So much was familiar in Pawleys Island, South Carolina, this week. North Carolina-Wilmington often starts its season this way – by making the drive a couple hours south down the coast to the Golfweek Fall Challenge at Caledonia Golf Club.
“This is the type of grass we play in, this is a very similar style golf course that we might face here,” said head coach Cindy Ho. “I love staying in the villas because it’s a great first team bonding kind of situation where especially if I had new players, they get to know each other.”
Not much getting-to-know-each-other is required for this UNCW team, which features several players from last season, so there’s familiarity in that respect too.
The week only diverged from familiar after Mallory Fobes holed the final putt on Caledonia’s daunting finishing hole, featuring a tight landing zone off the tee and an approach over water. When Fobes made bogey there to cap off a closing 69, it left UNCW a shot ahead of Lipscomb, with their first victory in the Golfweek Fall Challenge after four appearances.
Scoring: Golfweek Fall Challenge
“It was an incredible battle,” Ho said of a final-round horserace with Lipscomb. “At this time of year, you’re learning about your kids, you can’t simulate pressure but this is how you make it real. . . . Trying to compete, trying to win under that kind of pressure, pulling off shots – especially finishing on 18. Eighteen has had our number.”
On Tuesday, by the time UNCW – playing in the final groups with Lipscomb and Charleston Southern – approached the final hole, there were several groups stacked on the tee. Most of Ho’s players draw the ball, which means they can’t hit driver off the tee at that 377-yard par 4. That set up many more decisions down the hole, like where to aim on the approach and how much the wind would affect both line and club choice.
UNCW ended up playing the hole, the toughest for the field, in 1 over.
Ho jokes that checking Golfstat constantly during a round is too much for her blood pressure, but on the final day at Caledonia, a comment from Lipscomb head coach Shannon O’Brien about how well UNCW was playing led Ho to open up live scoring anyway.
It’s just not No. 18 that’s a challenge at Caledonia, but also the three holes leading up to it. Ho was proud of the way that her players rose to the occasion, especially fifth-year senior Fobes and redshirt sophomore Victoria Levy, who finished 1-2 on the individual leaderboard. Fobes was 4 under for the week and Levy, along with New Mexico State’s Emma Bunch, was 2 under.
Fobes is playing her COVID year, and Ho can’t think of a better way for it to start than with an individual title – the first of her career. It’s fitting for a player who owns many of UNCW’s program scoring records to now own some hardware.
“I’m just so proud of her, I’m so happy for her that she’s done so much work on her game,” Ho said. “You do so much work and you hope but you can’t control anybody else’s game. You can’t control your opponents in golf. The only thing you can control is your game, your emotions, how you react to it. She did the work and she was rewarded for it this time.”
Levy also shined as the coach’s pick in the lineup. Levy has had pneumonia and bronchitis almost from the moment she stepped on campus this fall and as a result has hit very few shots leading up to the first tournament. Coming down the stretch on Tuesday, she had a chip-in eagle on No. 15 then birdied No. 16 with a downhill, curling left-to-right foot putt to an unfamiliar right hole location.
Annika Saidleman, playing in the No. 3 position to start the week, brought in a final-round 72 and finished T-28 individually. Saidleman wasn’t in the UNCW lineup last year but was part of the team.
As Ho said, it takes everyone to win over three days.
“This group is really close, and I love that for them,” Ho said, noting how hard they celebrated Fobes’ individual win at the end of the day. “They’re genuinely happy for a person that won, not just about themselves, whether they played good or bad.”