Jensen Castle, Team USA Win Curtis Cup
CONWY, Wales – Jensen Castle’s never-say-die attitude embodied Team USA’s spirt this week as the Americans rallied from an early hole in the biennial international match vs. Great Britain and Ireland (GB&I) to win the 2021 Curtis Cup on Saturday.
Team USA trailed 4.5-1.5 after Thursday’s opener but rallied over the next two days to defeat GB&I in Saturday’s finale of singles matches. The Americans won with a score of 12.5-7.5 at Conwy Golf Club in North Wales.
Castle, a junior on the Kentucky women’s golf team, played a central part in the comeback. She earned 1.5 points on Friday to even the match heading into Saturday and then rallied from 3 down with four holes to play to halve her singles battle and steal a key half point.
“It was awesome,” Castle said of the comeback. “It was just a battle the whole time and I just kept trying. I was never out of it.”
The win improves the Americans’ series lead to 30-8-3, but this victory marked the United States’ first on GB&I soil since 2008. It’s the first back-to-back wins in the series since the U.S. won seven straight matches from 1998 to 2010.
Castle, the 2021 U.S. Women’s Amateur champion, had her hands full Saturday in the first pairing of the day vs. Hannah Darling, the 20201 Royal & Ancient Girls’ Amateur champion. The match was all square through four holes, but Darling, who is ranked No. 25 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking, made her move with two straight birdies and wins in three of the next four holes to take a 3-up lead.
Castle got one back at the 10th but Darling stole it right back with a birdie on the par-4 11th and held that lead going into No. 15.
Needing to win three holes with four to play just to halve the match, Castle did just that. She birdied the par-4 15th to win the hole, took advantage of a Darling bogey on No. 16 and entered the final hole of the day down by just one.
In clutch fashion, Castle birdied the par 5 to halve the match and get the U.S. within a half point of retaining the cup.
“I knew I was playing really good all day and was super consistent; she (Darling) was just playing so well,” Castle said. “She was like 3- or 4-under (par). I was like, Jensen, you’re giving yourself opportunities; they’re just not falling. I had a ton of great opportunities.”
Castle’s Saturday comeback was reminiscent of her incredible U.S. Women’s Amateur run. There she rallied from 2 down with three holes to play to stun Rachel Heck, the 2021 NCAA individual champion, on the 19th hole in the semifinals, and then rallied from a 2-down deficit vs. Yu-Chiang (Vivian) Hou, the 2020 Women’s Golf Coaches Association Freshman of the Year, to win the 36-hole championship match 2 and 1.
“I just never thought I was good at match play until the (U.S. Women’s) Am,” Castle said. “Going into that tournament I was just like, focus on yourself; that’s all that matters. That’s what I did all (this) week. Even when I had a partner, I just focused on (hitting) fairways and greens (in regulation).”
By winning the U.S. Women’s Amateur, Castle earned a spot on the USA Curtis Cup squad, one of many exemptions that came with winning the amateur national championship. Castle is not only the first U.S. Women’s Amateur champion in school history, she is also the first to play in the Curtis Cup.
Castle dropped her debut match on Thursday 2 and 1 in a four-ball match with Duke’s Gina Kim, but she came back strong on Friday.
In her morning match with Arkansas’ Brooke Matthews, Castle made some key birdies midway through the round in a competitive match vs. Caley McGinty and Emily Toy to halve the match.
Team USA went to a formidable duo for Friday afternoon’s match when they paired up Castle with Wake Forest’s Rachel Kuehn. The duo has won back-to-back Carolinas Women’s Four-Ball Championship titles with record-setting scores.
The USA pairing did not disappoint. Castle birdied the par-4 second hole with a long putt to go 1 up early and the two Americans never looked back. The two each birdied the par-5 fourth hole to take a two-hole lead and they increased it to a 3-up lead by the eighth hole. Lauren Walsh and Louise Duncan cut it to a 1-up lead after 11 holes, but Castle and Kuehn turned it on again and closed out the match with a 3-and-2 victory on No. 16.
It has been an incredible run for Castle. At this time last month, she wasn’t even sure she could get through a round because of a stress fracture in a rib that caused her to withdraw from all of her July tournaments. She picked up a club for the first time just a few days before the U.S. Women’s Amateur with no expectations. A month later, she is now a Curtis Cup and U.S. Women’s Amateur champion.
Now, Castle will gear up for a big junior season at Kentucky. On Friday, was named to the preseason watch list for the ANNIKA Award, which is presented to the player of the year in college women’s golf.
Arriving at UK as the most decorated signee in program history, Castle has been as good as advertised with 17 appearances in two seasons, seven top-20 finishes and a 73.6 stroke average.
In her freshman season, Castle led the 2019-20 team to two championships while setting the program’s single-season scoring record with 71.9 strokes per round.
Although she couldn’t match her record-setting pace last season as a sophomore, she was one of the key players in the Wildcats’ run to the NCAA Championships Finals, the program’s first appearance in the national championship since 1992. The team used 30 of Castle’s 33 scores during the season.
Kentucky’s 2021-22 schedule was released last month. Returning all five players who qualified and played in the NCAA Championship Finals, the Wildcats will play in nine regular-season events before the Southeastern Conference Championship and postseason play. After navigating through the COVID-19 pandemic, UK will return to a traditional schedule with four tournaments in the fall, four in the spring, a head-to-head matchup with rival Louisville and then the postseason.
UK was ranked No. 23 in the preseason WGCA Coaches Poll and No. 24 in the GolfChannel.com preseason ranking.
The UK season begins Sept. 13-14 at the Wolverine Invitational in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
For the latest on the Kentucky women’s golf team, follow the team on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, as well as on the web at UKathletics.com.
99 flake??for the win!@CurtisCup | @jensen_castle | @conwygolfclub pic.twitter.com/oM9azZA4U4
— USGA (@USGA) August 28, 2021
