Winning in collegiate sports is usually reserved for one team per match, game or tournament. However, in a sport like golf, teams can walk away co-champions. That is exactly what happened with the No. 1 Texas women’s golf team this week in Hawaii.
A few weeks after winning the Allstate Sugar Bowl Intercollegiate Golf Championship and being named the No. 1 team in the country, the team tied with SMU to win for the second time in 2019 at the Dr. Donnis Thompson Invitational, marking a string of successful showings for the Longhorns.
Hailee Cooper, who was recently named to the Arnold Palmer Cup team for the United States, finished tied for sixth as the highest finisher on the Longhorn team. She collected her third top-ten finish of the season, which includes a win earlier this season at the Betsy Rawls Invitational.
“It was a solid week, and I hit the ball pretty well,” Cooper said. “I drove the ball well and hit a ton of the fairways out here. Need to work on the putting a little bit.”
The rest of the team also put on strong performances with three players finishing tied for 11th. Additionally, Agathe Laisne was absent from the lineup as a different rotation of players competed this week for the team.
“The coolest thing about our third win this season is that we’ve done it with three different lineups,” Texas head coach Ryan Murphy said. “Nice to be in that position.”
The win made history for the women’s team, as this victory marks the first time since the 1992-1993 season that the women’s golf team has won three regular season tournaments in the same season. This was also the first time the team had won back-to-back tournaments since that same season.
While the team did pull off the tie, the team would have preferred to win the tournament outright as they had the lead heading into the final round after being in solo third after round one.
“It was nice to get out of here with a tie for first,” Murphy said. “We had a sluggish start and a sluggish finish but hung on just enough. It’s always nice to win, but we’ll need to clean up certain areas if we want to play to our potential.”
The team will have the week off as the University heads into its spring break but will get right back to work next week at the Evans Derby Experience in Auburn, Alabama. The team can break more records by winning yet another tournament, but at worst, will remain in the No. 1 spot for another week.
