Wagner Wins Women's Mid-Am by 1 over 6-Time Champ Klasse

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LAKEVILLE -- The MGA Women's Mid-Amateur Championship was the second state tournament to be contested this week, and as it approached its conclusion at Brackett's Crossing Golf Club, it looked for all the world like a replay of what happened the day before in the Minnesota Senior Open.

Then someone changed the script and altered the ending, and Kristen Wagner eked out a one-stroke victory over Leigh Klasse. Both players closed with 4-over-par 75's, but Wagner posted a 36-hole total of 151. Klasse finished at 152.

Katie Hanneman took third place at 154, after shooting her second straight 77. Kara Salava was another two back in fourth place, at 156 (77-79), and Claudia Pilot, a former three-time Mid-Am champion, was fifth with a 157 (76-81). 

In the Senior Open, Joe Stansberry, the first-round leader, was three ahead with four holes to go at Edina CC during Tuesday's final round, but he made four bogeys on the way in. That opened the door for the tournament favorite, Don Berry, the player with the more titles on his resume than anyone else in the field. He parred the final four holes and won by a stroke.

Wednesday's final round of the Women's Mid-Am looked like deja vu all over again (in the immortal words of Yogi Bera). Wagner, the first-round co-leader, birdied the 474-yard, par-5 14th hole at Brackett's to expand her advantage to three strokes over Klasse, a six-time winner of this tournament who hasn't finished out of the top two since some time around the turn of the millenium.

But Wagner, a native of Indiana who played college golf at Wake Forest in the 1990's, moved to Minnesota in 2006 and has been one of the state's best players since she began playing tournament golf again in 2009, bogeyed the 15th, 16th and 17th holes, which left her tied with Klasse. The stage seemed set for Klasse to claim her seventh Mid-Am trophy. At that point, however, the tournament made a 180-degree turn from direction of the previous day's drama.

Wagner reasserted herself with a par at the 480-yard, par-5 18th, and Klasse made a bogey, which meant that Wagner had won her first Minnesota individual stroke play championship.

It's her third state title overall. She won the 2010 Minnesota Women's Public Golf Association Four-Ball, with Ann Brilley as her partner. Her one previous indivdiual title came last year's MWPGA Match Play Championship, where she defeated guess who in the final? -- Klasse.

Jack Nicklaus, in addition to the record 18 professional majors he won (he also won two amateur majors -- the 1959 and '61 U.S. Amateurs), had a record 19 runner-up finishes in majors to go with all those championships.

Klasse could be considered the Jack Nicklaus of Minnesota women's golf. In the MWPGA Match Play, for example, a tournament that has been played eight times since it was started in 2004, Klasse has two first-place finishes and five seconds. In the Mid-Am, during that same time span, she has finished: first ('04), first ('05), first ('06), first ('07), first ('08), second ('09), second (2010), first ('11) and second ('12). That's six firsts and three seconds in nine consecutive appearances for the 51-year-old four-time MGA Women's Player of the Year and two-time Women's Senior Player of the Year (in two years of eligibility).

16th MGA Women's Mid-Amateur Championship

At Brackett's Crossing CC

Par 71, 5,610 yards

Lakeville

Final results 

Kristen Wagner, Minneapolis Golf Club, 76-75--151
Leigh Klasse, Meadowbrook Golf Club, 77-75--152
Katie Hanneman, Bearpath Golf & Country Club, 77-77--154
Kara Salava, Keller Golf Club, 77-79--156
Claudia Pilot, Austin Country Club, 76-81--157
Brenda Williams, Windsong Farm, 81-77--158
Betsy Aldrich, Woodhill Country Club, 81-77--158
Mary Hoisser, Keller Golf Club, 79-79--158
Donna Turner, Bracketts Crossing Country Club, 84-77--161
Deb Hayes, Keller Golf Club, 80-86--166
Norma O'Leary, Silver Bay Golf Course, 87-80--167
Terri Doolittle, Medina Golf & Country Club, 85-82--167
Ellie Layton, Rochester Golf & Country Club, 83-85--168
Stacy Lambert, Prestwick Golf Club, 84-85--169
Luanne Cortesi, Keller Golf Club, 85-84--169