Mission Inn Resort and Club Championship (May 26, 2021) By Brian Weis

Mission Inn Resort and Club Championship (May 26, 2021)

Featured Groups - Who To Watch

By Brian Weis

Three featured groups highlight the competition for the eighth event of the 2021 Symetra Tour season.

Dewi Weber, Vicky Hurst, Samantha Wagner (No. 1 tee, 8:14 a.m.)
The 2016 NCAA Division I Women's Golf National Individual Champion, Dewi Weber (Groningen, Netherlands), competed for the University of Miami Hurricanes. Last year on the Symetra Tour, Weber claimedthree top-10 finishes. Coming off her second T8 finish this season, Weber returns to the Mission Inn Resort and Club Championship where she finished fourth last year.

Eight-time Symetra Tour Champion,Vicky Hurst (Melbourne, FL) is back in Howey-In-The-Hills where she claimed her best finish of last season, a tie for fifth. The 2011 Team USA Member for the Solheim Cup has an LPGA Tour career best of T11 at the 2012 ANA Inspiration. The Florida native has one top-10 finish in six starts this year, a T6 at the Symetra Classic.

The final member of this featured group is Florida native Samantha Wagner (Windermere, Florida).The University of Florida graduate found her career-best finish in her second start of the season at the Copper Rock Championship with a tie for second. She comes into this week off her seventh career top-10 finish at the IOA Golf Classic present by RP Funding.

Linnea Johansson, Olivia Mehaffey, Avery Zweig (No. 1 tee, 12:30 p.m.)
Linnea Johansson (Bastad, Sweden) was a three-time All-Big 12 performer for Oklahoma State University. Last season, Johansson claimed five top-20 finishes in six starts including runner-up at the Mission Inn Resort and Club Championship.

In 2016, Olivia Mehaffey (Belfast, Ireland) won the Irish Women's Open Championship and the Welsh Ladies Open Stroke Play Championship and helped lead the Great Britain & Ireland team to the Curtis Cup victory. The four-time All-American from Arizona State made her first appearance in a professional event at the 2016 AIG Women's Open. In 2020, Mehaffey made the cut at the 2020 ANA Inspiration and also competed in the AIG Women's Open and U.S. Women's Open. Earlier this year she placed T6 at the Carlisle Arizona Women's Golf Classic as an amateur, this week will be her professional debut.

In January, amateur Avery Zweig (McKinney, Texas) won her first American Junior Golf Association tournament at the Diamond Resorts ANNIKA Invitational presented by Rolex. The win earned the fourteen-year-old an exemption into this week at Mission Inn Resort and Club Championship. Earlier this year, Zweig also claimed third place in the girls 12-13 age division at the Drive, Chip and Putt at Augusta National.

Sierra Sims, August Kim, Karolina Vlckova (No. 10 tee, 2;09 p.m.)
Sierra Sims (Tampa, Florida) was a Women's Golf Coaches Association (WGCA) Second Team All-American at Wake Forest University in 2015. She played the weekend three times in six Symetra Tour starts this year, with a season-best finish of T48 at the Symetra Classic.

One of eleven Florida natives in this week's field, August Kim (St. Augustine, Florida) returns to compete in her second event this season. The first four-time Women's Golf Coaches Association (WGCA) All-American Scholar in Boilermakers history, the Purdue University graduate is in her fifth year on Tour. Kim is coming off a top-20 finish in her home state at the IOA Golf Classic presented by RP Funding.

Completing the final group, Karolina Vlckova (Kladno, Czech Republic) is a University of Florida graduate. A two-time All-SEC Second Team performer for the Gators, Vlckova competed at the NCAA Division I Women's Golf National Championship in each of her four years. Vlckova's career-best finish was T4 at the 2018 FireKeepers Casino Hotel Championship.

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Revised: 05/27/2021 - Article Viewed 7,532 Times - View Course Profile

About: Brian Weis

Brian Weis is the mastermind behind GolfTrips.com, a vast network of golf travel and directory sites covering everything from the rolling fairways of Wisconsin to the sunbaked desert layouts of Arizona. If there’s a golf destination worth visiting, chances are, Brian has written about it, played it, or at the very least, found a way to justify a "business trip" there.

As a card-carrying member of the Golf Writers Association of America (GWAA), International Network of Golf (ING), Golf Travel Writers of America (GTWA), International Golf Travel Writers Association (IGTWA), and The Society of Hickory Golfers (SoHG), Brian has the credentials to prove that talking about golf is his full-time job. In 2016, his peers even handed him The Shaheen Cup, a prestigious award in golf travel writing—essentially the Masters green jacket for guys who don’t hit the range but still know where the best 19th holes are.

Brian’s love for golf goes way back. As a kid, he competed in junior and high school golf, only to realize that his dreams of a college golf scholarship had about the same odds as a 30-handicap making a hole-in-one. Instead, he took the more practical route—working on the West Bend Country Club grounds crew to fund his University of Wisconsin education. Little did he know that mowing greens and fixing divots would one day lead to a career writing about the best courses on the planet.

In 2004, Brian turned his golf passion into a business, launching GolfWisconsin.com. Three years later, he expanded his vision, and GolfTrips.com was born—a one-stop shop for golf travel junkies looking for their next tee time. Today, his empire spans all 50 states, and 20+ international destinations.

On the course, Brian is a weekend warrior who oscillates between a 5 and 9 handicap, depending on how much he's been traveling (or how generous he’s feeling with his scorecard). His signature move" A high, soft fade that his playing partners affectionately (or not-so-affectionately) call "The Weis Slice." But when he catches one clean, his 300+ yard drives remind everyone that while he may write about golf for a living, he can still send a ball into the next zip code with the best of them.

Whether he’s hunting down the best public courses, digging up hidden gems, or simply outdriving his buddies, Brian Weis is living proof that golf is more than a game—it’s a way of life.