Kate Smith, a graduate student at Nebraska, became the Huskers’ first Big Ten individual medalist.
Kate Smith keeps adding to her super-senior resume. The graduate student at Nebraska made headlines last month for a hot start at the Augusta National Women’s Amateur. Now, Smith is the Big Ten Conference individual champion.
Smith, of Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, went 9 under for 54 holes at TPC River’s Bend in Maineville, Ohio, and won the conference crown by three shots over Northwestern’s Irene Kim. A final-round 8-under 64 was key for Smith. That round included eight birdies – three of them in her first four holes – and tied Smith’s own record for best individual round in school history.
“What an amazing day,” Smith said in a school release. “I couldn’t be more proud of this team for their play this week. What a great day for the Huskers. Winning hasn’t really set in yet. My career at Nebraska has been amazing, and I wouldn’t have achieved this win today without my coaches, teammates and the support of the whole athletic department. This is a great day for Nebraska women’s golf.”
Maja Stark was the last woman to earn a spot on Augusta National for the final round of the ANWA after a day of moving cut numbers.
AUGUSTA, Ga. – Kate Smith intended to go to bed at 9 p.m. on Wednesday night. It took much longer than that to drift off.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “Normally you can look at the TV or phone as distraction; I just laid there. I just thought about my opportunities for the next day, those six holes a lot.”
Smith, a fifth-year senior at the University of Nebraska, was at 4 under and had a three-shot lead when the first round of the Augusta National Women’s Amateur was suspended because of weather. She had only played 11 holes.
When Smith returned on Thursday morning to finish, the temperature had dipped below 50 degrees. She played her remaining seven holes in 4 over. Shortly after lunch, she was back on the first tee for her second round and slowly slipped down the leaderboard. When Smith three-putted the 17th green, it moved the 36-hole cut from 6 over to 7 over.
Smith landed in a playoff with four other women – Maja Stark, Lauren Hartlage, Amari Avery and Yu-Sang Hou – that ended quickly when Stark dropped an 18-footer for birdie on the No. 10, the first extra hole.
Like the rest of the 81-player field, Smith has a practice-round tee time at Augusta National on Friday even if she won’t be one of the 30 women competing on Saturday. Friday’s round might even be a little more enjoyable now.
“I was already trying to mentally prepare for that while being here,” Smith said of a wandering mind where the final round at Augusta National was concerned, “and I don’t think I was in the present all the time. It’s a long week and you’ve got to keep your head down and focus on what’s in front of you.”
Smith owned the start of the day, but Stark was squarely in the spotlight 12 hours later when she drained the birdie putt that sent her to Augusta National. It couldn’t have been better timed. The Oklahoma State sophomore only made three birdies in the past two days: One came on the 36th hole to help her get in the playoff and another was on the extra hole.
Interestingly, Stark had bogeyed No. 10 in regulation both days.
For a few short minutes—and with memories of an 11-for-10 playoff in the inaugural ANWA were still fresh—it looked like extra holes would be avoided on Thursday.
Kiira Riihijarvi is the only NCAA Division II player in the field this week. The fifth-year senior at the University of Tampa made tidy work of the cutline when she rolled in a birdie putt on No. 18 in the fifth-to-last group. That moved her from 7 over to 6 over and brought the cut with her.
Smith’s late bogey gave the other four players at 7 over second hope.
“I tried not to look at the leaderboard while I was playing,” Riihijarvi said of coming down the final holes. “They made it difficult because they’re really big.”
Regardless of what the leaderboard said, a number became more and more difficult to pin down as wind swirled all day and made the closing stretch particularly difficult.
The second round of the Augusta National Women’s Amateur on Thursday, April 1, 2021. (Photo: ANWA)
Ana Pelaez Trivino, a fifth-year senior at South Carolina, felt that as much as anyone. She fired a 1-under 71 and went to bed Wednesday with a share of second place. She played the front nine in 2 under on Thursday but was 5 over on the back. At 6 over, she snuck in to the third round on the number.
Pelaez Trivino said the big numbers on the back – three bogeys and a double – weren’t even a product of focusing too much on the cut because she wasn’t focusing there at all. Mental game is an advantage for the firey Spaniard.
“I can look at the scoreboard and not feel pressure at all, just know what I have to do,” she said. “It’s a fact that I’m going to have to accept that knowledge at the end of the day, so why not look at the scoreboard or whatever?”
