By L.A. PARKER
Special to The Post

Pardon Alicia Kapheim if she created a golf prayer for the 84th Women’s Amateur Championship.

Kapheim shot an 82 and escaped a three-player-for-one-spot sudden death playoff on Monday, July 27 that earned the Hopewell Valley Golf Course champion a date with a woman who casts an imposing shadow at the 5,921-yard, par 72 Neshanic Valley Golf Course.

Though Kapheim walks in the shadow of four-time Women’s Amateur champion, Sherry Herman, she fears not, her irons and her putter will comfort her.

“Sherry may be intimidating to some but I have played her tough, including last year in the (Elizabeth) Goss Round Robin. I like playing against people who are good,” Kapheim said.

Kapheim won with a bogey-five in a playoff against Peggy Ference of Cherry Valley and Alpine’s Helen Bernstein.

Herman, of Hollywood GC in Deal, who won four consecutive State Amateurs (1996-1989) then pursued a professional golf career, dropped a 1-under-71 on the 55-player field for medalist honors.

Herman played four shots better than last year’s runner-up Karen Bouloucon of Crystal Springs, followed by Eagle Oaks’ Paige Pillar (77).

Two-time champion Donna Young of Springdale GC in Princeton, Donna Mummert of Copper Hill and Maura Ballard of Stanton Ridge finished with 78.

Young, who won back-to-back State Amateurs starting in 2006, laughed about her “intimidation factor.”

“I don’t know if I have ever been that type of figure. You can’t be intimidating when you are only 5 (feet) 3 (inches). Can you?,” she said.

Monday’s qualifier placed 16 players in Championship, First and Second flights.

Trentonian area players crashed this Championship by placing 12 players in position for victory.

Cherry Valley’s Donna Cortina continued her impressive summer with a 79, a top scorer out of a Skillman club that included Ference and Susan Sardi.

Cortina is a ninth-seed, Young a five and Mummert one step higher in Championship Flight action.

Ference is top-seed in A-Flight play while Sardi is No. 2 and Copper Hill’s Fran Gacos (83) is a fourth-seed.

Qualifying numbers meant nothing on Tuesday when match play got underway followed by an afternoon of quarterfinal play.