The Epson tour has grown substantially in recent years, up from $1.6 million a decade ago to $4.41 million in prize money.
The Florida’s Natural Charity Classic kicks off the 2022 Epson Tour season March 4-6 in Winter Haven, Florida, where a 132-player field will compete for a $200,000 purse.
The top 10 players at season’s end will earn LPGA cards for 2023. The LPGA’s official qualifying tour is made up of recent hotshot college grads, Epson Tour veterans waiting for a big break, and LPGA veterans looking to claw their way back to the Big Show.
The Epson tour has grown substantially in recent years, up from $1.6 million a decade ago to $4.41 million in prize money across 20-plus events in 2022.
Here’s a look at seven storylines to follow this season:
Fifth-year senior Kennedy Swann, with a big smile and even bigger game, has been the emotional leader Ole Miss.
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — After leading Ole Miss to a dominant victory at the NCAA Championship – the first women’s title in school history – head coach Kory Henkes said, “If you get the right people on your team anything can happen.”
When you look at the Rebel roster, Kennedy Swann stands out.
The Austin, Texas, native with the big smile and even bigger game has been the emotional leader and a sparkplug for Ole Miss, but this weekend at Grayhawk Golf Club almost never happened for two reasons. The first? Swann, a Clemson transfer two years ago, was unsure about returning for a fifth year after COVID-19 wiped out the 2019-2020 season. The second?
“To be honest, at first I told her no,” Henkes said of the initial call about a transfer. “I just didn’t know if it was the right fit for where we were going with our program at the time. After talking to her I said, ‘alright, I’ll give you a second chance, but if you mess up, you’re done.’ It was strict for the first year, and she didn’t blow it. She took advantage of every opportunity.”
‘We had our moments’
Both Henkes and assistant coach Zack Byrd uttered those words when talking about Swann’s start in Oxford.
“We’ve had our moments and she was a challenge when she got here, but it’s been unbelievable to watch her mature and see her game get better. She was always the one asking to go over stats, asking what can I do to get better,” said Byrd, who works a lot with Swann and was on the bag for her quarterfinal run at the 2020 U.S. Women’s Amateur. “Coming in she was averaging 76 and now she’s under par. It’s been one of the most fulfilling moments of my life to work with her.”
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“We had our moments, not every one was great, but that’s what gets us (to a national championship),” echoed Henkes. “We hold them accountable, and if we don’t do that early on, we don’t get here today.”
The final shot
As if making school history in her final event wasn’t impressive enough, Swann called her shot.
“She called me and Kory and said, ‘If I’m coming back we’re gonna win a national championship, right?’”
Right she was.
Swann finished 3-0 in match play this week and never saw the 18th green after making birdie on her final stroke-play hole on Monday. Not only that, she ended her college career in style with her family by her side, every step of the way.
“To dream this for your kid when they’re 10 years old and you see the talent, the fight they have in their heart, the want to compete and the will to win, to see it play out like this, knowing this was her very last golf tournament, to be here at the very last and see her hit that shot on 17 to seal the match, it was just nuts,” said her father, Jay Swann.
That shot on 17? Just a knockdown 60-degree from 86-some yards to a foot, leading to a conceded birdie and a crucial second point for the Rebels against Oklahoma State’s Maja Stark, a finalist for the ANNIKA Award and the No. 6-ranked player in the country.
— Ole Miss Women’s Golf (@OleMissWGolf) May 27, 2021
“That was pure luck or something else came over me because that was not my intention,” she said with her signature smile and a laugh. “My intention was get it on the green somewhere and make her make birdie to beat me and go to 18.”
“I hit it and thought, ‘that’s either going to be really, really good or its going to land next to the pin and roll off the back of the green and I’m going to have a tough chip,'” explained Swann. “I saw it land and saw her pick up my ball and throw it in the rough so I thought, ‘well, that must’ve been pretty good.’”
Family business
The Swann’s bought an RV – they call it the bus – the summer before Kennedy’s senior year of high school, and it’s been put to good use the last year.
“With COVID, travel was difficult,” said Jay. “So we loaded up the bus and drove from Austin, Texas, to Washington, D.C. for the 2020 U.S. Women’s Amateur in the summer. We knew this spring would be her last go around so we loaded up the bus again and drove to Florida in February.”
“When she committed to that fifth year I told Jay I really want to go to every tournament,” said Kennedy’s mother, Laura. “He said, ‘okay, let’s make it happen.'”
