October 12, 2025 • by David Tenneson / Images courtesy of UNC Athletics
Finely Golf Course (below) will again play host to some of the nation’s best D1 women’s golf teams for the 49th rendition of the Ruth’s Chris Tar Heel Invitational (October 17-19), a tournament that has seasoned beautifully across 50 years of UNC women’s golf history.
To get the full appreciation of this tournament's historical significance, you have to go back to the 1973-74 season when golf became the eighth official intercollegiate sport sponsored by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The first squad consisted of Mindy Moore, Jean Newton, Margaret Butkus, and Sally Austin. The latter had recently finished runner-up in the State Girls’ Junior Championship and her father was instrumental in convincing Athletic Director Homer Rice to fund a women’s golf team under the guidance of Coach Jeanne Eller.
The next athletic season (1975-76), the “Lady Tar Heels” were led by Dr. Pam Robinson, who had previously been an assistant coach at Ohio State, the birthplace of women’s collegiate golf. That Spring, they hosted their first tournament at UNC Finley Golf Course, a home shared with the men’s golf team. Mindy Moore, a future LPGA Tour President (1987), shared co-medalist honors with UNC-G’s Cathy Spaugh in the 18-hole event as the Tar Heels won the team title.
To put the time frame of this event into perspective, this first edition of the tournament took place two years after the first Big Ten Championship and nearly a decade before the first ACC Championship. Stars like Furman’s Betsy King and Beth Daniel (1975 and 1977 US Women’s Amateur Champion and a winner of the Lady Tar Heel Invitational in 1978) cut their teeth here before tearing up pro golf. North Carolina’s own Kimberly Byham and Kelly McCall, both members of the ACC 50th Anniversary Squad, also won the event.
Looking down the list of winners you see a plethora of recognizable names such as Jenny Chuasiriporn, Candy Hannemann, Amanda Blumenherst (2008 US Women’s Amateur champ), Leona Maguire, Jennifer Kupcho (who earned her first collegiate victory here), Emilia Migliaccio, Rachel Kuehn (above), and 2021 US Women’s Amateur champ Jensen Castle.
The Lady Tar Heels got their third coach in as many years when Dot Gunnells (below left) took the reins in 1976. It was the first of her eventual 17-season Hall of Fame career with the program. Beginning in 1983, her first star player, Sally Austin (below right), acted as assistant coach while also working as a golf instructor at the Pine Needles Schools in Pinehurst under the legendary Peggy Kirk Bell.
In 1993, Coach Gunnells retired with an ACC team title and several Coach of the Year honors to her name. She was succeeded by Austin, who continued the tradition of the Lady Tar Heel Invitational until her own retirement in 2009.
Coach Jan Mann inherited a strong team in the fall of 2009, including the reigning Lady Tar Heel individual medalist and ACC Freshman of the Year, Catherine O’Donnell (below), the most recent Tar Heel to win this event. The next season (2010-11), O'Donnell was instrumental in helping UNC win its second ever ACC team championship.
The O’Donnell family had another significant impact on the program and this tournament in particular. Michael O’Donnell was the CEO of Ruth’s Chris Steak House while his daughter Catherine was writing her name in the UNC record books, and the upscale chain added its name as title sponsor to the UNC tournament in 2012. Coincidentally, that was the last time the host team captured the team title.
The UNC Finley course underwent a major renovation in the Fall of 2022. Love Golf Design, run by former Tar Heel players Mark Love and Davis Love III (pictured below at the re-opening of the course in 2023), made significant changes to the course as well as creating a practice facility for the men’s and women’s programs.
Coach Aimee Neff provided input in shaping the practice facility (below) that she and men's Head Coach Andrew DiBitetto’s have utilized since 2023.
One interesting side note: Coach Neff (pictured below with UNC men's coach Andrew DiBitetto, Davis Love III and UNC Athletic Director Bubba Cunningham) had been an Associate Head Coach under Coach Mann in 2018 and returned to lead the Tar Heels in 2021. Before her coaching days, Neff was a member of the Michigan State team that won the Tar Heel Invitational in 2009, meaning that two of the four UNC coaches who have fostered this event across six decades have also won it.
While Finely Golf Club was being rejuvenated, the Ruth’s Chris Tar Heel Invitational continued on for two years at the Governor’s Club, a Jack Nicklaus “signature championship course" located around 20 minutes away.
The 2022 event saw an exciting conclusion as reigning US Women’s Amateur champion Jensen Castle eagled one of her final two holes to lead Kentucky to a team win and secure co-medalist honors. Castle took the individual title from Duke’s Phoebe Brinker on the first playoff hole.
In 2023, Florida ran away with the team title as UNC again finished third. Gator junior Maise Filler, earned her first collegiate victory by three strokes over Auburn’s Casey Weidenfeld.
Teams found the redesigned Finely course challenging but fair in their first time back for the 2024 Ruth’s Chris Tar Heel Invitational. Kentucky raced out to an early lead, but a final round even-par 280 by Duke secured their 17th team title in the event’s history.
The second round saw fireworks as Bailey Davis (Tennessee) and Megan Streicher (UNC) shot 64 (-6) and 65 respectively to add their names near the top of the tournament record books, behind just Rachel Kuehn (Wake Forest) who shot a 63 in 2021, the previous time the tournament was played at Finley.
Duke’s Andie Smith (above) took home medalist honors by five strokes over Carolina Chacarra (Wake Forest) following three rounds in the sixties, becoming the latest in a storied line of players to earn their first collegiate victory at the tournament.
The 2025-26 season brings the 49th edition of the Lady Tar Heel Invitational in 51 years, and it looks like being as competitive as ever. The home team will have to contend with the unbeaten Demon Deacons of Wake Forest, who already have two team wins at the ANNIKA (below) and Jackson T Stephens Cup, as well as two individual medalist honors earned by Chloe Kovelesky and Macy Pate, respectively.
Others with their eye on this prize, as well as the ANNIKA Award at the end of the season, include Eila Galitsky of South Carolina (below), the other co-medalist at the ANNIKA Intercollegiate, and freshman sensation Rianne Malixi of Duke.
Malixi is fresh off a runner-up finish at the World Amateur Team Championship, where she represented the Philippines in Singapore, and looks to become the fourth US Women’s Amateur champ to also win this historic collegiate event.