‘Incredible story.’ How a Wildcat won the U.S. Amateur and what it could mean for UK.
When Jensen Castle reflects on the memories made last week at Westchester Country Club in Rye, New York, — the ones that comprised her run to the U.S. Women’s Amateur title — two moments stick out.
The first came when Castle’s eventual victory was still a distant dream, as she advanced from a 12-for-2 playoff along with University of Kentucky teammate and rising junior Marissa Wenzler to reach the match play portion of the event.
The second came as Castle secured the title.
Kentucky women’s golf assistant coach Brian May made a last-minute trip to watch Castle play in Sunday’s 36-hole championship match, and when Castle drained a 15-foot birdie putt on the 35th hole to win the tournament, the normally reserved May displayed emotion that caught everyone off guard.
“Anyone (who) knows Brian, he’s not a very emotional guy. It’s just like a head down, a nod,” Castle told the Herald-Leader on Monday while driving home to Columbia, South Carolina. “Brian did a fist pump, the most genuine, coolest thing I’ve ever seen him do.”
“I think we all had that same kind of reaction when they put the cameras on Brian and he had this huge fist bump. We were like, ‘Whoa, that is not Brian May,’” Wenzler, who watched the championship match on TV, said. “To just kind of see that big fist pump was really cool. It just shows we’re a family.”
The Kentucky athletics family added a new championship over the weekend when Castle became the first UK golfer to win the U.S. Women’s Amateur.
The triumph defied not only logic, but also to an extent doctor’s orders.
Castle, a rising junior, helped Kentucky reach the NCAA Championship finals in May — the first time Kentucky appeared on the stage since 1992 — but her summer was derailed by a rib injury. While she played through the injury to win a second straight Carolinas Four-Ball Championship in June, the injury forced her to withdraw from several summer tournaments.
A doctor told Castle before the U.S. Women’s Amateur the injury could be a stress fracture for one of her ribs, but only an MRI could confirm it. The doctor said that if it was a stress fracture, Castle wouldn’t play in the tournament.
“If you don’t get the MRI and you have a stress fracture we’ll never know, and you can play in the Am,” Castle recalled her doctor saying. “I’m like, ‘OK, we’re going to do that then.’”
“I just couldn’t see myself giving that opportunity up to an alternate. ... I qualified, you know, if it wasn’t meant to be, then I wouldn’t have qualified in the first place.”
Low expectations turn into a fairy-tale run
After taking a couple weeks off to rest — the longest Castle has gone without playing golf in years — she was finally cleared to swing a club early last week.
Accordingly, expectations were low.
During the tournament, Castle told The Journal News she didn’t pack enough clothes or golf balls for how long she ended up playing in the tournament. Castle’s logistical plans reflected this, as she went from staying in a hotel to staying with a friend of a friend in Greenwich, Connecticut, about 20 minutes away from the course, initially sleeping on an air mattress before upgrading to a twin bed.
The U.S. Women’s Amateur features 36 holes of stroke play for 156 competitors before the top 64 players advance to match play. After an opening-round 79, Castle seemed out of contention.
“I was making mistakes that I have never made, mistakes that I only made just because I didn’t have a club in my hand the past few weeks,” Castle said.
A 71 in her final stroke-play round was enough to put Castle in a 12-for-2 playoff, which also featured Wenzler, to determine the final match play spots.
The other Kentucky golfer in the field, rising sophomore Laney Frye, made the match play field without the playoff.
Wenzler watched as Castle hit a tee shot within 10 feet of the hole and made birdie on the par-3 playoff hole. She matched that with a tee shot of her own to within 12 feet, making her birdie putt to send all three Wildcats through to match play.
“Just being able to run up and hug your teammate after a 12-for-2 playoff just to make it to the match play portion was one of the most special things,” Castle said.
Following the action from afar through online live scoring was Kentucky women’s golf coach Golda Borst, who was six hours ahead in her native Sweden visiting family for the first time in two years.
In match play, Frye fell in the round of 64 and Wenzler lost in the round of 32, but only after winning her first match against No. 1 seed Rachel Kuehn of Wake Forest, who was Castle’s partner for both of her Carolinas Four-Ball Championships.
“We really wanted to do something for Kentucky and to kind of make the name proud,” Wenzler said.
Castle, the No. 63 seed, defeated No. 2 seed Kennedy Pedigo of Southern Methodist University in the first round, and eventually reached a blockbuster semifinal against Stanford’s Rachel Heck, who won the 2021 NCAA individual national title.
