Thomson helps Manitoba to second place

Ladies’ amateur golf in Manitoba has a new heartbeat, and a local player is helping in strengthening that pulse.
Fort Frances native Chrissy Thomson, fresh off winning the Manitoba Ladies Amateur Championship, managed two ties and one loss in match play to help Team Manitoba take second place during the two-day Western Canadian Ladies Team Championships in Vernon, B.C. that wrapped up Monday.
“In the past, Manitoba’s always been last, so it’s really good that we could move up,” Thomson said of the event, which featured the six low gross competitors from the amateur championships of B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba squaring off in a Ryder Cup-style format.
Each team would gain a point for a win in either a group or individual event, with a half-point being earned for a tie.
A best-ball competition pitted pairs of golfers from each province going head-to-head with one team from another province. As the provincial titleist, Thomson joined teammate Stacey Bieber from Winnipeg in facing the favoured B.C. squad.
“We both played really well,” Thomson said about her and Bieber earning the draw against B.C., which went on to win its third-consecutive team championship in the tournament.
“B.C. was definitely the hardest team,” she added. “But when one of us was in trouble, the other one was there to bail them out.”
Thomson and Bieber exchanged the lead with their West Coast counterparts several times during the match, finding themselves one hole down with three to play.
But after winning No. 16, the Manitoba duo then tied B.C. on Nos. 17 and 18 to secure the single point for the tie.
Then Sunday afternoon saw Thomson and Dauphin’s Heather McMunn join forces in the alternate shot event against another formidable B.C. team. This time, B.C. took the early advantage en route to a 5 and 3 victory.
“It was a combination of being tired from the morning round and the fact that in alternate shot events, you’re not playing entirely your own game, so it’s hard to get in your groove,” Thomson explained.
“We got down early in the beginning, and got back into it a couple of times, but we couldn’t finish it off.”
Thanks to better luck on the part of her teammates, Thomson and Team Manitoba led after the first day by half-a-point.
But they could not maintain the momentum during the individual head-to-head matches Monday, when Manitoba ended up with a 2-3-1 record—the one tie coming courtesy of Thomson, who battled Saskatchewan amateur ladies champ Tamara Harasen of Regina to a draw.
“I was down one or two holes most of the match, but then I won No. 16 and tied her on Nos. 17 and 18,” Thomson recalled. “I wasn’t hitting my driver very straight.
“But I did a lot of scrambling, which kept me in the match, and she made a couple of mistakes.”
B.C. won the overall team title with nine points over the two days while Manitoba took second with seven points in the event, which was played in scorching 39 C temperatures.
Thomson is counting on her B.C. experience to fuel the fire of a solid competitive effort at the upcoming Canadian Amateur Championships in Montreal on Aug. 11-15.
“The match play format kind of tests you, makes you more aggressive, and helps you when you’re under pressure,” she noted.
She will join McMunn, Bieber, and Winnipeg golfers Donna Mathieson, Kathleen Zeweniuk, and Angela Daykin in Montreal, which will implement normal stroke play.
The team competition will be held over the first two days of the event, with each player’s scores being tallied throughout the entire competition to track the eventual overall individual champ.