January 30, 2025 • by Marcus El & Dan Davies
The University of Kansas women’s team has picked up right where it left off: winning and setting new program records. The dub at the Match in the Desert means it's now four tournament wins in a row for Coach Lindsay Kuhle’s side, something that has never been done before at Kansas.
The Jayhawks are certainly upwardly mobile; their season-ending ranking positions for the last three seasons have been 79, 51 and 48. At the end of the Fall they were ranked 24.
“It’s incredible to get our fourth win in a row this past week at Superstition Mountain,” says Kuhle, who is in her fourth season as Head Coach. She admits victory tasted even sweeter when Senior Lily Hirst notched her first collegiate win against a strong field that included #7 ranked Arizona State and five other teams inside the top 40.
Kuhle arrived in Lawrence after eight seasons as Head Coach at the University of Denver. Before that, she spent seven seasons as an Assistant Coach and Associate Head Coach under Sammie Chergo, with one season in between working under Josh Brewer at the University of Georgia.
She learned from both about the most important qualities in a coach: confidence with decision making, clear and plentiful communication with the players (“so that they know the expectations and standards”), and building and developing relationships with her student-athletes.
In just three seasons at Kansas, Kuhle’s teams have smashed numerous scoring records and been selected as an at-large bid to the NCAA Regionals for only the second and third time in program history (in 2023 and 2024).
“I have four seniors and two players that are on national teams and winning events,” Coach Kuhle explains. “They know how to win and that’s on their mind. I don’t even have to say anything anymore. They know the expectation.”
We sat down with the winningest women’s coach in DI this season at the WGCA Convention in Vegas where she talked about her victory-laden Fall, resetting the bar at Kansas and the ultimate goal for the program.
I came to Kansas because I wanted a new challenge and I saw that KU had great leadership. I wouldn't be there without the athletic director and my sports administrator, Nicole Corcoran.
I saw they had great resources and a great facility. If you have those three things you can accomplish your goals if you're a hard worker, you love the game, you love coaching and you’re passionate about it. So I was pretty confident that we could do some amazing things.
My goals for the first three years were to make the NCAA tournament, to be ranked in the top 50, to be involved in the community, and to have a GPA above 3.5. Academics are very important to me, and we accomplished all those things by the second year.
“One thing I talk to my team about is goals. We’re very transparent.”
Now my goals have moved to be a top-25 ranked team, to make the national championship and to make the cut in top 15 at the national championship in the next three years.
One thing I talk to my team about is goals. We’re very transparent. We’re very clear with our standards and expectations that this year we want to make the national championship. That's our biggest goal.
I'm only in year four at KU and we're already talking about that. I think it shows that I was right in my belief about our place could be pretty special if we just get the right people on the bus and they're hard working.
I wouldn't be coaching if I didn't believe my end goal is to win a national championship. That's my end goal. I think every player believes in that.
We beat some really good teams last year, finishing second at the Big 12 Match Play Championship, which proved we can do it. We just have to have five players playing well the same week. So I think anything is possible.
Good question. I call it the three Cs: it's about being coachable, confident and competitive. I want players who are coachable, want feedback, want to be developed and want to play on tour.
Then there’s the competitiveness. We broke every record imaginable pretty much on the golf side in the first three years. What more records could we break this year? We did it by winning three tournaments in a row [now four]. That had never been done before.
In terms of confidence, my goal as a head coach is to have players leave my program more confident in their golf games, but also in themselves as humans. When you get in the real world and you're a working mom that has a family and is trying to do all these things, I want confident women that come through; that aren't afraid or intimidated to do what they want to do and say what they feel.
“What can we do to leave a mark and leave a legacy on this program?”
We're always finding a new way to compete and to be the very best team to ever come through the KU women's golf program. We talk about that almost weekly: what can we do to leave a mark and leave a legacy on this program? What more can we do to break records to be the very best?
That comes from people who are competitive. How many times have they won individually? How many times have they shot under par? We had 13 individual wins this summer with 10 girls on our team, and we track that. We put their picture up on our board so they can see it daily.
My players that are on their national team are very independent and I like that. That's the way I was and that's the way I am. I want them to come here with a goal of preparing for the tour. They're not afraid to travel alone. They're not afraid to go get coaching on their own. They're not afraid to come halfway across the world on their own to learn and get better.
I try to incorporate playing all over the country into our schedule. We play in Florida, we play in Texas, Colorado, Michigan, we play in Palm Desert this year, Arizona. As a player at Tulane, I never went west of the Mississippi in four years until I got to the national championship in Bend, Oregon in my senior year.
“Every tournament was better than I predicted. Once we got one win, the confidence increased in my players.”
I want my players to get around – different courses, different teams — so they're not intimidated when they get to the regional or national championship.
No. With this being the first year of the .500 rule, of course every coach is planning and getting information on the fields and figuring out, based on that team last year and where my team is this year, how many wins and losses am I going to have at each event? Hopefully we're all thinking that.
Every tournament was better than I predicted. I do believe that golf is a game of momentum and confidence. Once we got one win, the confidence increased in my players.
In every tournament that we won we had a different five player in the team, and the player who came to the fifth spot still played with great confidence, like they'd won the week before. It was really cool to see all players play with such confidence, especially in the Bahamas (below).
In the spring last year it was settled, but in the fall we actually changed our five every tournament. Last year I had 12 players on the team and 11 played in the top five at one point. I'm a big believer in giving every player an opportunity. That's why we do home qualifiers to earn a spot into the qualifying for the event. We’re always competing.
We have a big white board in our locker room where we show every stat — qualifying score, away tournament as we call it, NCAA scoring average. We track everything and they can see it. Our team has become so much more competitive because of the stats that we're looking at and the players that we have on the team. To be competitive and to win, what do those stats look like?
This year, we have 10 players and seven have competed in the top five. Last year we had 11 of 12 compete in the top five throughout the season. We’re giving everyone an opportunity to rise to the occasion and play with confidence and help the team, so that they can play next week.