Emilia Migliaccio, Rachel Kuehn and Lauren Walsh have been teammates at Wake Forest and opponents in a pair of Curtis Cup Matches, Migliaccio and Kuehn playing for United States and Walsh, an Irish woman, a member of the Great Britain & Ireland side.
Their journey with the Demon Deacons has had its highs and lows. There was that no small matter of global pandemic that halted the wraparound 2019-2020 season in its tracks and continued to keep them from competing in the fall portion of the 2020-’21 season.
It was only fitting that it was that trio who accounted for the three full points in the 3-1 victory for Wake Forest, No. 2 in the Golfsat rankings, over Pac-12 champion and ninth-ranked Southern California in the NCAA Championship’s Final Match Wednesday at Grayhawk Golf Club’s Raptor Course in Scottsdale, Ariz.
Migliaccio, in her sixth year out of Cary, N.C. and No. 32 in the Women’s World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR), was in the lineup as a sophomore in 2019 when the Demon Deacons fell to Atlantic Coast Conference rival Duke in the NCAA Championship’s Final Match at The Blessings Golf Club in Fayetteville, Ark.
Back then, Migliaccio thought her future was on the LPGA Tour. By the time Wake Forest got back on the golf course in the spring of 2021, she wasn’t so sure.
Migliaccio decided she’d remain an amateur and then took a gap year for the 2021-’22 season, getting an internship with The Golf Channel. She was doing post-round interviews during the NCAA Championship at Grayhawk a year ago and she was missed in the Wake Forest lineup as the Demon Deacons failed to advance to match play.
Migliaccio and Kuehn, a senior from Asheville, N.C. and No. 7 in the Women’s WAGR, were teammates on a U.S. side that earned a pair of Curtis Cup wins in 10 months, the normally biennial schedule compacted by, what else, the coronavirus pandemic.
Walsh was there, too, at Conwy Golf Club in Caernarvonshire, Wales in August of 2021 and again last summer at Merion Golf Club’s historic East Course in the Ardmore section of Haverford Township, representing Ireland on the GB&I side.
The U.S. retained the Curtis Cup with wins in both editions of the series, but, regardless of the outcomes, the Wake Forest trio gained a ton of experience in match play on a stage that you almost have to see to understand.
At a Curtis Cup, there is pomp and circumstance and then there is competition, fierce competition.
That’s why Wake Forest head coach Kim Lewellen didn’t hesitate to put Walsh, a senior and No. 48 in the Women’s WAGR, in the anchor position in the Final Match against Southern Cal.
And it was Walsh who nailed down the clinching point, lagging a long birdie putt to gimmee range on the par-3 16th hole at the 6,368-yard, par-72 Raptor Course layout. When Southern California’s Brianna Navarrosa, a junior from San Diego, conceded Walsh’s par putt, Walsh had a 3 and 2 victory and Wake Forest had its first national championship in women’s golf.
“It’s easy when you have a team like this,” Lewellen told Dave Strege of Golf Digest following the epic win for her program. “They get along so well. They practice so hard and they’re veterans. They’ve been in this type of position before and they pulled it off.
“It was unbelievable to watch how they kept their grit and kept their foot on the pedal and got it done.”
Migliaccio got the call to bat leadoff and she responded with a 4 and 2 victory over Cindy Kou, a sophomore from China.
It was Kuehn who actually put the first point on the board for Wake Forest as she rolled to a 6 and 4 decision over her teammate on the U.S. Curtis Cup team last summer at Merion, Amari Avery, a sophomore from Riverside, Calif. and No. 12 in the Women’s WAGR.
Walsh and Mimi Rhodes, a junior from England who had a tremendous week in the Arizona desert for the Demon Deacons, were both closing in on the third point that would put Wake Forest over the top.
A day earlier, Navarrosa, playing in the anchor position, had taken down Stanford’s Rose Zhang, the No. 1 player in the Women’s WAGR, to stun the No. 1-ranked Cardinal and send the Trojans to the Final Match. Southern Cal has been a regular visitor to the NCAA semifinals since the match-play layer was added to the format, but it was the first time the Trojans had reached the Final Match.
But Walsh won four of the first five holes and Navarrosa, who battled hard down the stretch to stay alive, could never close the deficit to less than 3-down.
I had surmised several times during the wraparound 2022-’23 season that if Wake Forest could get into the match-play bracket at Grayhawk, the presence of Migliaccio, Kuehn and Walsh in the lineup would make the Demon Deacons a tough out.
But you can’t pull off a national championship without five solid contributors.
Rhodes gutted out a pair of 1-up victories in Wake Forest’s quarterfinal win over Florida State and its semifinal victory over Texas A&M, going to the 18th hole twice in a long day Tuesday in the desert heat.
Rhodes led Christine Wang, a junior from Houston, 2-up, on the 17th hole when Wake Forest clinched the national championship. If Walsh hadn’t finished the job, Rhodes was ready to do it.
Carolina Chacarra, a sophomore from Spain and No. 31 in the Women’s WAGR, fell 3 and 1, to Catherine Park, a freshman from Irvine, Calif. who had earned a share of second place in the individual standings in the 72 holes of qualifying for match play, in Wednesday’s Final Match.
They all needed to be good for Wake Forest to win five tournaments during the regular season and make it into the match-play bracket at Grayhawk.
It was The King, Arnold Palmer, who first established Wake Forest as a golf power 70 or so years ago. Wednesday, a group of talented and determined women added their own chapter to the great golf legacy Palmer established at Wake.
Somewhere, Arnie was smiling.
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