Erica Shepherd played the last three holes in 2 over to land at 6 over, which eventually left her safely inside the cut. It was a similar scenario to the one that played out in 2019, when Shepherd also narrowly avoided the playoff.
“Kind of had the same feeling heading down the last hole,” she said. “I guess that experience from being there two years ago may have helped me a little bit.”
Shepherd, who finished T-23 after a final-round 75 at Augusta National in 2019, bogeyed No. 18 on Wednesday, and only after laying up on the par 5 realized she could have reached the green with her 3-wood. She missed a downhill slider for par but bogey was still enough.
Having made the cut here once, Shepherd was extra motivated to secure another Saturday tee time.
“Just to see in person how it’s actually better than it is on TV and just being part of that experience and to see how much that did for women’s golf and just to have been there,” she said, “just kind of that pressure that I put on myself to get back, it’s kind of a relief to know that that’s secured now.”
The first round of the Augusta National Women’s Amateur was suspended because of weather, but Kate Smith had plenty of time to make her move.
AUGUSTA, Ga. – The tears have flowed for Kate Smith this week. It seems that no amount of preparation for competing in a tournament she’s coveted for three years could stop that.
But the floodgates were open in another way on Wednesday at the Augusta National Women’s Amateur, too. Once she poured in a birdie putt on the second hole at Champions Retreat, it opened the door to three more in the next nine holes. Smith’s day ended at the sound of a weather horn, as she faced an uphill 7-footer for par on the par-4 12th.
A downpour washed out the rest of the day, with 29 players in the 82-woman field still to finish.
By that time, Smith, playing in the final group out, had a three-shot lead. Normally, it would be a disappointing run to see end, but not here.
“This week, everything has been so awesome I’m just excited for another day here, another day to go low and make some putts,” said Smith, who is completing a fifth year for Nebraska while she completes a graphic design degree.
This is the kind of perspective that comes with an unexpected fifth year in college, a big opportunity and perhaps women’s golf biggest spotlight. The day before Smith played her way into the lead, she and the rest of the field piled into a fleet of charter buses for a trip down Magnolia Lane to Augusta National and dinner with Chairman Fred Ridley.
“I’ve cried off and on the last two weeks just knowing I’m (coming) here,” Smith said, admitting it’s an emotion that’s part happiness, part anxiousness. “Probably the best moment of my life so far. Kind of everything to gain this week.”
But credit Smith for dedicating energy to her mental game in the weeks leading up to the Augusta National Women’s Amateur, too. The 21-year-old repeated a mantra to prepare herself. She wanted to focus less on making the 36-hole cut and more on actually competing.
You can win this event. You can be up there. You’re just as good as everyone else.
Smith first got the call that she was in consideration for this field in November, after a rough week playing a tournament in Waco, Texas. It was an instant mood-lifter, given that Smith recalls exactly where she was sitting and exactly what went through her head the minute she heard about the creation of the ANWA in April 2018.
“It meant more to me than I thought, sub-consciously,” Smith told Golfweek in January. “I think I put the pedal to the metal in my competition schedule and practice schedule.”
As it turns out, Smith earned her way in as one of 30 top-ranked Americans. She was the last player in through that category with a year-end world ranking of No. 161 in 2020.
She played back-to-back tournaments in Florida to start 2021, finishing 12th at the prestigious Sally Amateur – a huge boost for a Midwesterner who generally puts the clubs away in the winter – and won her first college title two weeks before the ANWA. This is the biggest stage she’s competed on, following her maiden U.S. Women’s Amateur appearance in August.
To hear her older brother and caddie Karter, a former college golfer at Drake who now works for a business consulting company in Des Moines, Iowa, tell it, Kate’s mental preparation worked. Kate’s warm-up was solid on Wednesday afternoon, the first tee shot pure.
“She’s one that has a lot of confidence no matter what stage she plays on,” Karter said, “and I really appreciate that about watching her.”
Champions Retreat played long in the first round and the greens were firm. Only six players are under par, and only two of those players have finished their round. The first round will resume at 7:45 a.m., along with the second round, with players keeping their pairings and tee times from the first round.
Smith said her ballstriking, particularly with her long irons, carried her. There’s no reason to change the gameplan now, and certainly no reason to overthink it.
“Why ruin a week by putting pressure on yourself?” she said. “That was my mindset today.”
Kate Smith, a fifth-year senior at Nebraska, is combining her passion for golf and graphic design in a unique way.
