Former Tiger Madelene Sagstrom Captures Second LPGA Title

BATON ROUGE – Former LSU All-America Madelene Sagstrom captured her second LPGA title Sunday with her seventh match win since Wednesday to capture the Match Play Championship at the Shadow Creek Golf Course in Las Vegas.

The win, worth $300,000, was her first since Jan. 26, 2020 when she won the Gainbridge LPGA at Boca Rio event. It was her best finish since a second-place finish in the Founders Cup last May.

She joins another Tiger, Austin Ernst, as the only LSU players to win multiple LPGA events in their careers. The first prize check pushes her career LPGA earnings to over $4.8 million, the most by any LSU golfer in the history of the LPGA and puts her just shy of cracking the top 100 in total money earned on the LPGA Tour.

Sagstrom won the championship with a topsy-turvy 1UP victory over Laura Coughlin in which the Swedish star bolted out to a 4UP lead after six holes, only to have Coughlin rally to tie the match on the 10th hole.

Coughlin actually went 1Up on the 11th hole before Sagstrom with a birdie was able to get the match back tied on the 12th hole. A par 5 was good enough for Sagstrom to take the lead on the par 5 16th and the 2015 SEC Player of the Year may have sealed her win on the 17th hole when a touchy short flop wedge that she landed at the edge of the rough rolled to within a few inches of the hole for a par to hold her lead.

Sagstrom made a two-putt par on 18 and Coughlin could not make her long birdie putt to put four-time member of Europe’s Solheim Cup back in the winner’s circle.

“Well, I think that, I mean, I’m exhausted,” Sagstrom said after winning seven matches since Wednesday including four combined on Saturday and Sunday. “…I think it really kind of hit my swing there in the middle. But I just said to (caddy) Shane (Codd), I was like I can do this. I just need to find some sort of feeling to kind of hit some good golf shots again. And I just kind of dug deep.”

When asked about getting another LPGA win, Sagstrom told the Golf Channel, “I’ve worked so hard. I mean, all of us work so hard, but I really did. I struggled quite a lot at the end of last year and I worked so hard with Callaway and my coach, Hans, and I just like, I can feel so comfortable standings over the ball at the moment, and most of the times it comes out nice and it’s just such a nice feeling. It’s a fantastic feeling and it’s just knowing that all the hard work really does pay off.”

Sagstrom actually had to win three matches on Sunday. Her quarterfinal match with Celine Boutier Saturday was halted by darkness after 18 holes with Sagstrom winning on the 19th hole. Then she won her semifinal match over Angel Yin 4&2 to set the stage for the championship match.