In Play(er) of the Week, our goal is to highlight outstanding athletes or moments from games that deserve extra attention. 

Amanda Phillips ’28 is a first-year golfer from New York, N.Y. She set the bar high in the first tournament of her college career, breaking the program record for the lowest round in a two-day tournament in women’s golf. At the Bowdoin Invitational on Saturday, Sept. 14 to Sunday, Sept. 15, she shot back-to-back even rounds of 73, finishing in fourth place individually out of 80 golfers and leading the Cardinals to a seventh-place team finish. At 146, she broke the previous record of 150 set by her teammate, Mia Bardinelli ’26, last season. After her incredible showing at her first collegiate competition, The Argus sat down with Phillips to talk about her record-breaking performance, her history in competitive golf, and the experience of being on a team in college athletics. 

The Argus: How did you first get into playing golf?

Amanda Phillips: I first started playing golf because my mom played, and I initially wanted to do it as a recreational sport so I could play it with my family. When I first started, I was seven years old. I tried a week of golf camp over the summer, and I liked it so much that I canceled all my other camps and did golf for the rest of the summer. The counselors said that I should try competing, so I did, and I started performing really well in tournaments, and it kind of all went from there.

A: How did the recruiting process work for you, and how did you end up at Wes?

AP: So my high school did not have a golf team, but I competed in my own tournaments. All throughout middle and high school, I’d travel, sometimes missing a week in school, so it would be a good lesson to try and manage the workload for school and traveling. Over the summer, I would have tournaments every week.

As far as recruiting, I knew I wanted to stay close to home, and I wanted to stay in the Northeast. I wanted top academics and really wanted a liberal arts education. I liked Wesleyan’s open curriculum, and it was definitely my top [Division III] choice. One of the biggest decisions I had to make was whether I wanted to play DI or DIII, and I think Wesleyan had a good balance between academics and athletics. Both are very high priority, and I wanted to focus more on academics in college, but still have golf be a big part of my life. 

A: Are there any professional golfers you look up to? And why?

AP: One of my inspirations for the past couple years has been Rose Zhang. She played at Stanford, and she just transitioned to play professionally. She’s a really big inspiration for me because she was performing so well in golf and in school as well, so that’s just a good role model to see someone who can do both.

A: In your first couple of weeks on campus and in college competition, what has been the most rewarding part and most challenging part about being a student-athlete?

AP: Being a student-athlete in college is very different because now I’m on a team for the first time. It’s really rewarding to perform well as a group and then to feel a sense of shared success. It’s not just your own anymore; you’re doing well for the team because your score helps everyone and you all contribute to the team score. The most challenging part, I think, is some of the long car rides to the tournaments. Don’t get me wrong, they are super fun, but sometimes there’s no time to do work over the weekend, so I’ll try to do my work ahead of time, so I don’t have to cram it all in the next week. That’s pretty much been the most challenging part for me, just trying to stay on top of my workload. 

A: Many people think of golf as an individual sport, but at the college level, it becomes a team sport. What has your experience been like being on a team even though you are playing a sport where you’re out there competing by yourself?

AP: In tournaments, you’re paired with students from other schools, and you’re all competing against one another, but then you could look over to the next fairway and see someone else on your team. It’s really nice to see someone you’re not really competing against and someone you’re working with. It’s nice to have a friend out on the course, and it’s also nice to practice together because you feel you all keep each other motivated. You all push each other to stay focused and keep getting better, because, yes, we’re all on the same team, but there’s also a competitive aspect within the team itself. We all want to qualify for tournaments, we all want to travel on the weekend, so we push each other to get better, which is nice. 

A: Do you or the team have any pre-match superstitions or traditions you do before hitting the course?

AP: We have our little chant, we huddle up and say “3, 2, 1, Cards!” and then we clap two times, and they have to be very crisp claps at the same time, otherwise everyone’s like “Oh, that was not good.” And a new thing that just popped up is the night before all of us played in [the Bowdoin Invitational], we went to this restaurant called Little Tokyo, and everyone got udon noodles. And then this past weekend, we were like, “We need to get udon noodles again before the round.”

