CU golfer and 2023 CGA Women’s Player of the Year Morgan Miller wins prestigious Jones/Doherty Women’s Amateur title for second time
By Gary Baines – 1/21/2025
Twice in the last three years, it’s been Miller time at the prestigious Ione D. Jones/Doherty Women’s Amateur Championship.
As in, Morgan Miller time.
The University of Colorado golfer — the 2023 CGA Women’s Player of the Year and a two-time girls Colorado Junior Match Play champion — this month claimed the title in the event that has produced champions including Babe Zaharias, JoAnne Carter, Patty Berg and Lexi Thompson.
But Miller now has her name on the Jones/Doherty trophy for the second time in three years.
This time, the CU junior from Cedar Park, Texas defeated Remi Bacardi — a 17-year-old high school senior from Miami who will play college golf at the University of Virginia — 2 and 1 in the title match on Jan. 10 at Coral Ridge Country Club in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
Miller closed out the match with three straight birdies, including a victory-clinching 24-footer on No. 17.
After placing sixth in the stroke-play portion of the event with a 3-over-par 75, Miller won her four matches by margins of 7 and 5, 2 and 1, 6 and 4, and 2 and 1.
“It’s great to win this tournament,” Miller said in a story on CoralRidgeCC.com. “It is match play, so you have to go through everyone to win. It is hard to win the Jones/Doherty twice. This one in general means more because I had surgery over the summer.” After the knee operation, she didn’t hit a ball for four months and missed CU’s first two tournaments of the season before returning.
Miller became the 14th player in 92 years to win the open-age amateur division of the Jones/Doherty more than once. Among the others are Colorado Golf Hall of Famers Nancy Roth Syms and Tish Preuss.
For the results from the Jones/Doherty, CLICK HERE.
About the Writer: Gary Baines has covered golf in Colorado continuously since 1983. He was a sports writer at the Daily Camera newspaper in Boulder, then the sports editor there, and has written regularly for ColoradoGolf.org since 2009. The University of Colorado Evans Scholar alum was inducted into the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame in 2022. He owns and operates ColoradoGolfJournal.com