MIDWAY — What is in a name?
For new Utah Women’s State Amateur champion Arden Aline Louchheim, there’s plenty, and we are just talking about her first and middle ones.
Move around a couple of letters, and it spells out adrenaline, which is, coincidentally enough, one of the ways in which the Park City golfer who is a rising junior at the University of Nebraska played her way to the 119th Women’s Am championship.
Louchheim sealed it on Thursday in the 36-hole championship match against 17-year-old St. George phenom Kate Walker, downing the teenager 7 and 6 in a competition that was only close in the early going at Wasatch Mountain State Park Golf Course.
“I definitely was riding an adrenaline high all week long. I am hitting it farther at elevation, obviously, because Nebraska is not 7,000 feet,” Louchheim said. “But I think I gained 5 to 10 yards just throughout the week from being juiced the entire time.
“Not sure the heart rate has gone below 100 in the last 24 hours. I just think the passion and desire to win kinda drives you. I am sure I will crash tonight, but we managed to make it through.”
Sure, adrenaline played a role. But so did steadiness, experience and the ability to do what no other State Am contestant has ever done — go on to win the title after upsetting the great Kelsey Chugg, the event’s six-time champion.
Louchheim defeated Chugg 3 and 1 in the semifinals on Wednesday, immediately after defeating BYU golfer and good friend Berlin Long, who turned around and caddied for Louchheim in her final two matches of her second State Am appearance.
“Why would you tell me that?” was her response when her father, Utah Jazz broadcaster David Locke, mentioned how Chugg conquerors have fallen flat in their next match or two.
But then she used it as motivation, and that same motivation drove her Thursday as she put her name in the Utah golf record books.
Louchheim, 20, joins these five Utah-raised women who have played college golf out of state and then returned to win the Utah Women’s State Amateur: Skyli Yamada (Alta/Tennessee), Annie Thurman (Lone Peak/Oklahoma State), Natalie Stone (Judge Memorial/Colorado State), Sirene Blair (Bingham/San Diego State) and Tess Blair (Sacramento State/Nebraska).
Grace Summerhays won the event in 2020 before she enrolled at Arizona State.
“It means everything. … Anybody who is a name in Utah golf has won this tournament: Grace, Tess, Lila (Galea’i), Kelsey many, many times. To get to add my name to that list just means the world,” said Louchheim, who called it the biggest accomplishment of her golfing career, surpassing her Utah Junior Amateur victory a few years ago.
“I have seen all of those players and how successful their careers are, and to have this little checkpoint on mine is real validation that I am moving in the right direction and what I am working on in my game is correct,” she continued. “It gives me a lot of confidence going into my junior year at Nebraska.”
As far as those two names, her first name (Arden) is the name of the street her mother, Akemi, grew up on. The middle name (Aline) is the name of her father’s grandmother.
“Both my parents worked in sports broadcasting,” said Louchheim, who is a sports media major at Nebraska and has called some college football games for the Big Ten Network, when asked why she delivers one memorable line after another. “So I have heard a lot of interviews in my lifetime.”
To her older brother, Carter, she said: “Thanks for spending your last day of being 22 (years old) watching me golf.”
To Long, whom she credited for helping her beat Chugg with her “incredible golf mind,” she said: “These last two wins didn’t happen without you.”
Regarding the mariachi band whose playing could be heard throughout the afternoon on Pioneer Day: “I guess I might have to get a mariachi band playlist going.”
As for Walker, she has nothing to hang her head about. The two-time girls 4A individual golf champion (2023 and 2024) got off to a decent start, but watched as Louchheim made five birdies in an 11-hole stretch to pretty much put it away.
Louchheim was up six holes after 18, and then just stayed relatively conservative and mostly error-free to close it out on the 30th hole. Walker prolonged the match by sinking several long putts and never lost hope.
“I just wasn’t making putts (in the morning 18),” Walker said. “That’s really it. That’s what match play is. And I wasn’t hitting it as well as yesterday. Yesterday, I made a lot of putts. And those didn’t go in today, and that’s golf. So yeah.”
Walker turns 18 in August and has committed to play for Utah Tech, “my hometown school,” she said.
The week in which she overcame a shaky 78 in the stroke-play qualifying and then defeated Natalie McLane, Paige Anae, Adley Nelson and Ashley Lam before running into the Louchheim buzzsaw was a confidence-builder.
“It taught me that I am good. That I am good enough,” she said. “So I think it brought a lot of confidence to me.”
Louchheim earned a place in the U.S. Women’s Amateur next month at Bandon Dunes Golf Club in Oregon with the victory, a development that will mean some adjustments to some vacation plans.
119th Utah Women’s State Amateur
At Wasatch Mountain State Park Golf Club
Thursday’s 36-hole Championship Match
- No. 7 Arden Louchheim def. No. 29 Kate Walker, 7 and 6
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