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Kristen Park is a southern California girl
who made her first big splash in amateur golf in 2007. Early
in the year, Kristen won the prestigious Kathy Whitworth Invitational
over a field stacked with top golf talent. Soon after that,
she was the runner-up at the AJGA Rolex Tournament of Champions.
She achieved all this while not yet in high school; she became
a freshman in fall of 2007.
But her biggest result came at the US Girls
Junior in July. This was only her first ever match play event,
but she finished fourth in the stroke play portion and never
looked back. She went on to win the event, the fourth youngest
girl to ever do so.
At one point, her achievements in this and
other events allowed her to climb briefly to the top of the
AJGA rankings. She was named to the Canon Cup and Solheim
Junior teams. In Sweden, she teamed for several wins for the
American Solheim squad. At the end of the year, she was named
a first team Rolex Junior All American, the second youngest
girl to ever receive that honor.
Kristen made the Solheim team again in 2009,
and won all three of her matches. She remains undefeated in
that event.
Park continued to excel in 2010. She was named
the Rolex Player of the Year that season, accumulating wins
at the Ping Invitational, the Rolex Tournament of Champions,
and the Under Armour/Hunter Mahan Championship. She also reached
the quarterfinals in the US Women's Amateur and was a team
member of the winning US team at the Junior Ryder Cup.
Park signed a letter of intent to attend USC
in 2011, where she will doubtless become one of the lynchpins
of their women's golf team.
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