Jensen Castle Named to ANNIKA Award Watch List
LEXINGTON, Ky. – After capturing the attention of the golf world by winning the U.S. Women’s Amateur and now playing for Team USA in the Curtis Cup, Kentucky women’s golfer Jensen Castle made the preseason watch list for one of the most coveted honors in college golf, the ANNIKA Award.
Castle was one of 20 players on the watch list announced by Golfweek and the Golf Channel on Friday.
The ANNIKA Award is named for and presented by World Golf Hall of Famer Annika Sorenstam, a 72-time winner on the LPGA Tour and 10-time major winner. The award honors the player of the year in college women’s golf, as selected by college golfers, coaches and members of the college golf media.
Past winners include Natalie Srinivasa (Furman, 2020), Maria Fassi (Arkansas, 2019 and 2018), Leona Maguire (Duke, 2017 and 2015), Bronte Law (UCLA, 2016), and Alison Lee (UCLA, 2014). Stanford’s Rachel Heck, who Castle beat with an epic comeback in the semifinals of the U.S. Women’s Amateur, won it last season.
A Kentucky player has never won a national player of the year award in women’s golf.
Currently playing in the Curtis Cup in North Wales, Castle is gearing up for a big junior season after taking the nation by storm at the U.S. Women’s Amateur earlier this month. She beat some of the country’s top players to win the national championship for amateurs at Westchester Country Club in Rye, New York and burst onto the national scene.
However, Castle’s excellence has been on full display in her two seasons at Kentucky.
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.
Now Castle will return to UK for her junior year as a U.S. Women’s Amateur champion and Curtis Cup qualifier, an achievement no other player in school history can boast.
Castle won the U.S. Women’s Amateur by navigating through a field of some of the 156 top amateurs in the nation. She captured one of the final two spots from stroke play in a 12-for-2 playoff to make match play and then defeated the likes of Heck, the consensus national player of the year, and Vivian Hou, the 2020 Women’s Golf Coaches Association Freshman of the Year.
After Castle’s Curtis Cup appearance, she will return to the U.S. to rejoin her Kentucky teammates and get ready for the 2021-22 collegiate season, which will begin Sept. 13-14 for the Wildcats at the Wolverine Invitational in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
With Castle back in the fold, in addition to the other four Wildcats who qualified for and played in the NCAA Championship Finals in the spring – fifth-year senior Rikke Svejgård Nielsen, juniors María Villanueva Aperribay and Marissa Wenzler, and sophomore Laney Frye – there are high expectations for Kentucky this season. UK checked in at No. 23 in the preseason WGCA Coaches Poll and No. 24 in the GolfChannel.com preseason rankings.
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.
