THE FORGOTTEN SPARTAN - ALISON KNOWLES

Alison Knowles (Mexborough, England) didn’t start her career in East Lansing, but she played her final two years of college golf for Michigan State. Knowles, a rookie on the Epson Tour, still has her Michigan State golf bag and a Sparty headcover for her driver as she hopes for a little good luck this week.

“I’d like to think since we are in Michigan I have a home advantage maybe,” joked Knowles. “I like this golf course a lot, the greens are really nice.”

Knowles finished with the third lowest scoring average at Michigan State as a senior in 2015-16.

She started her college career at Louisiana Monroe, but transferred when her coach left.

“When I was looking at colleges, I wanted a small school because I was going so far from home,” said Knowles. “Everything I thought I wanted at first turned out to be not that important.”

This is Knowles’ fourth start and she has made the cut twice. Her best finish is a T27 at the Four Winds Invitational in South Bend.

CHAN STAYED IN SAME OLYMPIC VILLAGE BUILDING AS USAIN BOLT

Tiffany Chan, who will make her third career start this week, was guest number seven on the Epson Tour podcast on Wednesday at the Tullymore Classic.

She already ranks 28th on the Volvik Race for the Card money list in two starts in large part because of her second place finish in her debut at the Decatur-Forsyth Classic.

“I think I’ve always had those dreams (of shooting low) since I was young and watching golf on TV in Hong Kong,” said Chan. “Finishing with a 63 was half luck and half effort, but I’m definitely glad that the luck came to me finish well.”

A friend of Chan’s dad introduced her to the game of golf, which is not very popular in Hong Kong. There are only five or six courses and most are membership based.

“I grew up in a small town 30 minutes from the city and we have a public driving range there where I started,” explained Chan, who always hit off mats until she came to the US when she was 14. “I then got onto the Hong Kong National team and grew up playing with them since I was eight or nine.”

Chan’s meteoric rise started at a small junior college in Oklahoma and then she won back-to-back NJCAA national titles in 2014 and 2015 at Daytona State before she transferred to USC.

Chan then represented Hong Kong in the 2016 Olympics and stayed in the same Olympic Village building as Usain Bolt. Chan was able to qualify as an amateur by playing eight straight weeks on exemptions into events on the Asian tours. Her big breakthrough was a win at the 2016 Hong Kong Ladies Open.

“The Olympics was the greatest experience I ever had,” said Chan. “I saw Lydia Ko and Bubba Watson and Sergio Garcia and everyone else. It just made things so exciting.”

Tullymore Classic Pre-tournament Notes from Wednesday

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