Josh Brewer sees in Savannah De Bock the quality all good players have: An unfailing confidence in her own game.
“She thinks she’s holing every shot she can get to the hole,” said Brewer, the new women’s golf coach at Eastern Michigan. “If it’s a hybrid or a putt, she really thinks she should make it.”
De Bock, from Belgium, spent the spring semester at Georgia, playing for Brewer. She transferred to Eastern Michigan for her sophomore season to follow a coach she felt she connected with and now, she could help lay a foundation for a revitalization of the Eagles’ women’s golf program. Here’s a player who could be a contender on the Annika Award Watch List and in the conversation for other postseason honors – as Brewer says, someone who can “cause some headaches for the Power 4 schools.”
De Bock’s fall season began last month at big venues, like Chambers Bay in University Place, Washington, which hosted the 2015 U.S. Open and the 2022 U.S. Women’s Amateur. De Bock tied for eighth there at the season-opening Leadership and Golf Invitational. She was six shots out of first and her week included a quadruple bogey on the 18th hole because of “a bad shot that led to another bad shot that led to another bad shot,” she said.
“I learned from it,” De Bock said, “We can see that this weekend was much better.”
On a high-altitude Tom Fazio layout for the Golfweek Red Sky Classic in Wolcott, Colorado, a week later, De Bock didn’t make worse than bogey (and had only four of those) on her way to winning her first individual title in two years. De Bock’s 15-under 54-hole total at Red Sky Golf Club is one off the tournament record, and a mind-blowing amount under par for a big golf course set at 8,000 feet with fast, undulating greens.
“Some of the pins were really hard, but I had done a very good practice round with the coaches so I knew where to aim on the greens and what zones to avoid,” De Bock said. “We had a very strong strategy on the par 5s to know when to attack and when not to.”
A second-round 65 at Red Sky is De Bock’s personal best in competition, and she only realized that after counting up all the birdies at the end of the day. She’d posted 66 in tournament play plenty of times, most notably when she won the European Ladies Amateur Championship in 2022.
Just talking about that championship reminded De Bock of the drought she’d been in ever since that title. It was something she’d talked about recently with Brewer.
“I was just like holy cow, I cannot win a thing,” she said. “I was feeling a little blue about it.”
When De Bock arrived in the U.S., Brewer said she fired at every pin. Her victory at Red Sky is evidence of her being more open to a different game plan – and having the ability to execute it. De Bock has also improved her club-head speed since arriving in the U.S., which has made her an increased threat.
De Bock doesn’t just want to play the tour someday, she wants the whole experience. Asked for her goals in golf, she listed the LPGA grand slam and holing the winning putt for Europe in the Solheim Cup.
“I just want to get really great at it,” she said of golf, referencing little goals, too, like scoring records.
In the short term, De Bock hopes to get back to the Augusta National Women’s Amateur, a tournament she played in 2023 but missed the cut. At Eastern Michigan, Brewer has built a competitive, coast-to-coast schedule that can get her there. De Bock is currently 86th in the World Amateur Golf Ranking but has been as high as 35th. A prominent alum has helped provide the resources for that schedule and beyond.
In May, GameAbove announced a $6.5 million commitment to the Eastern Michigan golf programs. Eastern Michigan alum Keith Stone is the Chairman of GameAbove, a brand encompassing charitable giving, capital investments, sports entertainment, and media ventures, and has donated $34.5 million to the university since 2019, with $14.5 million being earmarked for the golf programs, according to a university release.
The donation has afforded Eastern Michigan’s golf programs myriad opportunities, from increased staffing to facilities to travel funds. It’s a program waiting to be built and Brewer, having spent 12 seasons at Georgia and four seasons as an assistant coach at USC before that, is always game for a challenge.
After his first interview with Eastern Michigan, Brewer tossed out a thought: Why not Eastern Michigan?
“It’s kind of stuck and been our mantra. Like, why not? Why can’t we be one of the top programs? We have everything we need besides, I say, the logo,” Brewer said, referencing Eastern Michigan’s mid-major status.
“It’s a unique challenge and I want to prove that it can be done no matter where you’re at, no matter what part of the country.”