Seniors helping UNLV’s women’s golf team get off to sensational start

There’s something special brewing at UNLV, and it’s not just the outstanding results the Rebels have posted three tournaments into the women’s golf season.

After a pair of second-place finishes to begin the fall, the Rebels won the Ron Moore Intercollegiate outside Denver over the weekend, finishing at 17 under to hold off Kansas State by a stroke. The win was a true team effort, coach Amy Bush-Herzer said.

“Great teams have great teammates, and watching these athletes together, they care about each other. They celebrate when a player plays well and put their arms around each other when they don’t play well,” Bush-Herzer said. “It’s something everyone strives for, and we have it and it’s fun to be around.”

The roster is dominated by seniors who help Bush-Herzer set the tone for the team. Seniors Toa Yokoyama, Mayumi Umezu, McKenzi Hall and Hina Matsui are the anchors. Newcomer Zi Yu Foong, a sophomore, also played a key role in the early results, while newcomers Brooke Barron, Amber Chen and Caitlin Shippam are waiting in the wings for their opportunites.

“It’s just been a great partnership where my seniors are showing the way,” Bush-Herzer said. “They’re showing the way that we operate our team and how we do things, so that’s always nice.”

They’re also getting things done on the course. Yokoyama made it to the NCAA regionals last season. Hall won her first individual title last fall and earned a spot in the LPGA Match Play at Shadow Creek in March. Umezu was the one who stepped up over the weekend, finishing third in the individual standings at 9 under. Matsui made the difference in the final round with a personal career-low 4-under 68.

“I knew we were close (leading into the Ron Moore Intercollegiate),” Bush-Herzer said. “I saw it and I was like, ‘Oh we’ve got something.’ I couldn’t wait to get to Denver, and to see that continue was really fun. The leadership is great, and it’s awesome.”

Winning college golf tournaments is no easy task. The victory in Denver was UNLV’s first since early 2022 and the 17th in Bush-Herzer’s 14 years with the Rebels. It will change the team’s goals for the season, which includes one more fall event before the winter break and the start of a busy spring. But Bush-Herzer isn’t looking too far down the road.

“When you have the student-athletes that have the capacity to do that, you can have different conversations,” she said. “So the future for us is what’s the next event? We go to Texas next week, and what do we need to do to be prepared? What’s our process to get ready for that, and what’s our process once we’re there, right?”

But if she were to look further ahead, Bush-Herzer sees good things in the future.

“I think they’ve got such a strong base,” she said of her team. “They just have such a strong friendship.”

Welcome to the Show

PGA Tour playing cards for 2025 were handed out to 30 players following the Korn Ferry Tour Championship over the weekend, and another Las Vegas player is joining the ranks. Isaiah Salinda finished 18th on the points list, thanks in part to his win in February at the Panama Championship.

Salinda, 27, is a San Francisco native who played four seasons at Stanford before turning pro and making Las Vegas his home. Salinda made quite a splash at last year’s Shriners Children’s Open. He qualified to get into the field again Monday and found himself in the lead at times on the weekend before finishing in a tie for seventh, his best result in 11 PGA Tour starts.

Greg Robertson covers golf for the Review-Journal. Reach him at grobertson@reviewjournal.com.