2023 Women’s Player of the Year

The 2023 Women’s RDGA Player of the Year: Deb Wood

The Rochester District Golf Association began its Women’s Player of the Year Award in 2015 as a way of honoring the most consistent championship-level women’s player of the season.

Designed to recognize women’s skill in the game of golf, the Player of the Year award is presented each year. This recognition is open to all women in the RDGA and is based on gross scores only. To be considered for the Women’s RDGA Player of the Year award, golfers must play a minimum of 5 events on the published Points schedule with an additional requirement that 3 of those events must be RDGA events.

This year’s RDGA Women’s Player of the Year Award featured a very competitive points race between one of the area’s top long-time women’s players and one of the area’s younger competitors and a recent RDGA Junior Champion.

Winning this year’s RDGA Women’s Player of the Year honors was Deb Wood of Durand Eastman GC, who captured 3 titles throughout the 2023 season, including the RDGA Women’s Open. Wood finished just 50 points ahead of Julia Zigrossi – a recent graduate of Mercy High School and a past winner of the RDGA Women’s Player of the Year in 2020. Zigrossi compiled an impressive record at the New York State level in 2023 – winning the NYS Women’s Amateur Four Ball Championship and finishing third in the NYS Women’s Amateur.

This year marks the second consecutive season that Wood has earned RDGA Women’s Player of the Year honors – and her third time overall. Last year, Wood shared the honor with Ellen Weeks of Clifton Springs CC – and she also won the 2017 RDGA Women’s POTY.

Wood played in six RDGA Two Person events in 2023 – compiling an impressive two victories and finishing in the top-5 (gross score results) in another four events. Her two brightest moments, however, came in the two biggest events she played in – at the WRDGA District Championship, in which she was a semi-finalist in the match play championship bracket, AND in the RDGA Women’s Open, in which she won the top Gross Score Division title.

By the end of the 2023 season, Wood earned 550 player of the Year points – with Zigrossi finishing with 500 points.

The race for the RDGA Women’s Player of the Year begins each May, with the opening of the RDGA Tournament Schedule.

To see the final 2023 Women’s RDGA Player of the Year Points standings, CLICK HERE.