Rose Zhang's NCAA title continues success of junior tournament winners from desert's LPGA event

If desert golf fans were paying attention this week, they might have noticed a familiar face winning the NCAA Division I women’s individual title.

Rose Zhang of Stanford won the title by three shots, not a margin indicative of how she dominated the tournament in its early rounds. Zhang’s desert connection comes from being one of a handful of talented and now successful junior golfers to have won the ANA Junior Inspiration.

Originally a tournament just for juniors in the Southern California area, the one-day 18-hole event was designed to award the winner with a berth in the LPGA major championship at Mission Hills Country Club in Rancho Mirage.

What no one who conducted the tournament, from LPGA Hall of Famer Amy Alcott to the Southern California Golf Association to the American Junior Golf Association, could have predicted was that many of those junior winners would go on to make the cut in the major championship.

Played from 2012 to 2019, but canceled in 2020 during the CIVD-19 pandemic, the junior tournament produced four players who have played on the LPGA and three more players, including Zhang, who seem certain to make waves on the women’s tour.

While the ANA Junior Inspiration, by whatever name, won’t be played in the desert again with the LPGA moving its major to Houston next year, here’s a look at the five most accomplished golfers to have won the ANA Junior Inspiration title in the desert.

Rose Zhang (2018)

At this point, Zhang is the most accomplished winner on this list. Zhang won the ANA Junior title in 2018 while still attending Pacific Academy in Irvine. In 2020, she won the U.S. Women’s Amateur and just a month later was the No. 1 ranked amateur in the world. In 2021, she won the U.S. Junior Girls Amateur, becoming the first player to win the Junior Girls title after winning the Women’s Amateur title. And just this week Zhang won the NCAA individual women’s title to cap her freshman year at Stanford. The question with Zhang is not if she can continue to win, but if she will be winning as an amateur or as a professional in the near future.

Alison Lee (2012)

The first winner of the desert junior event, when past Chevron Championship winner Alcott started the event with sponsor Fresh & Easy, Lee went on to be an immediate sensation and was a member of two Curtis Cup teams. She attended UCLA but turned pro before finishing a second year for the Bruins. She made it through the LPGA qualifying school in 2014, and by 2015 she was a member of the U.S. Solheim Cup team in her rookie year. Since then, Lee’s career hasn’t reached some of the same heights, but she remains on the LPGA.

Angel Yin (2013)

Yin is known as one of the longer hitters on the LPGA, but in 2013 she was a winner of an event that earned her a berth in what was known at the time as the Kraft Championship. She was already known in golf for qualifying for the U.S. Women’s Open in 2012 when she was 12 years old. Like others, Yin made the cut in the desert’s LPGA major the year she won the junior qualifier. She turned pro in 2016 and while she hasn’t won on the LPGA yet, she does have a victory on the Ladies European Tour in the 2017 Omega Dubai Ladies Classic.

Haley Moore (2015)

Moore, from Escondido, made headlines when she cried on national television thinking she missed the cut in the major, already renamed the ANA Inspiration, only to cry again when she found out she had made the cut on the number. Moore went on to a strong career at the University of Arizona and helped that team win the NCAA team championship in her junior year, making the clinching putt in the deciding match. After getting LPGA status through the 2019 qualifying school, Moore is trying to regain some status on the LPGA by playing in mini-tours and the developmental Epson Tour.

Andrea Lee (2016)

Few golfers who won the Junior Inspiration were as decorated or heralded as Lee. In fact she had already played in the ANA Inspiration in 2015 on a sponsor’s exemption before qualifying for the event again the next year through the Junior Inspiration. She was also the 2014 AJGA player of the year and was a member of a Curtis Cup and Junior Solheim Cup team. Lee went to Stanford and won nine individuals titles while gaining the No. 1 ranking among college golfers in 2019. As a pro, the road has been a bit rocky for Lee, but she seems on her way to the LPGA now, having won her first professional title on the developmental Epson Tour this year.

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Rose Zhang latest success story from junior event at desert's LPGA major