After a decade leading the Texas women’s golf program, Ryan Murphy stepped down as coach Friday.
After a decade leading the Texas women’s golf program, Ryan Murphy stepped down as coach Friday.
During his 10 years as head coach after six seasons as an assistant, Murphy led Texas to unprecedented success in the Big 12. The Longhorns have claimed seven conference titles since 2017, their best stretch in conference play since winning nine Southwest Conference titles from 1987 to the SWC’s demise after the 1996 season.
“The University of Texas has been great to me and my family, and I am grateful to have been given the opportunity to be a coach here,” he said in a statement. “I’ve enjoyed my 16 years around many terrific young people on my teams as well as many great people that work in Texas athletics. I am happy with what we achieved in my 10 years, and I believe the program is in a great place. I look forward to rooting on the players I’ve had the pleasure to coach into the future.”
This season, Texas finished 11th at the NCAA Championship, the seventh straight season that the Longhorns had placed in the top 15 at the NCAAs.
Texas freshman Farah O’Keefe and Murphy each claimed postseason honors from the Big 12 this year.
O’Keefe, an Austin native who won team and individual state championships at Anderson High School, was named the Big 12 player of the year and freshman of the year. She was also named to the Division I all-freshman team by the Women’s Golf Coaches Association.
Murphy earned Big 12 coach of the year honors.
Freshmen Lauren Kim and Selina Liao joined O’Keefe on the All-Big 12 team for the conference champion Longhorns.
There may be no bigger confidence boost than 15 team birdies in the opening fives holes of a postseason tournament.
There may be no bigger confidence boost than 15 team birdies in the opening fives holes of a postseason tournament. That was the case for the University of North Carolina-Wilmington in Friday’s first round of the 2024 Women’s National Golf Invitational.
Starting on the back nine, UNCW’s five starters blistered their opening holes at Ak-Chin Southern Dunes in Maricopa, Arizona. That stretch included only two bogeys. Head coach Cindy Ho felt like it was a little bit of uncharted territory, but she watched proudly as her team continued to go low. The Seahawks capitalized on those short opening holes with dialed-in wedges. Players had paid attention during the practice round, noting where first-round pins would be and they came out prepared.
A handful of holes in, the challenge came in controlling the pace. Ho thinks her players might have gotten a little bit aggressive – perhaps giving birdie putts a little too much speed, in some cases, as the momentum grew and then missing the comebackers. That contributed to a few bigger numbers that brought UNCW back to the field.
“For us, we’re not a team that goes deep that often so part of it was it happened so fast – we always talk about being in our comfort zone, but you can be in your comfort zone by being over par too fast and being under par too fast because you’re trying to learn how to handle the situation,” she said.
Starting at No. 15, the birdies ebbed and a few bogeys began to stack up. UNCW logged a double and a triple on the par-4 18th before making the turn. After being double-digits under par at one point early in the day, UNCW closed the first round at 1 over, one shot ahead of Rutgers.
Santa Clara is third at 5 over and Chattanooga is fourth at 8 over. Chattanooga’s Violeta Fernandez leads the individual race after a 3-under 69.
Ak-Chin Southern Dunes is a fast golf course. There often isn’t a lot of depth to the greens and that puts a premium on decision making. Ho has preached commitment.
“I think we’re learning the golf course right now and just trying to plan the best we can,” Ho said. “We don’t want to play too conservatively, you know you probably need to make some birdies out here. It’s just trying to figure out, let’s not put ourselves where we make too many bogeys or double bogeys. But you can’t start laying up with a 9-iron.”
UNCW won its first start out of the gate this past fall at the Golfweek Fall Challenge in Pawley’s Island, South Carolina, and Ho spoke that week of a close group. The Seahawks went on to navigate a demanding schedule, full of head-to-heads against Power 5 teams, and finished tied for second at the CAA Conference Championship.
Ho, a well-respected coach who has been at the helm in Wilmington for more than two decades, last took a team to the postseason in 2019 when the Seahawks earned an Automatic Qualifying spot into NCAA Regionals by winning the CAA title.