A: On Sept. 14–15, you dominated in your first competition, posting back-to-back even rounds and taking fourth at the Bowdoin Invitational. What was working for you last weekend that helped you stay in rhythm?

AP: I got a good feel for the course early on. I felt comfortable around the greens, and my swing was feeling good. It was definitely a position course: There are some courses where distance really matters, but here the greens were super undulating. You had to position yourself in the best spots so you could attack certain pin locations. I gave myself a lot of good opportunities to make birdies or not get into trouble. I knew which places to avoid, and I positioned myself well. It’s one thing to know where to hit the ball, but it’s another thing to execute it, and I was striking the ball well, so I was hitting the shots where I wanted to for sure. 

A: Were you aware before you had finished the round that you were within striking distance of the school record? What was your reaction once you realized you had broken it by four strokes?

AP: I had no idea what the school record was. I found out when I was sitting on my bed after and one of my friends, who wasn’t even on the golf team, sent me the Wesleyan Athletics Instagram post and let me know that I had just broken a record. I figured the record would be under par, but hopefully I do that soon. 

A: One part of golf that is taken for granted is the mental aspect of it, which destroys a lot of amateur golfers over the course of a round. When you are coming off a bad shot or a bad hole, what are you saying to improve your mindset and stay persistent moving forward?

AP: The mental aspect of golf is the most difficult in my opinion. You can’t perfect your swing, but once you are constantly striking it well, the hardest part is the mental game. For me, I just try my best to take my mind off whatever just happened and focus on the next shot, because there’s nothing I can do about it now. Something really important is to reset on the golf course and not get into a rut, which is very easy to do. In the second round of the Bowdoin tournament, I triple bogeyed my second hole. It was a mess. I was like, “What do I do from here?” But I stayed calm, I fought back, I had three birdies in a row a couple of holes later, and I calmed myself knowing I was back at even. So I think it’s just about learning how to rally and motivate yourself and not give up, because anything is possible, and anyone else can mess up and you can rise up.

A: What’s one common misconception about competitive golf that the average person wouldn’t know?

AP: I guess how much time and preparation goes into preparing for golf and how easy it is to fall off if you miss some time. Golf is something where you have to stay really consistent. I’ve had weeks where I couldn’t practice and it shows. A lot of people don’t realize how technical the sport is. It’s such an overused phrase, but it’s a game of inches. Any small difference can impact your shot by yards and yards. No one really understands until you start playing a lot how technical golf is and how difficult it is. 

A: Do you have a favorite golf saying or phrase that has helped motivate you throughout your career up to this point?

AP: When I’m on the green, I tell myself “Read it, roll it, hole it” every time. That’s just what I’m thinking in my head. Back of the cup. You got this, sink it. Anything’s makeable.

A: Golf doesn’t get a lot of coverage because you can’t really have fans show up to matches, so for people who don’t necessarily hear about it until something is posted on Instagram, what should people be excited about for Wesleyan women’s golf this year?

AP: I think the Wesleyan women’s golf team is getting a lot better, so I hope that in the tournament we can perform well. We want to qualify for the NESCAC Championship; that would be really fun. I just hope that we are getting stronger, and I’m so excited to see our performance in future tournaments. 

A: Is there anything else you want The Argus to mention in this article?

AP: I really appreciated my teammates [at Bowdoin]. Obviously, I broke a record in my first tournament, which is kind of crazy, but I couldn’t have done it without the team’s support. I remember we were getting breakfast in a diner before the first round, and I was getting really nervous, since it was my first college tournament. Everyone really comforted me, and it really helped. They were saying, “Oh, this advice is so cliché, you probably hear this all the time,” but I want them to know that hearing it really helped. It wasn’t just me who went out there and shot that, it was the support of the team that really helped me. 

This article has been edited for length and clarity.

Max Forstein can be reached at mforstein@wesleyan.edu.