GEORGIA GOLF HISTORY UGA HAS LONG BEEN AMONG NATION’S BEST
Perhaps no other player made It all began in 1967, when Liz the impact that Vicki Goetze did Murphey joined the UGA faculty as an assistant physical education in her two-season stint at Georgia. professor and golf coach. She gradA native of nearby Watkinsville, ually built Georgia into a national Goetze capped her freshman year powerhouse...a status the Bulldogs by shooting a tourney-record 65 have maintained for decades. on the last day of the 1992 NCAA In the past four decades, the Championships in Tempe, Ariz., to Bulldogs have earned four national win medalist honors by three over championships – one team and Arizona’s Annika Sorenstam. three individual titles. Georgia has In 2001, the Bulldogs captured won an SEC-best 19 team and inditheir first team national title. Georvidual league titles. gia rallied from a four-shot deficit On the team front, Georgia has entering the final round to best finished among the top 20 schools UGA GOLF’S FOUNDING FEMALES top-ranked Duke by three shots in at the national championships dur- Terri Moody (L) and Liz Murphey (R) take in the Howey-in-the-Hills, Fla. ing 26 of the last 42 years – 20 of action at the 2000 Liz Murphey Collegiate Classic. those in the top 10. UGA has cap- Murphey started the program from scratch and Premier amateurs tured 11 SEC team crowns, including was head coach from 1967-87. She also was the Vicki Goetze arrived in Aththree straight from 1997-99. senior woman administrator while UGA devel- ens as one of the most celebrated Individually, Georgia golfers have oped into a national power in women’s athletics. and decorated junior golfers ever. posted 36 top-20 individual finish- Moody, an Athens native who was the first female Goetze was a six-time AJGA Alles at nationals. Four of those came to receive a full athletic scholarship to UGA, paid American and three-time National in 2001 alone, when Reilley Rankin, major dividends on that investment by winning Junior Golfer of the Year. She won Laura Henderson, Angela Jerman the school’s first-ever national title in women’s in- the 1989 U.S. Amateur during the and Summer Sirmons all did so en tercollegiate athletics. summer after her sophomore year route to securing the team national of high school and won a second title. The aforementioned quartet is among 33 golfers who Am in 1992 following her freshman campaign at UGA. have been named All-America 59 times. In addition, Bulldogs Georgia golfers have also won three additional USGA titles have won eight SEC individual titles, eight SEC Golfer of the and international Bulldogs have several significant titles, inYear honors and nine SEC Freshman of the Year accolades. cluding the South American Am, Argentine Am, Brazilian Am, Canadian Am and Spanish Am. The quintet of coaches The year before Terri Moody won her individual national In 1986, Beans Kelly, a member of Bulldog teams that fin- crown, she became UGA’s first representative in the Curtis ished fourth and third at the 1982 and 1983 national cham- Cup, the biennial competition between top amateurs from pionships, respectively, took the reins from her mentor and the U.S. and Great Britain & Ireland. Bulldogs have reprecontinued to build upon the foundation Liz Murphey estab- sented the U.S. six more times, as well as GB&I in 2008. lished. During Beans’ tenure from 1986-2000, Georgia collected seven SEC Championships, five SEC individual crowns Dominating the SEC in Beans’ “Glory Days” and five top-10 NCAA finishes. Georgia owns an SEC-best 19 league titles – 11 team and Todd McCorkle assumed the helm in 2000 and delivered the eight individual – headlined by an unprecedented trio of program’s first-ever team national title the following spring. sweeps at three straight SEC Championships from 1997-99. Kelley Hester, a three-time All-SEC performer as the former Kelley Richardson, christened the newest chapter in Georgia Making a mark in the professional ranks Golf lore in 2008 and led the Bulldogs to two more top-20s. Eighteen Bulldogs have gone on to play on the LPGA Tour, Josh Brewer was named as the Bulldogs’ fifth head coach with four topping $1 million in career earnings and the group in June 2012 and immediately began to build upon UGA’s rich winning more than $8.5 million combined. In addition, 29 golf legacy, capturing 27 titles – 13 team and 14 individual – Georgia golfers have competed on the Futures Tour. during his first eight campaigns in Athens. Nanci Bowen won the 1995 Nabisco Dinah Shore, the first major by a Georgia golfer. In 1986, Cindy (Pleger) Mackey beNational titles make their way to Athens came the initial former Bulldog to secure an LPGA win, a 16 Georgia Golf owns four national championships – three in- shot victory at the MasterCard International that still stands dividual crowns and one team title. as the Tour record for largest margin of victory. Athens native Terri Moody was the first woman ever to receive a full athletic scholarship to UGA and became the BullStandouts in the classroom as well dogs’ first national medalist. She captured the 1981 AIAW title For all the success on the course, the Bulldogs’ academic reat the UGA Golf Course after winning a three-hole playoff sume is equally impressive. The program has captured UGA’s over Miami’s Patti Rizzo. Faculty Athletic Representatives Award – given annually to the Cindy Schreyer secured Georgia’s first NCAA medalist honor women’s and men’s teams with the highest GPAs – 12 times. by winning at the Innisbrook Resort in Tarpon Springs, Fla., in In 1998, Julia Boros earned the Edith Munson Award as the 1984. She did so in much the same style as Moody, in a three- senior All-American golfer with the highest GPA and was hole sudden-death playoff win over SMU’s Martha Foyer and awarded an NCAA post-graduate scholarship. Miami’s Michele Berteotti. 20 • 2020 2020--21 georgia golf
