Julia Johnson was in line at Chipotle when she picked up the phone. She’d just finished up a four-hour Saturday team practice session. The Ole Miss sophomore described it as immensely focused and enjoyable. The day prior, the men’s team and women’s teams had paired up for a worst-ball challenge on the program’s short course.
Here’s the thing about playing golf at Ole Miss: Players get better.
Head coach Kory Henkes isn’t really into rah-rah speeches. But you want inspiration? She plans to carry Johnson’s bag at the Augusta National Women’s Amateur while seven months pregnant. For perspective, she coached at the Magnolia Invitational in October of 2018, two weeks before giving birth to daughter Parker Elizabeth on Halloween.
“She’s just a freakin’ warrior,” gushed Johnson.
Henkes’ due date is June 5. The NCAA Championship ends on May 27. Ole Miss is currently ranked 11th in the country by Golfweek and has the kind of depth to make history in the desert this spring by advancing the match play.
GOLFWEEK/SAGARIN: Women’s team | Individual
Johnson said it would break Henkes’ heart if she wasn’t at the finale, but there’s no doubt that the Rebels would enter the week fully prepared. Henkes would make sure of it.
As for Augusta, Henkes used to be the head coach at Augusta University and happens to have plenty of experience around the iconic track.
“I’m sure Kory has a lot of the X’s in the book that she won’t really talk about,” said Kristy McPherson of her old college teammate’s strategy. “I think it will give (Johnson) a huge advantage.”
McPherson played golf with Henkes (formerly Thompson) at South Carolina. The pair roomed together for three years, and for a while, Henkes caddied for her friend on the LPGA. McPherson’s friends, players like Gerina Piller, Brittany Lincicome and Angela Stanford, took Henkes under their wing. The behind-the-scenes look at elite-level play showed Henkes how differently players go about the job.
“The key is learning how to adapt to each player,” said Henkes, “realizing you can’t coach them all the same because they’re not all the same.”
Johnson had verbally committed to LSU when she decided to accompany good friends Conner Beth Ball and Macy Holliday to the Ole Miss-LSU game at the The Grove. She was there for football, but ended up falling hard for the vision that she heard Henkes explain to her friends on that trip. Soon Johnson was willing to give up the security of a full scholarship to make the switch to Mississippi. Johnson even sent in a friend from the men’s team at Ole Miss to lobby on her behalf.
“We talk a lot about how I begged her to let me play golf here,” said Johnson.
Upswing has been staggering
The Rebels won their fourth title of the season earlier this month in Melbourne, Florida, setting a new program record for most wins in a season.
The upswing in Oxford has been staggering. When Henkes took over the program in 2015, the team scoring average had been below 300. The past three years, the Rebels have broken the mark, with the 2017-18 group holding the record at 295.26. This year’s team is on pace to shatter that number with a current average of 284.22 through six events.
Johnson looks do the same with the individual record. Dori Carter, an LPGA player who recently joined the Louisville staff as an assistant coach, holds the school record of 72.28. Johnson’s average of 70.72 includes an NCAA record-tying 61 last semester.
Johnson credits her improvement this season to her teammates. There are eight players on Mississippi’s team that can make the lineup any given week. Three of the four team wins this season have been with different lineups. Qualifying comes down to a shot or two every time.
“Everyone’s game has risen to the next level because we want to play so badly,” said Johnson. “You’ll see that I haven’t shot above 74 this year, but I didn’t play No. 1 in our lineup until the last event. … I was putting up the best scores I’ve ever had in qualifying, and I still wasn’t winning the qualifying.”
No player has pushed Johnson harder than Kennedy Swann, a senior who transferred from Clemson last January. Swann’s scoring average has dropped from 75.1 to 71.39 since she arrived in Oxford. She drained a 45-foot putt for birdie on the final hole at Medinah to win the Illini Women’s Invitational last fall.
“I kind of like to sit back and reflect on where we’ve come in two and a half to three years,” said Johnson. “From not being embarrassed to walk into events. … to realistically, we can beat anyone we play. The respect level has grown each year.
“Freshman year I felt like we had none.”