After late-spring play was canceled because of COVID in 2020, UNCW was knocked out of a second consecutive chance at the postseason in 2021 when two players tested positive for COVID.
Fast forward to this spring, and UNCW is making its NGI debut, albeit without a couple of its usual starters from this season. Nicole Adam, a transfer from North Carolina, stayed behind to take part in UNCW’s graduation ceremony, having missed her high school graduation in the spring of 2020 because of COVID. (Mallory Fobes, now a fifth-year senior, decided to travel with the team and skip graduation). Malu Brinker, from Germany, is missing from the lineup due to a back injury.
Credit to the veteran coach Ho for recognizing that the NGI could be the perfect opportunity to begin transitioning to what next year’s Seahawk lineup will look like by getting some new players into the fold.
“Here’s the thing: To me I felt like this was the perfect time to move everybody up,” she said.
“What a great experience for them to play in a championship, play for the team and then everyone gets some more experience.”
A year ago, Penn State won the inaugural NGI without its top player, Mathilde Delavallade, in the lineup because she had been invited to an NCAA Regional and thus was prohibited from teeing it up in the NGI. That’s not lost on Ho.
“I think it was a no-brainer for us as long as we had people who were OK making the trip,” she said of this new postseason opportunity. “These guys are all hungry and they’re excited so let’s go out there and compete best you can.”
And as they demonstrated on Friday, the Seahawks’ best would be a lot for any team to handle.
Check out the photos of the renovated host site for the 2024 men’s and women’s NCAA Championships.
Omni La Costa Resort and Spa in Carlsbad, California, has announced June 1 as the full reopening date of its Championship Course, which has been rebranded the North Course after an extensive renovation by the architectural team of Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner.
The opening to resort guests and members follows the NCAA Division I Women’s (May 17-22) and Men’s (May 24-29) Championships on the North Course. The layout is also slated to host those college championships in 2025 and 2026.
Hanse and Wagner implemented significant changes to the North layout. Among the renovations: A new drivable par-4 11th was built, the green of the par-3 16th was repositioned in a fashion reminiscent of Augusta National Golf Club’s No. 12, and the par-5 18th was stretched to more than 600 yards with water on both sides of the fairway.
Omni La Costa Resort and Spa in Carlsbad, California (Courtesy of Omni La Costa Resort and Spa)
The revised layout will feature six sets of tees that play from 4,500 to 7,500 yards. Other changes include transitioning irrigation lines that will continue to use reclaimed water, the removal of several man-made ponds and the reintroduction of natural barrancas that feature drought-tolerant and native species of plants.
“The North Course is now positioned to return to its stature as one of the top venues for championship golf in Southern California,” Hanse said in a media release announcing the opening date and completion of work. “We were able to combine a respect for the natural contours, landforms and vegetation with an emphasis on strategic design. This combination of beauty and interest should prove enjoyable for everyday play by members and resort guests, while asking compelling questions to be answered by the best players in the world during championship events.”
Originally designed by Dick Wilson and opened in 1965, the North layout had been renovated previously several times. It was part of a resort with a tournament pedigree that includes hosting the PGA Tour’s Mercedes Championship from 1969 to 1998, the inaugural WGC-Accenture Match Play in 1999 and the LPGA’s Kia Classic in 2010 and 2012.
The resort also announced its Legends Course has been rebranded to South Course. Both the North and South were the courses’ original names before being changed to Champions and Legends.
A renovated guest room at Omni La Costa Resort and Spa in Carlsbad, California (Courtesy of Omni La Costa Resort and Spa)
The resort also will feature a reimagined practice facility designed by Beau Welling that will include Toptracer technology. It’s all part of an extensive multi-year renovation to the entire resort that stretches from guest rooms and villas to the spa, lobby bar and meeting spaces.
