Erin Bolen • News-Leader • September 1, 2009 When Marissa Hill attended the Price Cutter Charity Championship, she didn’t pay hardly any attention to
the Nationwide Tour golfers. The Drury University senior watched the caddies instead, trying to pick up all the tips she could. She had never been a caddie before, and boyfriend Andrew Funk had asked her to caddie for him at the upcoming U.S. Amateur Championship. Whatever she learned worked. Funk and Hill made an strong team at Southern Hills and Cedar Ridge country clubs in Tulsa, Okla., as Funk played well enough in stroke-play qualifying to be among the top 64 golfers to advance to match play. Funk and Hill both play golf for Drury, so she brought more to the job than most girlfriends. “I was in Italy at the time, and when he told me he was going, I was, like, ‘Oh, so I get to be your caddie, right’ ” Hill said. “I thought he’d say no, but he said yes. So we worked on it from there.” Although Funk, a junior at Drury, lost in the first round of match play 4 and 3 to Texas Tech’s Matt Smith, he said he was happy with his first U.S. Amateur experience.
It was the first time the Canadian had tried to qualify for the championship, and he won his qualifying event at the Country Club of the Legends in St. Louis.