Jensen Castle Wins Second Carolinas Four-Ball Championship
ORANGEBURG, S.C. – The combination of Kentucky women’s golfer Jensen Castle and Wake Forest’s Rachel Kuehn has proven once again to be a winning one.
For the second consecutive season, the rising juniors partnered to win the Carolinas Women’s Four-Ball Championship in record-setting fashion. The duo teamed up to shoot 16-under par – tying their record from last season – to win the two-round, two-day tournament by three shots at Orangeburg Country Club in Orangeburg, South Carolina.
Castle and Kuehn entered Wednesday’s round a shot off the lead at 7-under par, but they took ahold of the 20-team tournament with a 9-under-par 63 in the final round. Castle provided the score for 10 of Wednesday’s 18 holes, including the birdie on No. 18 to tie their 2020 record.
The four-ball format, also known as best ball, involves two-person teams where each player on the team plays their own ball throughout the round. The player with the lowest score on the hole (“best ball”) out of the two-person tandem serves as the team’s score.
Castle wasn’t the only Wildcat who medaled at the Carolinas Women’s Four-Ball Championship. Former UK player Jayne Pardue (formerly Lohr), who competed at UK from 1988-91, partnered with Kerry Rutan to win golf in the senior division. Pardus and Rutan won by four shots with a total score of 7-under par.
Castle has already had a memorable 2021 as a key member on Kentucky’s first NCAA Championship finals team in since 1992. There, in Scottsdale, Arizona, UK tied for 18th place and was within a few strokes of qualifying for the final round of stroke play after carding the best 54-hole score at the NCAA Championships final in the program’s sixth all-time appearance.
Two weeks later, Castle played in the 2021 U.S. Women’s Open against the game’s best golfers. She finished at 23-over par after qualifying for the world’s premier golf tournament at a sectional qualifier at Shannopin Country Club in Pittsburgh in May.
Castle was key to Kentucky’s success in 2020-21. She was third on the team with a 74.5 stroke average and two top-20 finishes. UK used 30 of Castle’s 33 rounds this past season towards the team score as the Wildcats went on to post the third-best scoring average in program history. In Castle’s freshman season, she made the All-Southeastern Conference First Team and set a single-season program record with a 71.88 strokes per round.
Castle has had other success in four-ball formats as well. Earlier this spring, she teamed up with fellow Wildcats Marissa Wenzler at the U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball and made it to the quarterfinals of the match-play portion of the national tournament.
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.