“Working with the ‘best of the best’ course architects like Gil Hanse and his design team is a prime example of our continued commitment and investment to be in the highest echelons of U.S. golf destinations,” the resort’s managing director, Craig Martin, said in the media release. “This transformation signals a full return to championship glory at Omni La Costa and joins the now-completed renovation of the property as a whole resulting in an elevated experience for our members and resort guests to enjoy for decades to come.”
Woad, ranked No. 4 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking, hasn’t finished outside the top 8 in college golf this season.
Lottie Woad faced a tough decision in the aftermath of her Augusta National Women’s Amateur. The victory comes with special invitations to four major championships, including next week’s Chevron Championship, which overlaps the ACC Championship.
Woad, a 20-year-old sophomore at Florida State, has opted to make her major championship debut at the Chevron April 18-21 at The Club at Carlton Woods in The Woodlands, Texas, in what will be her first LPGA start.
“I wasn’t really going to turn down a major,” said Woad, who had full support form her Seminole coaches.
The Englishwoman delivered a finish for the ages on Saturday in the final round at Augusta National, making birdie on three of the last four holes to beat USC’s Bailey Shoemaker by one stroke.
“If I’d been told before this week that I’d be two back with four to play, I would have been like, yeah, perfect, that sounds great,” said Woad. “To be in the mix on the back nine at Augusta is something that everyone dreams about.”
Woad, ranked No. 4 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking, hasn’t finished outside the top 8 in college golf this season, with co-medalist honors at the Annika Intercollegiate.
With her parents and English national coach/caddie back home in England, Woad will be on her own in Texas, though former FSU player Frida Kinhult did have an extra room in her Airbnb. Woad is in the process of trying to find a local caddie for next week.
On Sunday at Augusta, Woad met Nancy Lopez and Tom Watson as she handed out awards at the Drive, Chip and Putt National Finals. She also met 2016 Masters champ Danny Willett for the first time in the clubhouse.
It’s back to class for Woad this week in Tallahassee. On Tuesday night, she’ll throw out the first pitch in the sold-out FSU vs. Florida game on ESPN2. While Woad hasn’t played baseball, she did play cricket back home in England.
World No. 1 Nelly Korda headlines the field at Chevron after winning her fourth consecutive start on Sunday at the T-Mobile Match Play. Korda is the first American to win four consecutive starts on the LPGA since Nancy Lopez won five consecutive starts in 1978.
Woad received a warm welcome-home reception when she returned to Tallahassee. Kinhult made cupcakes. Check out the photos from the surprise gathering:
Late-round energy gave the Panthers a three-shot victory at the Golfweek/Any Given Tuesday Collegiate.
Lyndsey Hunnell has devised a way to stave off late-round fatigue. It’s called the Bonus Bev, and her High Point women only earn the reward by playing the final five holes of a competitive round in even par or better.
“Sometimes you’ll kind of see teams coast off for the last couple holes, getting tired, but these girls really grind their ball the last five and that’s kind of when they moved up the leaderboard a little bit more,” Hunnell said.
Late-round energy gave the Panthers a three-shot victory at the Golfweek/Any Given Tuesday Collegiate. Wednesday’s final round was wiped when heavy downpours made the course unplayable and the tournament reverted to 36-hole scores. High Point had played the first two rounds in 6 over, which left them ahead of runner-up Florida Gulf Coast with Cal Poly in third another five shots back.
In the second round, High Point played the closing holes in 4 under, which gave them a big boost. (Players nicknamed the game Bonus Bev because often, they’ll use their reward on a drink at Starbucks.)
Hunnell had also prepared her players for the nasty conditions they would likely see in the final round – big gusts and downpours. Bogeys would be part of the game.
“It wasn’t going to be perfect conditions out there and just to kind of roll with what we could and just kind of embrace what we had in front of us because everyone else had to lay in the same conditions,” she told them. Ultimately, of course, those third-round scores were wiped.
Hunnell, who played collegiately for Virginia before using a fifth-year at Xavier, is in her second year coaching at High Point after spending the past three seasons as an assistant coach at Campbell. In her last year at Campbell, that team won a fall event at Caledonia, so even though High Point had not played in this event before, the team benefited from savvy coaching.
