Lottie Woad’s career took a big leap in 2024 when she charged home with three birdies in the last four holes to win the Augusta National Women’s Amateur.
Now the defending champion aims to take another leap – actually LEAP – toward status as a future LPGA professional.
In 2025, a PGA Tour University-style ranking program was deployed to provide top amateur female golfers a route to gain status on the top women’s professional circuit. The LPGA Elite Amateur Pathway (LEAP) will offer exempt Priority List status on the LPGA Tour to qualifying female amateurs who accumulate a minimum of 20 points within the set criteria framework in a given year and the previous three calendar years.
Woad, a 21-year-old junior at Florida State University from Farnham, England, leads the inaugural LEAP standings with 16 points thanks to her ANWA victory, No. 1 perch in the World Amateur Golf Ranking, McCormack Medal, finishes in 2024 LPGA majors (T10 at AIG Women’s Open and T23 at Chevron Championship) and Curtis/Palmer Cup participation. Second on the LEAP list is 2022 ANWA champion Anna Davis with eight points.
“I think it’s a really good opportunity for all of us,” Woad said of the newly implemented program. “It’s so recent, I didn’t really know it was coming but I was obviously very happy when I saw it come out. I’m just really trying to focus on playing my own game, but I have a lot of opportunities coming up to get some points so I’m really focusing on playing good golf really and seeing where that puts me.”
“I think everything is feeling really solid and I’m just feeling really comfortable with my game right now.”
Lottie Woad
Woad is poised to take advantage in ways that her fellow Florida State golfer Luke Clanton did in earning PGA Tour status via the PGA Tour U Accelerated program. Whether she would choose to immediately join the pro ranks this summer or defer until after she exhausts collegiate eligibility in 2026 remains to be seen, but she admits taking the next step “would mean a lot.”
“I’ve always dreamed of playing on the LPGA so to maybe be able to get that slightly easier way of not needing to go to Q-School would definitely be huge,” said Woad, who hopes to follow previous WAGR No. 1 and ANWA winners Jennifer Kupcho (2019) and Rose Zhang (2023) to the LPGA.
Of course, none of that can happen without Woad’s continued success. On that front, her most immediate concern is trying to become the first player to repeat as ANWA champion.
“I’ve been really consistent this year in college events, so I think everything is feeling really solid and I’m just feeling really comfortable with my game right now and looking forward to going back to a course that I feel really comfortable on,” Woad said.
Woad originally signaled her promise with a victory in the R&A Girls Amateur Championship in 2022 at Carnoustie, but it was the ANWA victory that really catapulted her into prominence as the first European winner. It not only got her exemptions into LPGA majors, but it drew congratulatory texts from English golfing idols like Charley Hull and Justin Rose.
“Yeah, there was a big reaction obviously, a lot of people watched it,” she said. “And I think just seeing all of the pros that I look up to from England were watching it and sent me messages, and that was really special.
“It definitely changed,” she added of her life after ANWA. “I think just a lot more people talking about you. And I feel like people’s expectations maybe increase, maybe people are trying to really beat you. But at the same time, there’s so many good players that I’m still trying to really beat them, too. … Kind of just try and block out the noise really.”
As a person, Woad has matured in the spotlight as the world No. 1 and reigning ANWA champ.
“I was always pretty shy at speaking to people, and I’m still getting used to it, but I think I’ve done a lot better at doing interviews and stuff like that,” she said. “So, I think it’s given me a lot more confidence. I’ve been exposed to a lot more so, yeah, probably a little bit.”
This year will mark Woad’s third and likely final ANWA appearance. In her debut in 2023, Woad qualified for the final round at Augusta and finished 13th.
“I think having played Augusta under a competitive environment definitely helps,” she said of her rookie experience. “It’s probably a big 5-footer I made my first year to make the cut. I think just experiencing playing in front of the crowds and stuff like that, you don’t get to do on the practice day at Augusta.”
She put that experience to good work with her poise under pressure a year later. Woad led by two after the first 36 holes at nearby Champions Retreat before needing to rally from two down with four to play to post 69 at Augusta National and finish at 8-under-par 208 last year. She was the only player in the ANWA field to shoot all three rounds under par.
“It gave me a lot of confidence, especially coming from behind,” she said. “Knowing I’m never out of it, I think that gave me a lot of confidence and went straight from that into the Chevron and I was kind of riding the wave into that and I think it set me up for the rest of the year.”
More than her birdie putts of 12, 10 and 15 feet on holes 15, 17 and 18 that lifted her past clubhouse leader Bailey Shoemaker – who fired an ANWA-record 66 at Augusta National – it was the par she saved with a 10-footer after scrambling from a drive that hit a tree on 14 that still stands out a year later.
“I think if I didn’t manage to get that up and down, it might have been all over,” she said. “So I think that was very important in the last couple hours or so.”
While she might have snuck up a little on favorites last year at Augusta, Woad brings a load of form into her defense. Since last spring’s NCAA regional and championship (where she finished runner-up individually), Woad has not finished outside the top three in 10 consecutive collegiate tournaments.
She also registered her first ace on the 13th hole at Seminole Legacy Golf Club in the final round of the Florida State Match Up two Sundays ago. She nearly got her first on the eighth hole at Sunningdale in last year’s Curtis Cup victory.
“Yeah it’s taken me a while to get a hole-in-one,” she said. “I will say my younger sister got one when she was 12 and she doesn’t play golf that much so that’s always been hanging over my head. So I’m very glad to get it done, and to be fair, to be at our home event with loads of spectators out there was pretty cool, I will say. I’m feeling good, feeling like I’m playing pretty consistently and everything is feeling good to be honest.”
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Top: Lottie Woad has become more comfortable in the spotlight since her victory at the 2024 ANWA.
JOE TOTH, ANWA