Katherine Schuster is quickly becoming queen of the winter circuit. Considering that Schuster’s goal for the off-season was to improve her self-trust on the golf course, the cross-country travel has been time well spent.
Schuster, a 16-year-old from Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, won the Joanne Winter Arizona Silver Belle Championship on Dec. 30 with a final-round 65 at Longbow Golf Club in Mesa, Arizona. She was 7 under for 54 holes, and topped a field mixed with juniors and college players.
The Silver Belle title came 10 days after Schuster won the Dixie Women’s Amateur on the other side of the country in Tamarac, Florida.
Two titles in the span of two weeks should go a long way in building self-belief.
Leaderboard: Joanne Winter Arizona Silver Belle
“I’m always the one to not have the confidence in myself,” Schuster said. “I’m starting to believe in what I’m doing and saying that I can hit this shot. I’m not afraid to fail, as I was before.”
It’s important to Schuster to remain humble, thus the difficulty in drawing the line between cocky and confident. Improved iron play gives her all the reason to be the latter.
One of Schuster’s first golf memories is watching the Drive, Chip and Putt National Finals, a one-day event at Augusta National Golf Club on the Sunday before Masters week. She tuned in to the telecast in 2013 and the sport drew her in.
“I asked my parents if I could go to the locals and see if I could make it to Augusta without knowing what Augusta really means to me,” said Schuster.
Schuster is part of a new generation of young women for whom Augusta National has been both a motivator and a benchmark. She was a Drive, Chip and Putt national finalist in 2015 as an 11-year-old, then went back and won the girls 14-15 age division in 2018.
It’s golf heaven there, and “the peach ice cream sandwiches aren’t too shabby either.”
Now that she’s aged out, there’s a new carrot: the Augusta National Women’s Amateur. At No. 763 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking, Schuster knows she isn’t likely to score an invitation for 2020. She has her sights set on 2021.
“I would love to someday be able to walk on the 18th fairway at Augusta,” she said. “That would be, words can’t even describe how amazing that would be.”
Until then, Schuster, who has committed to play for Clemson in the fall of 2021, wants to play more and more mixed-field events like the Dixie and the Silver Belle. The past year also included victories at the North Carolina Junior Amateur, North & South Junior, Beth Daniel Junior Azalea and Hope Valley Junior Invitational. She was third at the Carolinas Women’s Match Play, where she also encountered older competition, and saw a different type of field entirely when she played the IOA Golf Classic on the Symetra Tour (missing the cut despite rounds of 78-75).
These past two weeks have brought new friends and a new level of gratitude for Schuster, who talks as excitedly about the green fairways she found when she went south to the Dixie as the titles she’s racking up. There is an appreciation for competitive golf that comes with not being able to play it.
Periodically, Schuster has been sidelined from it – in bed for up to six weeks as she underwent three different surgeries for a rare condition called Multiple Hereditary Exostoses, commonly known as MHE.
The disease causes non-cancerous, bony tumors to form on longer bones.
“It’s kind of like a bone spur but having hundreds of them,” she said. “It’s very painful to walk and there’s no cure for it so you have to get it surgically removed to ease the pain.”
Schuster had her first surgery on both legs when she was 11, shortly before the Drive, Chip and Putt national finals. She was 14 when a second surgery was performed on her left leg. She is almost exactly a year removed from what she hopes will be the final surgery, performed on her right ankle.
During the recovery periods, Schuster consumed golf on TV, followed her friends’ tournaments through live scoring and debriefed them by phone.
“It definitely builds a lot of fire in you because you know you can be out there, but you’re stuck in a bed. You do what you can to keep a positive attitude while you’re recovering,” said Schuster, who reports that for the first time she was 8 years old, she is pain-free.
With her body healed, Schuster continues to work on the mental side of all this – and is watching her world ranking rise in the process.
