the short putts was not comfortable for her. It also didn’t hurt she basically out-drove all her opponents, Fennell included.
“Even this week, mentally I was not feeling good about golf,” Kennedy admitted. “I was even not wanting to play. But I just told myself sometimes you’ve got to suck it up and do things, you can’t just give up when times get hard. And obviously I came out here and grinded through it.”
Kennedy never led until the 17th hole. Throughout the final round on Friday (June 14) at Plum Hollow Country Club, Fennell had as much as a two-hole lead, or the pair were all square. But Fennell’s approach to the 17th green clipped a tree branch and her ball dropped down almost into a hazard giving Fennell a bad lie and a few strokes later, Kennedy walked off the green with a par and her first lead.
Both players were a little off the green on 18, but Kennedy’s chip for a birdie attempt hit the flagstick and bounced back a couple feet. Fennell eventually conceded that putt after missing her own attempt at par.
“I feel like I played really well and I just hung in there all week and kept it going,” Fennell said. “It was a really close final match with Shannon. I just had a couple putts lip-out and I feel like that was the difference.”
Perhaps the bigger news for Kennedy wasn’t just adding her name to the Patti Shook Boice Trophy with 13 other Spartans since the mid-1960s – it’s that new this year, the Michigan Women’s Amateur champ receives an automatic invitation to the U.S. Women’s Amateur.
“I actually didn’t know the winner got into the US Am until lunch (today, between the semifinal an finals),” Kennedy confessed. “So I was pleasantly surprised by that. And I definitely feel like it’s the way it should be. I feel an 18-hole qualifier is not representative of who the best players are – in your state or in the country – so anyone winning their home state amateur, I think it’s really cool that they’re able to get into the US Am and I hope to represent Michigan State and the state of Michigan on a big stage.
“And I feel really good looking at that trophy and seeing other Spartans on there, like Ally Geer, and coach (Stacy Slobodnik-Stoll).”