ORMOND BEACH, Fla. – Kate Smith’s golf hat collection has spilled out of her closet. Part of it now lives above the stairway in her apartment near the University of Nebraska. Add some hats from roommate Megan Whittaker’s collection and it makes for the kind of installation you might expect in the home of a graphic designer.
Smith and Whittaker both play on Nebraska’s women’s golf team. Smith is wrapping up an extra COVID year by taking on a fashion merchandising minor to go along with her graphic design degree.
“Graphic design is such an awesome major because I can do it at night and on a plane,” said Smith, who is still considering a playing career. “It’s worked out well so far.”
The hats are keepsakes that eventually inspired a career path. Even when she was a kid, her dad Kris would sometimes bring home a hat with a logo he thought his daughter, a budding designer, might appreciate.
Kate Smith and Megan Whittaker’s hat collection. (Photo submitted)
Kris, the PGA member and manager of the city-owned Lakeview Golf Course in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, once brought home a cap from exclusive McArthur Golf Club in Hobe Sound, Florida. Its logo is a simple milk jug – much appreciated by Kate.
To this day, Kate names it as being among her favorite logos. There’s also Pebble Beach, Scioto and Winged Foot. Some of these courses she has never visited. At some, like Scioto, she has merely made a trip into the golf shop. Kate recognizes she can’t leave out Minnesota’s best and there plenty in that category. Windsong Farms and Hazeltine quickly come to mind.
There are plenty of golf fans out there with hat collections rivaling Kate Smith’s, but they likely don’t have their own personal collection of golf logos. That portfolio is still growing.
By the time Smith plays two more rounds at the Sally Amateur, she’ll have reached seven consecutive days of competitive golf between that tournament and last week’s Orlando International Amateur (where she finished T-22). At each such tournament, Smith as decided to give the course logo a refresh – she’s hashtagging it #LogosUnderRepair on Twitter where she’s posting the designs.
“I hope it doesn’t offend anybody that I’m redesigning their logos,” Smith explains. “It’s been really fun for me.”
After playing last week’s event at Orange County National, Smith’s logo upgrade included half a bright yellow orange to the left of the course name, in an updated typeface.
“Florida has kind of a flair to it and I wanted to express that in that logo,” she said.
Playing the historic Sally for the first time at Oceanside Country Club, Smith tried to work in the location a little more prominently. A wave now occupies the center of her revamped logo.
“You’re right near the ocean and you should know that when you see it,” she said.
Smith played her way into contention at the Sally Amateur on Thursday (rounds of 72-69 left her in second, two shots off the lead) in a bright pink long-sleeve top and a neon yellow skirt. She chose a hat from Moody Gardens in Galveston, Texas, noting that she might need to play a tournament there so she could add a Moody refresh to her list. There are pyramids (housing various nature exhibits) next to that golf course, and she’d like to see that become a bigger part of the logo.
Course logos make up a running dialogue in Smith’s head, and they always have. Part of that, she thinks, is inspired by her dad’s job as a PGA professional. Golf business naturally morphed into golf branding for Smith. Her designs are picking up some traction on social media, too.
“I definitely didn’t think people would enjoy them as much as they are,” she said. “It’s not like I’m viral but people like seeing it.”
Numbering them on her Twitter allows Smith to catalogue the places she’s been. It’s part travel journal and part budding portfolio.
This COVID season has amounted to many extra opportunities for Smith. Both parents were on hand at Oceanside to watch their daughter compete. Margery Smith took extra days away from work just in case COVID forces more spring golf cancellations. The Big 10 didn’t compete in the fall.
Still, Smith, the Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, native who was named Minnesota’s women’s co-player of the year in 2020, has risen to No. 161 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking. It helped her gain entry into the Sally for the first time and also got her into the U.S. Women’s Amateur for the first time ever.
“Anybody from the Midwest can tell you, you always feel a little bit behind with the climate,” she said. “I kind of feel like I got to catch up a little bit this year as far as rankings and tournaments. I got to play in my state am one last time, those type of things.
“I think a lot of us golfers, once we get to a certain level, we’re in a rush to play on the LPGA and we don’t realize how really cool these amateur events are.”
So Smith plays on in her golf and design journey, recognizing that there’s one coveted event that would throw the logo refresh operation out the window: the Augusta National Women’s Amateur.
“I wonder if I get in, I think I would just tweet that logo because I can’t redesign it,” she said. “That would be like golf sin.”
