Michelle Waters admits she brought a bit of attitude to the Simon Fraser University women’s golf team when she enrolled in the school after graduating from Kwalikum Secondary School in 2014.
There may be no living with her now.
Waters, 19, shocked herself and a field of Great Northwest Athletic Conference rivals when she won the GNAC women’s golf championship April 18-19 at Coeur d’Alene Resort Golf Club in Idaho.
The second-year player beat St. Martin’s (Wash.) University senior Jennifer Liedes by dropping a six-foot birdie putt on the first playoff hole after they finished tied at 9-over-par 151.
“Honestly, I’ve never been in that situation before,” said Waters, who led after the first day’s round only to watch Liedes charge back with a tournament-record 71 to forge the tie on the final day of play. “I’d never led a tournament, let alone been in a playoff.
“Going into a tournament my thought wasn’t, ‘I’m going to win this.’ It was, ‘Let’s piece together a couple of good rounds.”
The championship was historic on several levels. Waters’ playoff victory was the first by an SFU women’s golfer in the six-year history of the tournament. It also led the Clan to their first team championship, scissoring the five-year title streak of Western Washington. And the young SFU squad, made up of three sophomores and two freshmen, set a new championship record with a team score of 617, beating the 620 established by WWU in 2013.
A week after her win, Waters was named to the All-GNAC first team, along with freshman teammate Emily Leung, the GNAC Newcomer of the Year.
“It’s been a building program forever,” Waters said of the SFU golf team. “We lost four seniors, but John Buchanan, the head coach, brought in two good players this year. So we don’t really have good numbers, but we have pretty good players.”
She said she began to sense a change in the team’s fortunes at the start of the 2015-16 season, when Leung won the first tournament of the year.
“That kind of lit a fire under everybody,” Waters said. “As we went on, we started to realize our bad rounds were what used to be our good rounds last year.”
Kwalikum Secondary School alum Michelle Waters is doused with water by teammates after winning the Great Northwest Athletic Conference women’s golf championship in a one-hole playoff earlier this month in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. — Image credit: Shawn Toner/GNAC
Waters, who was coached by Gord Melissa at Pheasant Glen Golf Club and who also played at Kwalikum Secondary, began to notice an improvement in her own game, and credits Clan swing coach Nate Beauchamp with helping her through the physical and, especially, mental aspects of playing at the college level.
“I was a bit of a tyrant, kind of a head case,” Waters said of her arrival at Simon Fraser. “Bad shots used to get to me a lot more. With Nate’s help I’ve got a new perspective; I bounce back better.”
In the conference championship, Waters opened with a 3-over 74 to lead the field. After Liedes shot her record round to tie, the two marched to the 499-yard, par-5 first hole to begin a playoff with Liedes seeming to carry all the momentum
“I’ve never felt nerves like that in my life, walking to that first tee,” Waters said.
But she hit a clean drive 250 yards, sent a 6-iron to within 92 yards of the flag, then pitched to within six feet. After Liedes pushed her eight-foot birdie try just past the hole, Waters dropped her putt and was mobbed by her teammates, who doused her with their water bottles.
“That was my first birdie putt all day,” she said. “It was a grind all day out there, so I was happy to see that one fall.”
So, when she returns next season as the reigning champ, will Waters flash a little of that old-time attitude on the course?
“Oh, absolutely,” she said.
