Newcastle’s Bailey Plourde will look to make it two in a row when she begins defense of her Maine Women’s Amateur Golf Tournament at the Portland Country Club in Falmouth beginning Tuesday.
The three-day, 54-hole affair will conclude on Thursday.
The field will be cut to the low 45 players and ties after the second round is complete on Wednesday.
Plourde will be gunning for her third title overall as she also won it in 2018.
The 21-year-old Plourde will be in the first threesome to tee off at 7:30 a.m., and she will be joined by last year’s runner up, 17-year-old Ruby Haylock from Portland, and 21-year-old Jordan Laplume from Old Orchard Beach.
Haylock had won the 2020 Maine Women’s Amateur when she chipped in on the first playoff hole to edge Plourde.
Laplume won it in 2019.
Plourde won last year’s title by six shots at the Bangor Municipal Golf Course.
Laplume just concluded her college career at Merrimack College in North Andover, Massachusetts, where her career stroke average of 82.77 is seventh best in school history.
Plourde is coming off a college season in which she was named a first team All-Southern Athletic Association choice from Berry College in Georgia.
She was a graduate student at Berry after previously playing at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, where she was a two-time All-American.
Plourde, who plays out of the Sheepscot Links Golf Club in Whitefield, has had three runner-up finishes in the Maine Women’s Amateur in addition to her two victories.
She was ranked in the Golfstats Top 10 for women’s NCAA Division III golfers until an injury ended her season prematurely.
She set a school record for the lowest round when she shot a final-round 68 to finish second overall at the Chick-fil-A Collegiate Invitational at the Coosa Country Club in Rome, Georgia.
Plourde finished with a four-under-par 140, one stroke behind winner Jillian Drinkard of Methodist University in North Carolina.
Haylock went undefeated during the regular season in the fall for Leavitt High School in Turner and was second in the state Class B individual championships, four shots behind her freshman sister Jade.
Jade Haylock will tee off at 8 a.m.
The Haylocks play out of the Turner Highlands Country Club in Turner.
Laplume, who plays out of the Dunegrass Golf Club in Old Orchard Beach, shot a season-best 71 against Franklin Pierce last fall and was 30th overall in the Northeast Conference Tournament.
Players from 35 different Maine courses will be in the field.
