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119th Utah Women’s State Amateur Final: Arden Louchheim vs. Kate Walker
Reconstructing her golf swing this summer, Arden Louchheim needed a checkpoint. Another meeting with six-time winner Kelsey Chugg in the 119th Utah Women’s State Amateur Championship proved to be just the right opportunity.
The University of Nebraska golfer from Park City took a 3-and-1 semifinal victory Wednesday at Wasatch Mountain Golf Course. She advanced to Thursday’s 36-hole final match vs. Crimson Cliffs High School senior Kate Walker, a 1-up winner over Ashley Lam.
Louchheim did not need to be reminded about last July’s 5-and-4 loss to Chugg in the round of 16. “Anyone watching could tell you it really wasn’t a match,” Louchheim said. “She definitely kicked my butt.”
As well as Chugg played that day, that’s how Louchheim performed Wednesday. “Coming back this year, my game feels a lot better,” said Louchheim, a Rowland Hall graduate. “Everything feels like it’s coming together.”
After defeating BYU’s Berlin Long in the quarterfinals, Arden Louchheim asked Long to caddie for her in the semifinal match against Kelsey Chugg.
She needed something close to her best to beat Chugg, who’s now 41-8 in 14 years of Women’s State Am match play. Louchheim followed the pattern of Berlin Long, who lost to Chugg in 2020 and won in the ‘21 semifinals. Coincidentally enough, Long caddied for Louchheim in the afternoon after losing to her friend in the morning’s quarterfinals.
Louchheim was 1 down at the turn, when Long told her, “Let’s go have a back nine.”
The turnaround started with Louchheim’s tricky birdie putt on the par-4 No. 10, followed by Chugg’s violent lip-out. That foreshadowed the rest of the match, as Chugg bogeyed the two par-3 holes on the back nine and Louchheim remained steady. She closed out the match with a birdie on the par-5 No. 17.
Six-time champion Kelsey Chugg is now 41-8 in 14 years of Women’s State Am match play.
“I definitely felt nervous,” Louchheim said of playing a Utah golf legend. “I did feel like the underdog, I’m not going to lie, but I like playing from there.”
So does Walker, actually. That’s the outlook she carried right through the winning stroke, even if she didn’t realize what was at stake in that moment. Her 15-foot par putt on No. 18 clinched the victory.
Kate Walker’s 15-foot par putt on No. 18 clinched her semifinal victory.
Walker was surprised when Lam, a Westminster University golfer, congratulated her. “I had no idea,” Walker said of the putt’s significance. “I was just trying to make it.”
Asked if that worked in her favor, she said, “That’s kind of what I have to do. I just pretend, like, ‘You’re down. You’ve got to get up and down here, or you give one back.’ So that was kind of my mentality all day. It worked.”
Westminster’s Ashley Lam extended her semifinal match against Kate Walker to 18-holes making multiple putts from 20-feet or more.
Walker, whose St. George-based family spends most of the summer in northern Utah, had to withstand Lam’s barrage of four putts from 20 feet or longer. She took it in stride, realizing that there’s no playing defense in golf. But then Lam gave her a gift on the par-3 No. 16, which proved pivotal. Lam three-putted for a double bogey. That enabled Walker to win the hole with a bogey, after her tee shot sailed to the right and landed in the basket of a rules official’s golf cart.
“That should have counted as a hole-in-one, I think,” Walker said.
In that case, a “4” was good enough. “Being the 29th seed and making it to the final is crazy,” she said. “So I’m proud, either way.”
Quarterfinals
Lunch was far from being ready in the clubhouse when the quarterfinal matches ended.
That’s one way to illustrate how Lam, Walker, Louchheim and Chugg accelerated to the finish line in their matches. Lam, a 2-and-1 winner over Rachel Lillywhite, was the only one of the four who went beyond No. 15. And even her match ended earlier than expected as the back nine unfolded. The Westminster University golfer was tied before winning Nos. 15 and 16 in the day’s opening match.
Crimson Cliffs High School junior Kate Walker advanced to the championship match as the No. 29 seed in match play.
The other three matches followed a pattern, as the winners each made a big surge. Walker birdied Nos. 3, 4 and 5 to take control in a 4-and-3 defeat of Adley Nelson. Louchheim was 1 up at the turn vs. Berlin Long, then won four of the last six holes in a 5-and-3 victory.
Chugg was 1 up over Aadyn Long through eight holes, then took five of the last seven holes in a 6-and-4 triumph.
The Long sisters also made the quarterfinals in 2021, when Berlin reached the finals. With the asterisk that the Women’s State Am was contested in stroke play for nearly 50 years, they’re the only sisters to reach the quarterfinals of match play in the same tournament.
Day three recap of the 119th Utah Women’s State Amateur written by Fairways Media senior writer Kurt Kragthorpe. Photography by Fairways Media/Randy Dodson and Garrit Johnson.