In a US Open that is dominated by Asian competitors, with 11 of the first 15 from the continent, plus two with Asian roots, all the praise fell on young Asterisk Talley, a 15-year-old amateur golfer, at the end of the second round.
Talley, the junior at Lancaster Country Club (Pennsylvania), shot 71 to total 141, one over par, and remain five strokes behind the leader, Thailand’s Wichanee Meechai, three strokes behind Andrea Lee, also from the United States, and two strokes behind two Majors winners, Minjee Lee and Yuka Saso.
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The young lady with the big smile, even more youthful-looking because of the braces, had a hard Friday. She dropped two bogeys, on the 12th because it sent her into the water, on her first nine holes and then went on to card pars with a single birdie on the par 3 6th hole [she had started on the 10th]. “I minimized mistakes,” said the young woman who has just entered high school in Chowchilla, a town in the interior of California, which has two prisons and less than 20,000 inhabitants and is marked in history by that tragic memory of the 1976 kidnapping and murder of a busload of children.
Talley was a prodigy from the cradle. At the age of three, her father was told of the young girl’s talent and put a coach in charge of her. At eight she was already working under Mike Schy, who among others coached Bryson DeChambeau‘s first steps. “You stood in front of her and thought you were talking to a 20-year-old,” Schy said.
Daughter of a Greek mother, who is the one who has given her that unique name whose translation is ‘little star’, last summer she was in Spain to play the Junior Solheim Cup where her driver did not go unnoticed. She is among the five most powerful golfers in the history of golf with shots that exceed 250 meters.
“I feel like I’m doing what I want to do,” she told reporters. “My goal was to make the cut in this tournament and now try to be the top-ranked amateur,” a task that is difficult as Megan Schofill, last year’s US Amateur winner, is equal with her and Catherine Park, one stroke behind. They are 16th and 12th in the amateur rankings, where Talley is still 87th. “But above all I want to enjoy this first experience.”
Eleven birdies
Meechai, a birdie machine – with 11 birdies in two days – climbed to the top of the leaderboard. The golfer, who claims to feel like she is in a “haunted” house in the residence she rented at the last minute to live this week in the tournament, managed better than anyone with some fine shots. At 31 years old and winless on the LPGA she sees how the experience of Minjee Lee and Saso will be a major obstacle to the weekend and ultimate victory. “But if there’s a ghost in that house, she likes me.”