Ole Miss golfer Kennedy Swann celebrates with her father Jay Swann after defeating Oklahoma State in the NCAA Women’s Golf Championship at Grayhawk Golf Club. (Photo: Joe Camporeale-USA TODAY Sports)
Laura, a counselor and adjunct faculty at the University of Texas, worked from the RV when she was out on the road. Jay, a lieutenant for the Austin Police Department, would fly back home to work and make it to tournaments when he could on the weekends. Laura spent seven weeks on the road watching her daughter become one of the nation’s best players.
Swann is exempt into the 2021 U.S. Women’s Amateur, and the family will be “loading up the bus” for the drive to Westchester Country Club in Rye, New York, in about five weeks.
It’s the first women’s national championship for Ole Miss as the Rebels beat Oklahoma State in golf.
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Chiara Tamburlini earned her first point of the week for Ole Miss on Wednesday in the final of the NCAA Women’s Golf Championship against Oklahoma State.
It opened the floodgates to a national championship, the first women’s title in school history.
Tamburlini’s 6 and 5 win was the largest margin of victory in the women’s final.
A few minutes later, fifth-year senior Kennedy Swann earned the Rebels their second point with a 2 and 1 win over Maja Stark. Swann’s win pushed her career match-play mark to 10-2.
Then it was Ole Miss sophomore Andrea Lignell, who played 40 holes over the quarterfinals and semifinals on Tuesday, draining a five-footer on the 17th hole to clinch the win.
Oklahoma State, which knocked out defending national champion Duke with a 5-0 showing in the semifinals on Tuesday, was also attempting to win the first women’s title in school history.
Ole Miss players brought the firepower in stroke-play qualifying at the East Lake Cup. Now they’ll try to ride the No. 1 seed to a title.
When the 2019-20 college golf season was canceled, Ole Miss’ women had just bagged a fourth team title for the season. The Rebels were ranked No. 13 in Golfweek’s rankings. They were a good bet for the NCAA match-play bracket.
The premature end of the spring season burned on many levels, and a missed opportunity for an Ole Miss team that was looking to defend its SEC title and make the bracket at the 2019 NCAA Women’s Championship is high on the list of COVID disappointments.
Instead, they’ll get their day on TV this week at the East Lake Cup. The four-team televised match normally is a fall perk for the semifinalists from the previous season’s NCAA Championship. This year, the field was built based on the final spring Golfstat ranking, with teams not playing because of COVID weeded out.
Ole Miss, with an 18-hole score of 5-under 283 at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta, topped a field that also included South Carolina, Florida and Texas.
In addition to the No. 1 seed, two Ole Miss players also shared the individual title. Fifth-year senior Kennedy Swann and junior Ellen Hume, a transfer from Charleston Southern and the 2019 English Women’s Amateur champ, each got a share of it.
Hume did it on the strength of big closing birdies at Nos. 14, 15 and 17.
“There were definitely chances out there,” Hume told Golf Channel after the round. “Fourteen is a good par 5 that we can attack. Then we had a couple wedges going into 16, 17 and 18. So they were good chances for birdie. I think my up-and-down on 14 definitely gave me some momentum.”
Swann said she had visions of Rory McIlroy coming down the stretch at East Lake. She had to hole a putt for birdie at the last hole to catch her teammate for co-medalist honors.
“I really just tried to take the result out of it,” Swann said. “A lot of times I tend to put way too much pressure on myself in those situations. It definitely helped knowing that a teammate already had the title and that if I did miss it, Ole Miss was still going to hold it.”
Ole Miss head coach Kory Henkes spent the day walking with Hume while assistant coach Zack Byrd walked with Swann. Byrd told Swann she was a shot back coming down the stretch, but he didn’t tell her who she was chasing.
“Everyone on this team really pulls for each other so I know Ellen was just as excited for Kennedy as Kennedy was for her so just an all-around great day for our program,” Henkes said.
The highlights were plentiful for the Rebels. Four players landed inside the top eight. Julia Johnson dropped her approach on the front of the green at the par-4 17th and watched it roll in for eagle, the only one of those on the board for the day.
You never know what kind of firepower you might get out of Ole Miss, a team that claimed the 2019 SEC title in a big-energy match against South Carolina.
Ole Miss faces Texas in the first round of East Lake Cup match play while South Carolina, which just won The Ally last week, will play Florida. The two teams could meet again in Wednesday’s final.
