In one breathless and brilliant month, Allisen Corpuz played in the LPGA’s Lotte Championship at Ko Olina, captured her first David S. Ishii Foundation State High School Championship and qualified for next week’s 71st U.S. Women’s Open.
In between, she graduated from Punahou.
“It felt really great to see all the work paying off,” Corpuz said by phone in the middle of a summer mainland tour that could nearly take her to her first day of college. “My senior year was really fun, enjoyable.”
Allisen Corpuz
>> DOB: 3/20/98
>> 2006, ’07, ’09 U.S. Kids Golf World Champion
>> 2008 Optimist International Junior Champion (Girls 10-11)
>> 2009 Hawaii State Women’s Match Play Champion (youngest ever)
>> 2014 Hawaii State Open Women’s Champion
>> 2016: LPGA Lotte Championship qualifier, State High School Champion, U.S. Women’s Open qualifier
>> Current Golfweek Junior Ranking: 13th
>> Punahou 2016, heading to USC
In the fall, her academic endeavors continue in Los Angeles, where USC will pay for her college education via golf scholarship.
It has all come together for a golfer hooked on the game since she picked up a club at “4 or 5” when brother George was hitting golf balls. He would follow his father to USC. Now Allisen will join her brother after a memorable junior career derailed momentarily by a wrist injury.
“It was a goal of mine to be here, but it seemed so far away when I was younger,” Corpuz says. “I think about all these older girls who were about to go to college then. I remember Cyd (Okino) qualifying for the Open when she was 14 and, I think, Stephanie Kono too. They are so good, so much older. It’s pretty unreal if I’m thinking back to being 7 and thinking then, ‘Yeah, when I’m 18 I want to qualify.’”
The Open tees off next Thursday at CordeValle, just south of San Jose. It is only the third Women’s Open in California, and the third mainland event Corpuz will play since graduating.
She qualified for Championship Flight at last week’s Women’s Western Golf Association 116th National Amateur Championship in Ohio, eventually falling in the second round of match play. This week, she’s at the Rolex Tournament of Champions in Ohio.
If all goes well, she will be home less than two weeks before heading to USC, which lost to Duke in the quarterfinals of this year’s NCAA Championship. The Pac-12 champions also lost their top recruit when Hannah O’Sullivan, the 2015 U.S. Women’s Amateur champ and a Symetra Tour champion at 16, chose to turn pro in April.
Next up is Corpuz, for many, many reasons.
She won a Junior World 6-under title, then U.S. Kids championships at 8, 9, and 11 — the same year she became the youngest Hawaii State Women’s Match Play winner, capturing the major on her way to sixth grade.
Corpuz is a three-time AJGA All-American and was the youngest competitor ever in a USGA Championship, when she played at the 2008 Women’s Amateur Public Links, at 10 years, 3 months.
She can barely count her Top-10 American Junior Golf Association major finishes on two hands and won the 2014 Hawaii State Women’s Open. And, last month’s high school title helped her Punahou team to its ninth team title in 10 years, including the length of her career.
Corpuz has been very good for a very long time. Her major at USC will be business administration. Her passion is to play golf professionally.
Next week will be a remarkable opportunity to see where she stands, as Lotte was.
“It will be a tough course obviously,” Corpuz says. “I’ll see how well prepared I am for it and get the most out of it. Just playing with professionals, comparing my game and seeing what they’re doing is always a nice thing.”
Corpuz is a “huge” Lydia Ko fan and also follows Brooke Henderson closely. Megan Khang has been a close friend since they were both 8.
A year ago, Khang was the only amateur to finish ahead of Mariel Galdiano— Corpuz’s Punahou teammate — at the Women’s Open. Then she qualified for the LPGA. After last week, she has four Top-25 finishes, including a seventh at Lotte.
Corpuz wants to get there, maybe next week.
“It’s the first time, so I’ll see how it goes,” she says. “But for me, I’ll just try and focus on my routine, do what I need to do and not focus on results, just the process. Do the best I can for the results I want.”
“Lotte was not my best, but I definitely improved from the first day to the second. I felt pretty good toward the end, was hitting the shots I wanted. I definitely enjoyed it, it was a really nice experience. I loved the people I played with and I hung around later in the week just to see how it was to be out there. I followed Megan the last two rounds.”
Since then, Corpuz put her game into hyper drive.
“I’m really enjoying the feeling there’s something I’m working towards,” Corpuz says. “Working and trying to improve and see how good I can get. And hit the perfect shot. When you hit that shot it’s like, ‘Wow, that’s really good.’ I always try to work for that feeling.”
Along with Corpuz and 2014 U.S. Women’s Open champion Michelle Wie, ‘Iolani alum Marissa Chow will be playing in the Open, for the second time. Former Hawaii resident Alexandra Kaui also has qualified.
Chow, niece of former LPGA player Lenore Muraoka, was a three-time All-American at Pepperdine and left ranked second in career scoring (73.32). She was the 2015 WCC Player of the Year. Chow led the 2014 Open briefly after birdieing four of the first six holes.
The U.S. Women’s Open will be televised on Fox Sports 1 the first two days and Fox network on the weekend, from 9 a.m. each day.