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Four Selected For USA Team At First Copa De Las Americas
April 25, 2003
Far Hills, N.J. - Four national champions will represent the United States of America in the inaugural Copa de Las Americas, an international amateur golf event including countries from North, Central and South America and the Caribbean, from June 25-28, at the Hyatt Dorado Beach Resort and Country Club in Dorado, Puerto Rico, the United States Golf Association has announced.
Four USGA champions from 2002, U.S. Amateur champion Ricky Barnes of Stockton, Calif.; U.S. Women's Amateur champion Becky Lucidi of Poway, Calif.; U.S. Women's Mid-Amateur champion Kathy Hartwiger of Birmingham, Ala.; and U.S. Amateur Public Links champion Ryan Moore of Puyallup, Wash., have been selected to participate in this event hosted by the Puerto Rico Golf Association.
Mary Bea Porter-King, a USGA Executive Committee member from Lihue, Hawaii, has been named captain of the USA squads. Porter-King played for more than 20 years on the LPGA Tour and works closely with junior golf in Hawaii.
Two-member teams from as many as 32 countries will play 72 holes in team stroke play competition in three categories-- male, female and overall team.
Barnes, a senior at the University of Arizona, and Moore, a sophomore at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, both made the cut at the 2003 Masters Tournament. Barnes was a member of the USA team that won the World Amateur Team Championship last autumn in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Moore, the 2002 Mountain West Conference Freshman of the Year, was also the runner-up at the 2000 U.S. Junior Amateur.
Lucidi, a senior at the University of Southern California, played on the 2002 USA Women's World Amateur team, which placed fifth in Malaysia. Hartwiger, who plays a limited schedule of competitive golf because of her young children, is a three-time state amateur champion, and helped Alabama to win the 1997 USGA State Team Championship.
The competition will be contested on Dorado Beach's East and West courses, both designed by Robert Trent Jones. The Hyatt Dorado's courses will also serve as the site of the 2004 World Amateur Team Championships.
The USA teams were chosen by the USGA international selection committees.
For more information about the Copa De las Americas, please visit the Web site of the Puerto Rico Golf Association at www.prga.org.
E-mail address: mediarelations@usga.org
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