“I knew the course pretty well and that it’s a little bit shorter,” she said. “We practiced a lot more wedges last week and really knowing our numbers. . . . I knew it was going to set up well for my team and that’s why we were really excited we were going to get to go.”
So far this season, High Point has won once and finished inside the top 5 another six times. Hunnell brought in three new players this year who made an immediate impact in the lineup. That includes fifth-year Wake Forest transfer Julia McLaughlin and Anna Howerton, a freshman from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, who led High Point at Caledonia with a third-place finish individually at 1 under. She finished two shots behind individual medalist Hannah Karg of Coastal Carolina.
Hannah Karg of Coastal Carolina won the individual title at Caledonia. (Golfweek photo)
“I think it’s helped the girls to know I’m bringing in fresh blood and you have to earn your spot, you can’t just expect to keep it year to year,” she said. “I think that’s kind of been the vibe and they have all such great team chemistry and they get along so well.”
In fact, the players at home typically set an alarm so they can send off a team good-luck text before the start of a round.
High Point needs a team firing on all cylinders heading into the Big South Conference Championship in two weeks. To get through a bit of a slump recently, Hunnell gathered her team to re-evaluate their progress.
“I showed them their goals they had set at the beginning of the spring and showed them where they were at so I think that kind of sparked a little bit of their drive, and they’ve been working really hard before this tournament,” she said.
Campbell has always been the powerhouse in the Big South, having won the last seven straight league titles (and the Automatic Qualifying spot into NCAA Regionals that goes with that), but Campbell made the move to the CAA before this season.
Last spring, High Point lost to the Camels in the final match. High Point is the heir apparent to Campbell, but Hunnell knows the Panthers need to walk into that spot with confidence.
“We’ve got a chip on our shoulder there,” she said. “We’ve been in contention and we know what it feels like and we know what to expect.”
“After a couple of years of painful deliberation, I have come to realize that I do not want to play professional golf.”
This spring, after Rachel Heck completes her senior year at Stanford, she’ll put her golf clubs away and take on an internship in private equity. She’ll also be pinned as a Lieutenant of the United States Air Force. Heck explained her reasons for not turning professional in a first-person essay on nolayingup.com.
“I was strongly considering attributing my decision to my injuries,” wrote Heck, who has grappled with several in recent years. “It is true that even if I wanted to, I do not know if my body would hold up on tour. But frankly, after a couple of years of painful deliberation, I have come to realize that I do not want to play professional golf.
“I do not want a life on the road and in the public eye. I no longer dream of the U.S. Open trophies and the Hall of Fame. And I realize now that these dreams were never what my dad intended when he first put a club in my hand.”
Golf has given me the world and more. Post-graduation, I’m choosing to hold onto my love of the game as an amateur as I explore new horizons. Read about my decision at the link below🫶🏻https://t.co/LDq5j0pYYRpic.twitter.com/pZ7sEfpuX0
Heck qualified for the U.S. Women’s Open at age 15 and, as a hotshot junior, suffered a back injury that left her sidelined from the game. Without golf, she felt lost, and during a period of darkness, decided that she wanted to pursue the Air Force ROTC to find something more. Heck’s parents told her she was crazy, but she persisted.
Heck won six times in nine starts in 2021, including her last five events. She became the third player in NCAA history to sweep the postseason, winning the Pac-12 Championship, NCAA regionals and nationals. She posted 15 of 25 rounds in the 60s, including 12 consecutive.
But, as her college career progressed, more injuries followed. While Heck intends to pass on the professional life, she does plan to continue to play amateur golf, following a similar path set by Wake Forest grad Emilia Migliaccio.
“I have grappled with anger, hope, depression, joy, and everything in between,” Heck wrote, “but amid each trial in which I so desperately sought the clarity of a deeper meaning, God always showed me the next step. Right now, the next step is not professional golf.”
Farah O’Keefe and Lauren Kim have emerged as anchors of a deep Longhorns roster.
