SA’s Streicher joins Macnab in 124th U.S. Women’s Amateur Championship

4 August 2024 – Former South African Women’s Stroke Play champion Megan Streicher will be teeing it up at Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa after winning her way into the field for the 124th U.S. Women’s Amateur Championship in August.

Streicher will tee it up in Southern Hills alongside fellow GolfRSA National Squad member and South Africa’s top-ranked women’s amateur Caitlyn Macnab in the 156-strong field starting the 36-hole stroke play qualifier.

The University of North Carolina (UNC) student earned her birth by virtue of winning birdied the 98th Carolinas Women’s Amateur at the start of August.

Following an opening 71 at the Pine Island Country Club in Charlotte, the Boland golfer fired three birdies over the first six holes, made her only bogey on the eighth. Streicher birdied the 16th hole to take a one-shot lead and cruised home in three-under 33 to claim a one-stroke victory on five-under-par 137.

After caddying for her parents, Streicher only picked up the clubs for the first time at age 11. “South Africa is a sports-mad nation, and my parents encouraged us to play as many sports as we wanted,” said the 21-year-old. “Golf wasn’t really on my radar, but once I started competing, it stuck.

“All the challenges were kind of what drew me in and I think I kind of just enjoyed how it was like you against yourself, or like you against the course and not really quite as intense as other sports can be against opponents.”

Streicher first tested herself in the United States in the 2020 Annika Invitational. Although she didn’t have a great tournament, she did catch the eye of UNC’s head women’s golf team coach, Aimee Neff.

Neff, who was coaching at Florida Atlantic at the time, liked Streicher’s maturity. “She had really good head on her shoulders,” Neff said. “We said that for recruiting, it was a great example of a person who held herself in a respectable, mature way, even when things were going away, kept fighting, didn’t give up, didn’t throw in the towel.”

When Neff moved to UNC, she approached the tall South African, who took a while to commit.

“I mean, back home there isn’t really the opportunity to study and play golf at a high level, so I think it was definitely an easy decision in that sense,” Streicher said. “But definitely hard to leave my family, but they’re supporting me.”

Streicher has certainly left her mark in her two years at UNC so far. She holds the programme record with the scoring average of 71.83, eclipsing the previous record that stood for more than 50 years. Her coach says Streicher has an impressive consistency to shoot par or better.

“She actually really enjoys stats and is like a student of the game,” Neff said. “She’s just a sponge and she wants to genuinely learn and is curious about just small ways that she can get a little bit better.”

Having tried to qualify for the U.S. Women’s Amateur Championship, Streicher gained her spot with her first collegiate victory on US soil, and she is excited for the challenge in one of the strongest fields that she’s teed it up in.

With two more years at UNC before she must make some big life decisions, Streicher has one more big goal – to qualify for the Augusta National Women’s Amateur. “I definitely think the younger me would be proud of some of the scores that I’m shooting and results that I’ve achieved and just being here where I am today but definitely still a few things obviously that I’m wanting to do so, I’m excited for that.”

Her competitiveness and her drive, witnessed so many times in her native South Africa, is taking her to Tulsa, so don’t be surprised to see Streicher making the memorable trip down Magnolia Lane in the next two years.

Quotes courtesy of www.carolinasgolf.org