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This week, the Nicholasville Rotary Club hosted speaker Golda Borst, head coach of the University of Kentucky women’s golf.

She’s finishing up her 15th season on the job and has earned 10 NCAA Regional appearances and eight team championships. The team also broke through with a 2021 NCAA championship Finals berth, the program’s first since 1992.

Borst has been the head coach for Kentucky Women’s Golf since 2010. She was born and raised in Sweden and moved to the States in 2002. She started playing golf when she was 6 in Sweden because her mom wanted the family to have a fun hobby together. Borst said thinking back on that is funny because she now has two daughters under 10, and she and her husband are teaching them to golf so they can golf together.

“I loved sports of all kinds, and I just ended up being really good at golf. I loved it. I’m incredibly competitive and passionate about what I do, and I’m really intense. So, it was a pretty natural sport for me, and I was very fortunate,” Borst said.

She played for the Swedish national team and was exposed to recruiters in the States. “Don’t hate me or boo me for this, but I played for the University of Tennessee down the road, so I’m really excited to now have been at Kentucky for 15 years. I am a much bigger Kentucky fan, and I bleed blue,” Borst said. 

“I graduated in 2006, played professionally for a little bit, and then I was the assistant coach at Louisiana State University (LSU) for three years in Baton Rouge. My husband came with me there, and I left him again to come here, and he followed me here, and now we’re here, and we’ll be here for quite a bit of time if [UK Director of Athletics] Mitch Barnhart allows that.”

She was only 27 when she became the head coach. Since her time at LSU, Borst’s dream was to coach in the SEC. “I do not really know what I said to Mitch to make him offer me the job, but I was very happy that he did. I wanted to drive a program that I knew could be successful that maybe hadn’t had that success,” Borst said. She knew the right players and culture could build a successful team. “That’s what we work hard for every day.”

Borst and her family live close to Nicholasville, by Brannon Crossing. “We’re frequent visitors, and my husband works at Alltech,” she said. Her husband has been with the company for 12 years. “We love Nicholasville,” Borst said. 

Wrapping up her 15th season, Borst said she’s learned a lot. “We’re in some very interesting times, I’ll tell you, as a college coach.” Borst went on to discuss how she fosters relationships with her players and the Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) topic. “We don’t have those NIL deals that some of these other sports have, but it’s been fascinating to see what [my team] think about, what’s important to them, what they’re looking for, and what they want from us. It goes back to recruiting again. I try to identify players who matter to them, who they wear across their chest, and what they want to accomplish, on the golf course and off the golf course.” 

Last semester, a golfer on Borst’s team had the highest GPA the team has had in her time at 3.92. University of Kentucky Women’s Golf is ranked 41st in the country, with 275 teams in total. “So, not where we want to be but a whole lot better than where we’ve been. We just keep on the steady climb, and that’s all we try to do,” she said.

In addition to living and coaching by the values and mission of the UK Athletics Department, Borst instills different values into her team. She said that she’s aware not all of her players will play professionally, so it’s important to her to teach them skills and values they can use wherever they go. 

One of those values is courage. “It takes courage for me to stand in front of you all today, actually. But discipline and hard work are other things we talk about a lot, and we define those types of things.” She spoke about the difficulty of semantics on her team since she has one golfer who speaks four languages and other golfers from across the country and the world. The other day, Borst asked her golfer from Finland, with parents from Russia, what language she speaks on the golf course. She told Borst it depends on how mad she is. If she’s really mad, she’ll speak Russian, but if she’s happy, she’ll speak English. This player’s scale of semantics in language will be different from everyone else’s. 

Borst said she really explains what courage means for golfers so her team understands the value. “Like Justin Thomas last week at Missouri, understanding the pressure of being able to execute that putt and the courage it took him to hit it at the pace he needed to. That’s what we’re talking about when discussing courage within our team. Do you have the guts to stand up there and stroke the ball the way you want to, even when you’re feeling all these different emotions? Because courage means different things to different people. It means standing up for a teammate, if there’s drama within a team, having the courage to approach that teammate and say, ‘Hey, you kind of crossed a line here. You’re not being as disciplined as you need to be. You’re not working as hard as you need to right now. I need you to step up for Kentucky Women’s Golf (KWG). But those are just some of the things that we’re trying to instill in our young women.”

This last season was wrapped up with a 291 average, with a low average of 289. When she first started as a coach, the team’s average was 305. “It’s amazing to see how much women’s college golf is now compared to when I played 15 or 20 years ago. I was a decent player, I would say. I was an all-SEC player, and I did not average what these kids average right now. So its pretty neat to see the players’ evolution and the improvement. It shows how much harder I think they’re working now, the skills are better, and the clubs are better,” Borst said. 

Regarding where she wants to take the team, Borst said, “We want to compete for championships. I know everyone does, but we really do.” 

Senior and team captain Marta López Echevarría will play the NCAA Division I championship at Champion Trace in Nicholasville on May 5, 6, and 7 next week. The University of Kentucky is hosting the tournament. Other team members will not be golfing because of a new requirement that women’s golf teams have a 500-winning record to participate in the tournament. “If you don’t have anything to do next week, you should come watch Marta. She’s really fun to watch, and her family will be here. She’s graduating [the week after], it’s exciting!” Borst said. 

Next week, on Wednesday, May 7, Borst will start looking through the recruitment portal for transfers. Her team is young, with four freshmen, two sophomores, and senior Marta graduating, so she’s looking forward to potential juniors and seniors looking to transfer to the University of Kentucky.