A mixture of phenomenal freshmen and savvy veterans has the Texas women’s golf team poised for another run at an NCAA Championship berth in the spring.
But first, head coach Ryan Murphy wants to end the fall semester on a high note at this weekend’s power-packed Stanford Invitational in California, where the top-ranked Cardinal will play host to several ranked squads, including the No. 5 Longhorns.
“I’m happy with what we’ve done so far this semester, and hopefully we can have a good one at Stanford,” said Murphy, who’s served as the women’s head coach since 2014. “We have some depth on our team, and we’ve had some great performances.”
Those performances start with a pair of freshmen in Farah O’Keefe and Lauren Kim, who have emerged as anchors of a deep roster. Along with Westlake graduate and senior Bentley Cotton, O’Keefe and Kim have competed in all three of the fall tournaments so far. Selina Liao, Cindy Hsu and Bohyun Park have also filled a spot in the lineup this fall.
O’Keefe’s quick emergence won’t surprise local golf fans. The Anderson graduate won an individual state championship with the Trojans while leading them to a Class 5A team title in 2022, and she hasn’t slowed down since joining the Longhorns.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CyitYJWssV1/
O’Keefe opened her collegiate career with a pair of top-five finishes and was recently named the Big 12 women’s golfer of the month. She showed her poise during a runner-up finish at the Windy City Classic in Chicago earlier this month, when she tied Texas’ individual 18-hole scoring record with an 8-under-par 64 in the first round. O’Keefe’s final score of 9-under 207 was the seventh-best 54-hole score in program history.
Murphy, who served as an assistant for the UT men’s team during current PGA star Jordan Spieth’s time with the program, credited O’Keefe for having a similar mental toughness.
“It does remind me of Jordan a little bit. It’s next level, for sure,” Murphy said. “That head on her shoulders is way past her age, I would say. And that’s a testament to her parents. I would say they’ve taught her some really great things. Her disposition on the golf course is right where you want it. She’s studied optimal performance states.”
And how about her game?
“Well, she’s got nice power, and she’s got tremendous hands on and around the greens,” Murphy said.
At last week’s Jackson T. Stephens Cup at Trinity Forest Golf Club in Dallas, Kim stepped into the spotlight to win a four-hole playoff and claim individual honors. A Canadian from British Columbia, she birdied 17 and 18 in round three to force a playoff at 11-under-par with Texas A&M’s Adela Cernousek.
“She (Kim) is just rock-solid in every category, and is very, very competitive,” Murphy said. “She hits it ridiculously straight on a regular basis, and I would say the best part of her game is her approach shots. She’s probably the best on our team coming in on her approach shots from the fairway. She just doesn’t have any flaws in her game.”
The fast ascendency of freshmen like O’Keefe and Kim testifies to the increasingly early development of golfers, said Murphy, whose coaching career began shortly after his professional career ended in 2005. Both Kim and O’Keefe have already competed in the U.S. Women’s Open, which is the pinnacle of professional golf for women in the U.S.
“They’ve seen the highest level of golf you can see,” he said. “Both in the U.S. Open, that was for me a little bit surreal. That was crazy. Freshmen, they’re entering college now more seasoned than ever.”
Pomona-Pitzer outscored the field on the par 5s at Baytowne Golf Club, and it helped deliver the title at the Golfweek October Classic.
It isn’t always possible to put a finger on where, exactly, a winning team found its edge. In the case of Pomona-Pitzer, however, connecting the dots is relatively easy.
After winning the Golfweek D3 October Classic on Tuesday, what head coach John Wurzer calls the biggest regular-season victory in program history, Wurzer could pretty confidently point to the long holes at Baytowne Golf Links in Sandestin, Florida. He coaches a team of longer-than-average players, and so Wurzer had been chewing on par-5 scoring for a while.
“The first day, they were 9 under on the par 5s,” Wurzer said. “It was, for us, a really amazing performance on those holes and it really kind of separated us the first day.”
