Past RDGA Women's Champions

The RDGA Women's Championship - Danielle E. Downey Memorial

The Rochester District Golf Association's Women's Championship has been held every year but one between 2010 and 2019 as an extension of the Distict's Women's Golf Initiative - becoming an integral part of the RDGA's efforts to provide the area's best women golfers an opportunity to compete against other top players on some of the most storied venues in the Rochester area.

Played as a two-day, 36-hole, stroke play competition, the RDGA Women's Championship is open to any women RDGA members with a USGA handicap index of 15.0 and under - and include those exempt from qualifying, such as past champions and/or the top-20 finishers from the the previous year's championship.

Between 2010 and 2016, the RDGA Women's Championship was held each year concurrently with the RDGA Men's District Championship, with competitors teeing off in separate flights during the final two rounds of the Men's District Championship. 

In 2014, the RDGA Women's Championship took on a new title, when in January of that year, 33-year-old Spencerport native Danielle Downey was killed in an auto accident near her alma mater at Auburn University in Alabama, where she was Director of Golf and coach for the women's golf team.

Having attained her dream of playing at the highest levels of women's golf - as an amateur, Division I collegiate player and a member of the LPGA Tour - one of Downey's life missions had been to support those young women who shared that dream of making golf their career. Recognizing those goals and other accomplishments - in life and in golf - the RDGA announced later that year that it was re-naming the annual Women's District Championship in her honor as the RDGA Women's Championship Danielle E. Downey Memorial.

In 2017, the decision was made to suspend the event while seeking out alternatives for a premier championship format for top women amateurs in Rochester. The Championship would return a year later, when the decision was made to incorporate the RDGA Women's Championship into the popular RDGA Women's Open event - in which the Championship division competitors will play 18 holes at the same site the day before the Women's Open, then play the second 18 hole round at the same time as the Women's Open.

That year, Jenna Hoecker of Brook-Lea Country Club earned her third Danielle E. Downey Memorial title, winning the 2018 RDGA Women's Championship by 5 shots over Kristen Bromley at Ridgemont Country Club. Hoecker posted rounds of 79 and 74 in the 36-hole Championship to win the title with a 9-over-par 153 total.

Maggie Kril receives the RDGA Women's Senior Championship trophy following the inaugural RDGA Women's Senior Championship at Ridgemont Country Club in 2016. Presenting Kril with the trophy are RDGA President Dan Overbeck, left and RDGA Vice President Mark Battle, right.

The RDGA Senior Women's Championship

The first - and, to date, only - Rochester District Golf Association's Senior Women's Championship was held in 2016 as an extension of the RDGA Women's Championship, as well as another opportunity to offer some of the area's best women golfers a chance to compete against other top players in the Rochester area.

Held concurrently with the RDGA Women's Championship, the RDGA Senior Women's Championship was also conducted as a two-day, 36-hole, stroke play competition, hosted by the same venue as the RDGA Men's District Championship. The field was open to any women RDGA members, age 50 and above, with a USGA handicap index of 15.0 and under.