LAKE ELMO, Minn. — Eila Galitsky asked her coach whether she could send it. She got the green light. And she did.
During Monday’s first round of the 2025 Annika Intercollegiate at Royal Golf Club, Galitsky stood on the tee box of the 450-yard par-5 18th with a stiff breeze at her back and wanted to hit driver. She did just that, and she launched a tee shot that landed over 300 yards down the fairway.
It left her with a wedge into the back left pin. From 114 yards, she knocked it to eight feet and buried the eagle putt to take the outright lead after the opening day.
Galitsky is the longest player in women’s college golf, and the No. 7 amateur in the world has been using it to her advantage this week in Minnesota, where she holds the 36-hole lead at 7 under heading into Wednesday’s final round. Her opponents stand no chance in terms of matching her length, and when every other part of her game is clicking, Galitsky is hard to beat.
And now, she’s the face of a South Carolina team that has won the Annika in back-to-back years, though it trails USC and Wake Forest by nine shots going into the final round. Hannah Darling, the medalist in 2024, and Louise Rydqvist, one of four medalists in 2023, are both gone from the Gamecock lineup, and now it’s Galitsky’s team. Behind her power, she’s looking to blast her way to the top of women’s college golf.
“I don’t think anybody on this team looks at me as a leader with my goofy personality,” Galitsky said. “I just want to set a good example. Want to keep playing my game.”
Her game in 2025 has been tremendous. Galitsky, from Thailand, enrolled early at South Carolina in the spring and picked up her first win in just her second start at the Moon Golf Invitational. After finishing T-34 in her first start, she didn’t finish worse than T-11 the rest of the year.
Now, she’s not only one of the best players on her team but one of the best in the country, and her power is a big reason why.
She blasts the ball off the tee, and with a steady 2-iron in her bag, she’s a weapon with any club. Take the par-4 15th for example. On Tuesday, the hole was playing 290 yards back into the wind. She hit that iron and came up about 20 yards from the hole. Then, from off the green, she chipped the ball and watched it curve and bend until it dropped for her second eagle this week.
Galitsky had to wait two hours because of a weather delay to finish her second round, but when she did, she birdied the 18th to move to 7 under and take a one-shot lead over Wake Forest’s Chloe Kovelesky and USC’s Elise Lee heading into the final round.
“Obviously I want to do well in every tournament,” she said. “I set goals with each shot more than, you know, like a long-term goal. I like short-term goals better.”
Like on her tee shot Monday. The goal was to get it over the bunker into the fairway, and it resulted in an eagle.
Come Wednesday, if her stellar ability to drive the ball of the tee keeps up, she could continue the trend of Gamecocks winning the Annika.
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