MSU’s Valentina Rossi Wins Women’s Amateur Latin America
Teammate Valery Plata turning professional mid-season
By Tom Lang
The buzz around the golf program at Michigan State a few days before Thanksgiving was loud and strong.
Valentina Rossi, a junior, had just won the prestigious Women’s Amateur Latin America, with four rounds played at the Pillar Golf Club in Buenos Aries, Argentina.
Almost simultaneously, Valery Plata was successfully completing stage 2 of the LPGA Tour Q-School, and has since decided to turn professional after completing the fall schedule, and skip her college spring season, MSU coach Stacy Slobodnik-Stoll told me. A new LPGA rule requires players to be pros to advance to the third and final stage, the 8-round Q Series in Alabama in early December. Under the same circumstances, at the last minute before Stage 3 began, U-M’s Ashley Lau made the same decision to forgo the spring season and turn pro.
Last year, Plata had won the same Latin America tournament Rossi just did. It’s the second time they mirrored each other’s play. In 2020, Plata reached the semifinals of the U.S. Women’s Amateur, and Rossi did the same in 2021.
“I’m so happy for Valentina, her family and our program,” Slobodnik-Stoll said in a release about the Latin America. “This is such an incredible achievement for her and it’s a testament to the hard worker that Valen is. She never quit, she never thought she was out of it and continued to play her game and she was rewarded with a tremendous victory.
“It is a great accomplishment for our program to have back-to-back winners of one of the most prestigious amateur events in the world. Valery (Plata) and Valentina (Rossi) have been wonderful representatives of our program over the last few years and it’s just incredible to see them have such great success while representing their home country at the same time.”
Rossi came from behind by four strokes in the final round in Argentina. Via a Michigan media Zoom from Brazil, she said she played it like match play with the then leader in her group. Rossi made three birdies on the front nine to be one stroke back at the turn. But she went up two strokes with four holes to play.
“That’s when I felt like I can win this tournament,” she said. “Winning the Women’s Latin American after (Valery, her college roommate) is incredible. I’m pretty happy and I think it’s pretty cool for Michigan State.
“Those were both pretty important tournaments for us (Plata at Q-School) so we were talking about it, wishing good luck to each other. We were talking about how for Michigan State this is incredible, with so many changes in just a week.”
Rossi’s Latin America win automatically qualifies/exempts her for three LPGA majors in 2023: the AIG Women’s Open, the Amundi Evian Championship and the The Chevron Championship – as well as the Women’s Amateur Championship and the Hilton Grand Vacations ANNIKA Invitational. It did not come with an automatic bid to the Augusta National Women’s Amateur, but she still could make it there – which would be two years in a row for MSU.
“With this win I’ll go up in the (World Amateur) rankings, but I don’t know if it will be enough to qualify (for Augusta).”
