Emma de Groot is so humble and shy that she doesn’t want to be within earshot when her coach praises her to others.
“She’s carried us,” University of Tennessee at Chattanooga women’s golf coach Colette Murray said before de Groot asked her to take a few steps away to continue the conversation.
“She’s been the one person who’s showed up every week,” Murray said. “Without Emma and her results, there’s no telling where we’d be in the rankings. We’d be way down there.”
Instead, the Lady Mocs are ranked No. 35 in the country by GolfWeek.
They will attempt to earn an automatic berth into an NCAA regional by winning the Southern Conference championship Sunday through Tuesday at the Moss Creek Golf Club’s North Course in Hilton Head Island, S.C.
And de Groot, a native of Australia, is playing her best golf of the year and perhaps her career. She won the SunTrust Gator Invitational at Gainesville, Fla., with a final-round 68 last Sunday.
“Something just clicked,” said de Groot, ranked No. 34 individually by GolfWeek. “I was a lot more disciplined. I didn’t let myself have any excuses.”
Her team is about out of excuses for not winning the SoCon tournament. In their first one two years ago, the Lady Mocs finished fifth. Last year they were second, 22 shots behind Furman after a lousy first round.
“We didn’t know any better,” Murray said of the 2008 event. “I think we got there and it was a shell-shock for the girls. I think I played it down more than I should have.”
Last year, Murray explained, “We shot ourselves in the foot. We gave them 20 shots on that first day. We know we can’t win it on the first day, but we know we can lose it.”
This year, the championship is expected.
“We should win it,” Murray said. “We may not have won the SoCon last year, but we did things (going to regionals and the NCAA championships) that schools that have been around for 40 years haven’t done. That was all experience for them.”
Perhaps that experience will make all the difference for de Groot, Christine Wolf, Maria Juliana Loza, Moa Duf and Katie Taylor.
“Everybody that’s playing now has played in a SoCon, so we know what’s going to come,” Wolf said. “We’re all getting older and getting used to playing in tournaments and the pressure.
“But I think everybody is more excited than feeling pressure.”