Andrea Lee of Hermosa Beach and Bethany Wu of Diamond Bar have received amateur sponsor invitations to the ANA Inspiration, the first LPGA Tour major of the year, on April 2-5 on the Dinah Shore Tournament Course at Mission Hills Country Club in Rancho Mirage.
The 16-year-old Lee (pictured), a junior at junior at Mira Costa High who won the CIF State Championship last year, was selected 2014 Rolex Girls Junior Player of the Year by the American Junior Golf Association.
Lee, who has committed to Stanford, is the No. 1 player in Golfweek’s Girls national rankings, won the 2014 Yani Tseng Invitational and Rolex Tournament of Champions, in addition to playing on the victorious U.S. Junior Solheim Cup and Junior Ryder Cup teams.
Wu, 18, who led Diamond Bar High to the 2014 CIF-Southern Section and CIF State Championships, was medalist at 2014 U.S. Women’s Amateur Stroke Play Championship and twice has won the Annika Invitational.
The UCLA commit also played on the U.S. teams in the Junior Solheim Cup and Junior Ryder Cup.
Other sponsors exemptions went to Celine Boutier, 21, of Montrouge, France, a junior at Duke who is No. 1 in the Women’s World Amateur Golf Rankings and helped the Blue Devils win the 2014 NCAA Championship; Nelly Korda, 16, Bradenton, Fla., the sister of LPGA Tour star Jessica Korda, who won the 2015 Harder Hall Invitational the 2014 Kathy Whitworth Invitation, and Mika Liu, 16, also of Bradenton, Fla., who captured the 2014 Women’s Western Amateur, the Southern Women’s Amateur Championship and the World Amateur Junior Championship.
