Carter’s Canyon: The 91st Women’s Amateur & Mid-Amateur

Carly Carter | Photo: Claire McCormick

Carter watching her tee ball on the 4th | Photo: Claire McCormick

The 91st playing of the Women’s Amateur Championship featured a fitting end — the (likely) final walk for a player whose last name is forever linked to golf in the Idaho and whose first name joins a short list of winners with multiple titles in the last 25 years.  

Carly Carter is a two-time Idaho State Women’s Amateur Champion now, boat racing the field along the Snake River at Canyon Springs Golf Course to finish seven-strokes clear of BYU duo Whitney Banz (+4) and Ava Schroeder (+5). She was the only player to keep every round at level par or better.  

With back-to-back birdies to start her tournament on Thursday, Carter pinned her name to the top of the board early and never really left. Payton Watkins-Panzeri's fifth birdie on the difficult 17th stole the first-round lead at two-under par, but Carter entered the second round lurking one shot back. 

Carter’s second round featured both fumbles and firepower. After a routine birdie-par start, things, as she put it, got “squirrely” as she played her next four holes in five-over par. 

“I usually hit it pretty consistent, but it was windy out there so it was getting kind of squirrely on me,” Carter said. “But I just kind of stayed steady and tried not to overreact to any bad shots.”  

“Heady” may be a better way to describe her reaction over the next seven holes, which she played in five-under par to bring her round back into red figures. A bogey on the par-5 16th dropped her back to even par on the day, but the wind helped pull the field into her review mirror for a three-shot, 36-hole lead.  

In an unusual setup, Canyon Springs played to a par 74 for the ladies this week. Its six par-5s made many of the longer players, including Carter, feel like the opportunities to score were plenty plentiful.  

“It makes it fun,” she said. “And you can go for all of them too, which make it more fun.”  

She played the par-5s in seven-under par (-7) for the week.

Carter’s final round featured four more birdies as she ran away from the field, totaling a field-high 13 for the week to finish at three-under par. A second etching on the Jean Lane Smith Cup sits alongside three Idaho Girls’ Junior Amateur titles.

“It would be great to win on a high note, especially from the IGA since I’ve grown up playing these [events] for so long,” she said after her second round. “So, it would be a great possible ending depending on how the rest of the summer goes.” 

The rest of Carter’s summer is up in the air, but it begins with a U.S. Women’s Amateur qualifier next week. If she qualifies, she’ll play the U.S. Women’s Amateur before turning professional. If not, she’ll take a crack at the mini tours before heading to Q-School. 

“[This win] is good for confidence,” she said. “It’s hard to win in golf because there are so many people playing and so many good players out there — if you can compete here, you can compete anywhere.”  

Felicia Medalla-Kennedy with the Vicki Mallea Cup | Photo: Claire McCormick

MID-AMATEUR CHAMPIONSHIP:

The 15th playing of the Idaho Women’s Mid-Amateur Championship featured a familiar face as well, but the Vicki Mallea Cup found its way into the hands of a new one.  

Karen Darrington returned from more than 20 months away from competition while on a mission to the Kingdom of Tonga, where she served for 18 months as a dental hygienist in an island nation desperately lacking medical resources. Over that time, golf looked a little different for the six-time Mid-Am champ — but she didn’t look far removed from her usual tournament form at Canyon Springs.  

“I was anxious to see how it would go,” Darrington said after her first round. “I didn’t really feel much pressure because I didn’t put a lot of high expectations on it. I just wanted to go out and play the golf course and see how I did — and it turned out okay.”  

The Twin Falls native found herself tied for the lead with Felicia Medalla-Kennedy, a former Cal State Fullerton golf team member. Both fired two-over rounds of 76 and followed with copy-paste performances (76-76).  

Across the Amateur and Mid-Amateur fields, Darrington and Medalla-Kennedy proved that par goes a long way to hanging around the top of the leaderboard. But it was Medalla-Kennedy who ultimately surged ahead in the par count and soared away from the field with a third-consecutive 76 and a five-shot victory. She made 38 pars over 54 holes, three more than Darrington.

“I always tell myself ‘fat-fat,’” Medalla Kennedy said. “Just go for the fattest part of the green, go for the fattest side of the fairway. I try not to put a lot of pressure on myself and just have fun out there.” 

Hailing from the Philippines, Medalla-Kennedy arrived in Twin Falls for her first ever IGA event after moving to Idaho with her Idaho-native husband who she met while playing golf in graduate school at University of Nottingham in England. The Mid-Amateur division, she says, opened her eyes to a new chapter in her golf life — one that took her to the 2024 U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship.  

“I think my golf journey is relatable to a lot of Mid-Ams that I’ve met...” she said. “[During Covid] I was stuck in the Philippines... and I just continued playing as much as I could throughout the lockdown. And then I just realized that there was another avenue for me to compete which is the Mid-Am [division]. So that’s given me motivation to just go out there and practice.  

“It's relatable for a lot of Mid-Ams who come out of college and find the game again — find the love for the game again — and are just out here to have fun and compete and meet a bunch of really cool people.”