photo by: Henry Greenstein/Journal-World screenshot

Kansas women's golf coach Lindsay Kuhle speaks to reporters at the Kansas Golf Facility at The Jayhawk Club on Friday, May 9, 2025.

Kansas sophomore Lyla Louderbaugh officially earned the Columbus Regional individual title early on Wednesday afternoon, and she had been so far ahead — with a dominant eight-stroke lead on Arkansas’s No. 4 Maria Jose Marin and No. 45 Clarisa Temelo when all was said and done — that the outcome wasn’t in too much doubt for some time before then.

But it didn’t actually register with her that she had become KU’s first-ever regional champion until a day later, as she had to explain to her senior teammate Lauren Clark.

“I actually went to the grocery store and I sat in the parking lot and they had posted kind of like a collage of videos of me from the week,” an emotional Louderbaugh recalled on Friday. “And it kind of just hit me when I saw that video, and it made me really happy.”

Louderbaugh’s ascension, after she wasn’t even a fixture in KU’s lineup in the fall and didn’t start finishing as the Jayhawks’ top scorer until about six weeks before the regional, is another huge step on the program’s upward trajectory — and they hope it’s not the apex. KU, with both the team and individual titles coming out of Columbus, now has a chance to vie for a national title at Omni La Costa Resort & Spa at Carlsbad, California, beginning next Friday.

“This is the reason I came to KU,” said fourth-year head coach Lindsay Kuhle. “This is the reason all the players on our team came to KU, is to compete for a national championship, and to get that opportunity means everything, and we’re beyond excited to have that opportunity next week.”

Kuhle’s ongoing elevation of the Jayhawks’ program has taken it to new heights this year in particular, as KU is now up to six team wins and five individual wins — from three different golfers — on the year. No prior team in program history had won more than three events in a given season. Only two players had previously won more than two career events and Clark won three, in a row, this winter.

To hear Kuhle tell it, she specifically designed the schedule to include some events with weaker fields, in part because of the newly implemented .500 rule which requires teams to have outperformed at least half the opponents they face head-to-head in order to be eligible for at-large NCAA bids.

“When you play a field with being ranked the highest, I think you have confidence going into it,” Kuhle said. “I think winning, I’ve said it a million times, but winning is contagious. Once you win, that confidence just bleeds throughout the whole team.”

Early in the season, KU’s top finishers included the likes of seniors Johanna Ebner and Lily Hirst and junior Amy DeKock. Hirst got the Jayhawks their first individual title at the Match in the Desert on Jan. 27. Then Clark’s hot streak began, as she rattled off her own victories at the UCF Challenge in her home city of Orlando, Florida, the Wisconsin Westbrook Invitational and the Yale Invitational West.

Then it was time for Louderbaugh, a native of Buffalo, Missouri, to take center stage.

“I really think that just being able to see my teammates succeed has given me the confidence to succeed as well,” she said.

She burst onto the scene with her first-ever top-five finish at the ASU/Ping Invitational in late March, shooting a 6-under 66 in the final round.

“I think my first collegiate bogey-free round at ASU really helped me in my process on the golf course,” Louderbaugh said. “I realized that I needed to be more, I keep saying, mellow, and ‘mono-emotional,’ if that makes sense. I don’t really show emotion, like yeah, I’ll get excited when I hit good shots and make putts, but I think just really keeping a cool, calm, collected attitude on the golf course has really helped me.”

It certainly served her well on a rainy trip to Columbus this week.

“I think just being able to be flexible and really just adapt to the weather and not let it affect my mindset helped me,” she said. “I knew the weather was not going to be great going into the week, but just having that going into the week was really helpful for my performance.”

While Louderbaugh describes her on-course playing style as “very conservative,” she also had something of a no-holds-barred mindset entering the final day — when she shot 7-under to seal her victory.

“I thought about it the night before, and I was like, ‘I have nothing to lose because I was beating so many girls ranked above me,” she recalled, “so I was like, ‘I really have nothing to lose and I’m just going to go out there and play my game,’ which I had done the previous days.”

Kuhle said what Louderbaugh accomplished on her own and for the team was “pretty incredible,” and credited it to her hard work to crack KU’s lineup and her dedication to the process

“I knew it was in her when we recruited her, because she shot 62 in high school and she’s had a lot of low rounds,” Kuhle said. “I think that’s something once you do it once, you have the belief you can do it every time.”

Could she do something like it again in Carlsbad? Louderbaugh said she’s performed well in California and in warm climates in the past.

The Jayhawks, as a whole, have no shortage of confidence heading to their first trip to nationals in over a decade. Kuhle said they emphasize gratitude and feel secure in the knowledge that “we’re probably the best team to come through this program in 52 years, so that just really puts you at ease and relaxes you.”

KU and Louderbaugh have certainly put the world of collegiate golf on notice, too, with their performance in Columbus.

“I didn’t really think it would happen this soon, to be honest,” Kuhle said of the regional titles, “but again, once you win once, you’ve got the belief that you can continue to do it, which is the confidence we have going into nationals.”