For the week, Pomona-Pitzer played the par 5s in 11 under. Carnegie Melon, which finished runner-up to the Sagehens, played them in 4 over. Pomona-Pitzer finished 54 holes at 15 over, 18 shots ahead of Carnegie Melon, the team that had topped Pomona-Pitzer two weeks ago at the Fall Preview.
That’s easy math, and it’s not like Wurzer had intricate, detailed plans for his players – though they could have easily followed them if he did.
Wurzer, in his sixth season as the head coach of Pomona-Pitzer, notes that his program attracts an Ivy League-kind of athlete. “They have to be amazing students, so they’re poised, they’re smart, they’re aware, they’re very coachable,” he said.
It’s a unique setup back home in Claremont, California, where Pomona College and Pitzer College, two separate institutions that combine into one athletic program, help comprise the “5Cs” that also include Scripps College, Claremont McKenna College and Harvey Mudd College. The latter three compete in the combined Claremont-Mudd-Scripps athletic program.
Pomona-Pitzer competes in the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference along with perennial powerhouse programs Redlands and Claremont-Mudd-Scripps. The area is loaded with talent, to the point that Wurzer said his team never competes in a tournament where there isn’t at least a top-8 school in the field. The proverbial bar is no further than two stout par 5s away. That’s the distance to Claremont-Mudd-Scripps, which won the 2018 D3 women’s golf title.
“Our main rival for golf is 1,000 yards away, on the same campus,” Wurzer said.
When Wurzer arrived in Claremont six years ago, Pomona-Pitzer was a talented program that had never won the conference title. The Sagehens won it the past two years. He has orchestrated a slow build, and so far this season, his team has won twice and finished runner-up twice.
“For us, it was really about getting competition,” he said of two trips east to start the fall. “We wanted to come to this event because it was really one of the two best regular-season events in the country – in the fall for sure.”
At the Golfweek event, Pomona-Pitzer drew senior leadership from Katelyn Vo, who led the team with a runner-up finish individually. Vo, at 1 over, was three behind individual medalist Sydney Kuo of Washington University-St. Louis.
Sydney Kuo, Washington University-St. Louis
Jessica Mason (fourth) and Emily Chang (T5) also bring back experience, while freshmen Eunice Yi and Rachel LeMay have played the whole fall season with the Sagehens.
“We’ve just built toward rising to the level of competition that’s in our conference and they set the bar and we’ve just tried to kind of reach it and surpass it,” Wurzer said. “Wins like this just show that we have players that have bought in and they’re exceptionally talented. The teams in our conference have pushed us to be great because the only way we accomplish goals that we set is to beat them first and foremost.”
Wurzer knows as well as any college coach that success does not happen overnight. A native of Southern California, his history in the game is layered with teaching, program-building and simply observing at every level.
Wurzer founded the Torrance High School girls golf program in 2000 and coached the team to its first of many California Interscholastic Federation State Girls Golf titles in 2005. Program alumni include Angela Park, the 2007 LPGA Rookie of the Year, plus LPGA players Jane Rah, Jenny Shin and Demi Runas.
Wurzer gained notice for what he was doing in high school golf, mostly as his players were recruited to top schools (or went straight to professional golf), and he spent four years as the Director of Golf Operations at USC, learning under then-head coaches Chris Zambri and Andrea Gaston.
After an assistant coaching stint at Long Beach State, his alma mater, Wurzer found a head-coaching opportunity at Pomona-Pitzer, where he leads the men’s and women’s teams.
After so many years in a pocket of high-caliber golf, Wurzer’s knowledge is deep. He has watched notable careers unfold in all directions – from Lizette Salas, for example, to Stewart Hagestad.
“I’ve seen a lot and it just allows me to have perspective and coach these players, recruit very differently but coach a very similar way and use a lot of those lessons I learned along the way from SC and when I was at Long Beach State,” he said.
As his time at Pomona-Pitzer is showing, the ultimate success of a program comes down to the players. But the identity? That’s built quietly, and painstakingly, by the coach.
