North & South Women’s Amateur: Kuehn advances to Round of 16

Wake Forest’s Rachel Kuehn is making a run with arguably the best caddie at Pinehurst. The Demon Deacon sophomore is turning heads with 30-year Pinehurst veteran caddie Keith Silva. The duo took down Bentley Cotton 2 up in the opening round of match play on Thursday. A feat that neither claims they did alone. “Everybody’s telling me I’ve got the best caddie,” Kuehn told Pinehurst’s Alex Podlogar. “I’ve only known Keith for four days, and already I trust him with everything. Just give me the number and the line, and I’ll try to do that. If I miss, it’s my fault, not his.” Having not met until this week, Silva had high hopes for the Wake Forest star. “I knew what kind of player I had just from the two practice rounds on No. 2 and No. 4,” Silva said. “A few members came up to me and asked if I had a good player. I told them, ‘If we don’t make it to match play, I’m going to pack it up.’” At 70-years old, no one would blame Silva for hanging up his bib. However, his success with amateurs over the past 11-months would make people wonder ‘Why retire now?’. On the bag for William Holcomb’s semifinal run at last August’s U.S. Amateur and the North & South Amateur Championship runner-up finish just a couple weeks ago gave Silva a rejuvenated outlook. “Really, they’re all just making me look good,” Silva quipped. Kuehn has a tendency to make anyone looping for her look good. As one of the top-ranked juniors in the 2019 class, she made five appearances in her COVID-19 shortened freshman season notching top-20 finishes in each event and taking home the ANNIKA Intercollegiate title. As the 10-seed, Kuehn will play 26-seed Becca DiNunzio who bested junior golf star Megha Ganne 3 & 2 on Thursday. “Let’s play 36 tomorrow, OK, kid?” Silva told Kuehn as they walked off the 18th at No. 2. Medalist Ivy Shepherd kept rolling along with a 2 & 1 win over Annika Borrelli to set up a match with Duke star Gina Kim in the Round of 16. Kuehn’s teammate and top-ranked female in the AmateurGolf.com rankings, Emilia Migliaccio advanced 3 & 2 over Lei Ye. Auburn’s hot-handed Megan Schofill, on the heels of her 10-stroke comeback at the Florida Women’s Amateur advanced 1-up over Round 1 co-leader, Mikayla Bardwell. Play resumes at 7:00 am ET as the field will be cut from 16 to four by the end of Friday.