With perhaps the best junior golf resume ever for a girl on the Grand Strand, Madison Messimer of Myrtle Beach essentially had her choice of women’s college golf programs across the country.
She visited several schools and considered staying in state, as Clemson and South Carolina were two of her three finalists.
But she has decided to play at Tennessee, and on Wednesday signed a letter of intent to attend the school in Knoxville on the first day of the fall signing period for college golf.
“I visited quite a few schools, but the practice facilities are the best in the country, the coaches were super nice and welcoming, and the team . . . when I went there I just felt it in my heart,” Messimer said.
Indeed, Tennessee has facilities that are second to none, as the Tennessee Golf Performance Center recently opened at what was already an impressive 37-acre Day Golf Practice Facility and Blackburn-Furrow Golf Clubhouse that sits alongside the Tennessee River.
The Lady Vols recently completed a fall schedule that featured three top-five finishes in four tournaments, including a runner-up at their own Mercedes-Benz Collegiate Championship, and are coming off a 2023-24 season in which they finished ninth in the SEC Championship and sixth in an NCAA regional.
Messimer was wowed on her campus visit after attending a sold-out football game at Neyland Stadium, which has a seating capacity of nearly 102,000, and was also impressed with the school’s commitment to women’s sports. The Tennessee women’s basketball team has won eight national titles, the most recent in 2008.
“They really do a good job with women’s sports and with each team,” Messimer said. “Tennessee really does a lot for women and women’s sports and all their teams individually.”
A coveted recruit
Messimer’s ranks as a recruit among American girls in her class of 2025 are No. 3 by College Golf Commits, No. 4 by the American Junior Golf Association (AJGA), and No. 5 by Junior Golf Scoreboard.
She is on pace to become the S.C. Junior Golf Association Beth Daniel Player of the Year for the third straight year, and in 2022 she won the Carolinas Women’s Amateur Championship at the age of 15 to become the tournament’s youngest winner in its 98-year history.
In September, she was one of 12 members of the victorious U.S. team in the biennial Junior Solheim Cup at Army Navy Country Club in Arlington, Virginia.
Her instructor of six years, Ted Frick of the Classic Swing Golf School at Legends Golf Resort, said in his school’s 34 years Messimer is “the best ball-striker that’s ever come through here. . . . There is no weakness. I’d just give her a pill of confidence.”
While already winning at every level she played when Messimer began working with Frick in 2019, she was doing it with a weak grip, shallow inside backswing and open clubface on the backswing that they have since changed.
“She was doing things with a golf club she wasn’t supposed to be doing and she was getting away with it,” Frick said. “She’s blessed with incredible hand-eye coordination. She just doesn’t miss the sweet spot no matter what lie I put her on. She has a gift.”
Messimer’s list of accolades and accomplishments is long. Among the highlights:
_ 2024 U.S. Junior Solheim Cup Team member, winning her singles match 5 and 4 with five birdies and helping the U.S. post an event-record margin of victory over the European team with an 18.5-5.5 win.
_ 2022 Carolina Golf Association Women’s Amateur champion
_ Two-time Class 4A S.C. state high school individual champion, and she only played high school golf for two years as a freshman and sophomore before focusing more on junior and amateur events.
_ 2021 and 2022 Women’s SCGA Junior state champion. In 2022 she shot a three-day total of 16-under par and won by 21 strokes.
_ On pace to become the S.C. Junior Golf Association Beth Daniel Player of the Year for the third straight year.
_ 2023 Carolinas Golf Association Junior Girls Player of the Year
_ 2024 AJGA Rolex All-America Second Team
_ Top-five finishes in the 2024 national U.S. Junior Girls Championship and Girls Junior PGA Championship
_ Top-three finishes in the 2023 Beth Daniel Junior Azalea and Dustin Johnson World Junior Championship at TPC Myrtle Beach
_ Top 25 in the 2023 Sage Valley Junior Invitational
_ Low round in competition is an 8-under 64
Developing quickly
Messimer didn’t inherit the game from her parents. Her father, Jonathan, seldom plays and her mother, April, doesn’t play at all.
Frick first met Messimer at the age of 5 when her parents introduced her to golf by bringing her to a week-long summer junior camp at Classic Swing. She returned the next two years and then gave tournament golf a try.
“We were just trying to fill her summer up, then after a couple years of coming [to Classic Swing], they came to us and said she’s actually kind of good at it, you should try getting her into tournaments,” April Messimer said. “That’s when we started the tournament route, and once she won a trophy and a medal, there was no looking back, the competitive side of her came out.”
Messimer continued to grow in the game with her involvement in several youth golf organizations, including The First Tee of the Coastal Carolinas, U.S. Kids Golf, South Carolina Junior Golf Association Hootie Series, PGA Junior League, Peggy Kirk Bell Girls Golf Tour, and AJGA.
She won six regional US Kids tournaments across the country, and eight majors on the Peggy Kirk Bell tour while earning an Order of Merit title in the tour’s Futures division.
She also received an honorary membership at The Dunes Golf and Beach Club, giving her an upscale practice facility and challenging course on which to practice.
“I was actually playing tennis and golf and I wanted to just do one so I chose golf because I really had a lot of fun and I was pretty good at it,” Messimer said. “I was good at tennis too, but I thought golf was more fun and I just really enjoyed it. Golf is hard, the swing and mentally. I just try to be patient. If I make a mistake I’ll be like, ‘I’ll get it back on the next hole.’ “
Messimer, who is in the top 20 academically in her senior class at Myrtle Beach High School, has always been calm and well-mannered on the course, and her demeanor is one of her biggest strengths. There is no trash-talking or showboating when things are going well, or club-throwing or outbursts when things are going poorly.
“I think that’s why in some of those tournaments she was able to come from behind because she’s very steady with her play and with her mind,” April said. “All it takes is one momentum change and she keeps staying cool and the other people just let it get to them and get in their head.”
Among her on-course achievements, Messimer is perhaps most proud of her win in the 2022 Carolinas Women’s Amateur, when as a 5-foot 15-year-old she beat a field of older experienced amateurs and college players.
“I was definitely the tiniest one there,” said Messimer, who is still diminutive at 5-foot-3.
She was five shots behind the leader with two holes to play before making up the shots with a birdie and par while the leader, who was playing alongside in the same pairing, made a triple bogey and bogey to fall into the playoff.
Messimer holed a 25-foot birdie putt on the first playoff hole to win.
“I just never gave up and kept pushing and ended up winning because of that,” Messimer said. “It was my first amateur tournament so I didn’t really have any expectations, I just tried to play my own game and go as low as I could.”
Messimer joins notable girls from the Grand Strand who have signed to play at Division I schools.
They include Kristy McPherson, who played at South Carolina and for several years on the LPGA Tour, Kelly Tilghman at Duke, Dallas Ambrose at South Carolina, Kari Damron at Purdue, Lorraine Ballerano at N.C. State, Ann Maness at Coastal Carolina, Smith Knaffle at South Carolina and College of Charleston, and Adrian Anderson at College of Charleston.
Messimer will see how college golf goes and determine if she wants to pursue golf professionally.
“Right now my aspirations are just to play college golf four years,” said Messimer, whose major will be finance and economics. “I think I’ll figure out what I want to do from there in college and just go from that.”