More opportunities in women’s college golf have opened up.
More opportunities in women’s college golf have opened up.
On Monday, Saint Joseph’s University, located in Philadelphia, announced the addition of women’s golf as a varsity sport for the Hawks. The team will begin competing fall of 2024.
“We are extremely excited to announce the addition of one of the most popular sports for high school girls and college women with the addition of women’s golf,” Vice President and Director of Athletics Jill Bodensteiner said in a post on the university’s website. “During my time on Hawk Hill, I have had more inquiries about starting a women’s golf program than any other sport. I am delighted to offer additional participation opportunities for female student-athletes to receive a Jesuit education at this great institution.”
Saint Joseph’s officials indicated the search for a head coach will begin soon and that the women’s team will need placement in a conference. St. Joe’s competes in the Atlantic 10 in all other sports.
“It definitely makes it extra special knowing how we felt to lose last year being so close,” Flagler coach Santiago Cavanagh said.
This time last year, the Flagler College team van was headed east across Florida, from Destin back home to St. Augustine, with the bitter taste of a close call. Santiago Cavanagh’s team loves competing at the Raven Golf Club at Sandestin, but a one-shot loss to Nova Southeastern did not sit well.
On Tuesday, the results swung hard the other way, with Flagler College riding high on a 21-shot victory for that trip back east.
“It definitely makes it extra special knowing how we felt to lose last year being so close,” Cavanagh said. “This is one of our favorite events, we love the golf course, it’s challenging. The whole week is very special. I know how much the girls wanted to win this week.”
In Flagler’s second start of the fall season, the team claimed the Golfweek Division II Fall Invitational title by going 5 over at the Raven Golf Club. The Saints built an eight-shot lead in the first round and never looked back, finishing 21 shots ahead of runner-up Rogers State.
Flagler set a new program record for lowest 54-hole score and also broke the record for lowest round with their final-round 5-under 279.
“The golf course was in great shape, just like it was last year,” Cavanagh said. “The greens were just a little bit softer than last year and so that made it better. But the first days, it was extremely windy. We had about 15 to 20 mph wind both days. Finally, today was a little bit less, probably 8 to 12 so it was a little more manageable. But the golf course is awesome.”
Individually, Stella Jelinek, a sophomore from Germany, finished 54 holes at 4 under to medal by five shots over Lydia Sitorus of Rogers State and Yuliana Yapur of Texas A&M International. Jelinek opened the week with a 2-under 69 but had a tough round on Day 2 and backed up to 74. On Tuesday, she posted her first collegiate bogey-free round, a 5-under 66, and calmly pulled away.
“She wanted to win it really bad. She didn’t have the round she wanted yesterday and she started behind today,” Cavanagh said. “She stayed calm all day. It was a very close fight until the end, she just kept playing her game. When you make five birdies and no bogeys, you’re going to close the gap for sure.”
Flagler’s Stella Jelinek
After last year’s close call at the Golfweek event, Flagler rallied to win its home event three weeks later. Last spring, the Saints were second in the Peach Belt Conference Championship and advanced to an NCAA Division II Super Regional, where their season ended.
The start to this season was a little jarring as Flagler arrived at the NCAA D2 South Region Preview at Cleveland Country Club in Cleveland, Tennessee, ready to start a strong fall campaign and finished ninth out of 17 teams.
“We went up there feeling very good and not having the finish you want, it’s like a bucket of cold water,” Cavanagh said.
The disappointing opener motivated his team to come home, work harder and prepare smarter for the next tournament – not a hard task considering how much Cavanagh’s players love this stop on the schedule.
Cavanagh looks down this year’s lineup and likes the mix of experience and new blood he sees. It’s a long, tough road the rest of the year, with Flagler’s own Fall Slam and the Rollins-hosted National Championship Fall Preview – to be played at Orange County National in Orlando, Florida – on tap for later this month.
“We’re going one tournament at a time and I definitely have a team that I’m not surprised when I see these numbers,” he said.