Heck was in control for most of Saturday’s semifinal, winning the first hole against Castle and not trailing for the next 17 holes.
But a short par putt on the 18th that would have won the match for Heck slid past the left edge of the cup, meaning extra holes were needed. Castle took advantage and won the match with a lengthy birdie putt on the 19th, the first time she led all day.
“I actually almost gave her that putt (on 18),” Castle said. “But I thought, ‘Well I’m down, there’s a slim chance and she hasn’t putted a 4- or 5-footer all day because I’ve given them to her.”
The match was broadcast live on The Golf Channel, but Borst was still unable to see any of it. She was flying back to the United States via Amsterdam and Atlanta and was without Wi-Fi for nine hours, only realizing what Castle had accomplished hours after the fact.
“I took videos of myself and my daughter and we were screaming in the airplane,” Borst said.
Ahead of Sunday’s 36-hole championship match against Vivian Hou of the University of Arizona — one of the biggest moments of Castle’s life so far — Castle slept for less than two hours, according to her Apple Watch, on a twin-sized bed.
“If I have a long car ride or something big the next day, for example like a tournament, I never seem to sleep well,” Castle said.
Anti-inflammatory medication, Tylenol and ice helped keep Castle’s rib pain at bay, but she was also concerned about blisters on her feet during the 36-hole championship match, which is separated into 18 holes in the morning and 18 holes in the afternoon.
She was also acutely aware to not be caught yawning on TV.
Hou finished the opening 18 holes 2-up on Castle. During a nearly two-hour break between the morning and afternoon sessions, Castle spoke on the phone with Borst, who was now back at home in front of a TV with her daughters.
“I thought I was swinging in fear, not necessarily of losing, just a fear of where the ball could end up,” Castle said. “So I was like, there’s nothing to be afraid of out here, there’s not even water. If you commit to it you shouldn’t be afraid.”
The turnaround was instant. Castle birdied and won three of the first four holes in the afternoon, going from 2-down to 1-up by the 23rd hole, and she led for the rest of the match.
Castle said it was the first individual tournament she’s won in five or six years.
“I knew we had some great horses in the tournament, but to think that the one that’s been sitting out for the last month, that pulled out of two tournaments, was going to get all the way to the final, what an incredible story,” Borst said.
Castle’s win spotlights Kentucky women’s golf
Borst said that when May texted her about going to Westchester for the title match she was initially concerned about getting in Castle’s way, but that concern gave way to the importance of having someone from Kentucky supporting Castle during her big moment.
“No words will ever be able to describe what that meant to me,” Castle said. “It was the most little gesture that just showed that he supported and cared for me and was there for me.”
In similar fashion to May, Castle made a lengthy trek home Monday to be at work Tuesday morning as a cart attendant at Columbia Country Club in Columbia, South Carolina.
“That’s how special Columbia Country Club to me is, I would do anything just to be out there and be around people,” Castle said.
While Castle’s immediate future includes time spent resting and working, her upcoming golf schedule will be busier thanks to winning the U.S. Women’s Amateur.
Castle is now part of the eight-woman USA Curtis Cup team for this year’s event against Great Britain and Ireland, which will take place in two weeks in Wales.
She is also now exempt for the next 10 U.S. Women’s Amateurs and received invitations to this month’s Women’s British Open, which she won’t play, and the 2022 Augusta National Women’s Amateur. Castle also secured a spot in next year’s U.S. Women’s Open, an event she qualified for and played in as an amateur this year.
But the future also involves making sure Castle gets enough rest with Kentucky’s 2021-22 season set to start in September.
“It’s my job to also help her understand that she’s not invincible,” Borst said. ‘She’s got to pick and choose and that’s something that she’s going to have to figure out when and if she decides to turn professional, too.”
Even with Castle potentially missing out on one of Kentucky’s nine tournaments prior to April’s SEC Championship, the Wildcats should remain one of the conference’s top teams this season.
Including Castle, UK returns all five players from last season that qualified and played in the NCAA Championship finals. This also includes Wenzler, who in July won both the stroke play and match play portions of another prestigious tournament, the Western Women’s Amateur.
Frye, the other UK golfer at the U.S. Women’s Amateur, was named to last season’s SEC All-Freshman Team.
“I’m not worried about Kentucky. We will play great. We will miss her when she’s not in the lineup but she is the best teammate I think the girls could ever ask for,” Borst said of Castle. “This is also a huge moment for her and we are huge supporters of that. This is what we want for our players.”
