Who is the Scot tasting US college success as a top coach?

Third NCAA Division 1 Women’s Championship for Strathaven woman

She swapped Strathaven for Stanford and has established herself as one of the top college golf coaches in the US. Step forward Anne Walker, who has just led her Stanford team to a second NCAA Division I Women's Championship in three years and third in total.

If you need that put into perspective, it’s the college golf equivalent of being a title-winning football manager because a coach’s role is all encompassing in this instance and Walker has once again enhanced her reputation in one of the most competitive environments in golf. Stanford, of course, is where Tiger Woods played his college golf and Walker had Rose Zhang, an equally-exciting talent, on her title-winning team two years ago, when the Scot was named National Coach of the Year by the Women's Golf Coaches Association (WGCA).

As a player, Walker was a good player herself, as illustrated when she won the Welsh Women’s Open Stroke-Play Championship in 2001. During a spell at the University of California in Berkeley, was a three-time captain for the Golden Bears and twice won individual medals. She was the 2002 Pac-10 medal winner, a three-time All-Pac-10 selection and three-time WGCA All-American Scholar. All of which led to her being inducted into the California Athletics Hall of Fame in 2013.

Coach Anne Walker, far right, celebrate with her Stanford team after winning the NCAA Women's Golf Division I Championships at Omni La Costa Resort & Spa in Carlsbad, California. Picture: Orlando Ramirez/Getty Images.

Walker began her coaching career at her alma mater, where she was named assistant coach after earning a geography degree in 2002 while, with an eye on her potential pathway in life, she also received a master’s degree in coaching and athletic administration. She then became associate head coach at Cal in 2007 before then taking up the head coaching job at UC Davis in 2008.

A successful four-year spell there – the ‘Aggies’ won three Big West Conference titles and recorded a first-ever top-20 national ranking – led to Walker securing her big move to Stanford in 2012 and, on the back of steering the team to its best finish in the NCAA Championships since 2007 by tying for 13th in her inaugural season, it’s been onwards and upwards for the Palo Alto institution’s women’s team. “It’s an incredible school,” Walker told bunkered in an interview two years ago. “You never have to go looking for inspiration. I started on 20 July, 2012, and it’s been the most amazing ride.”

Stanford, the No 1 seed, beat sixth-ranked UCLA in the final at the Omni La Costa Resort & Spa in Carlsbad to land title No 3, with the first one having come in 2015. “Every player on the roster has contributed this year,” she said. “We’ve had different players in the line up and we’ve had great success all up and down and I’ve spoken about that a lot this week. It doesn’t matter who you look at on this roster, there’s someone there that’s going to give you something and this week we saw that.”

As for her own success at Stanford, she added: “It’s unreal actually. When we won in 2022, my dear husband told me two was good, but he was like, ‘ah three is really good’, so that stuck in my mind and when the winning putt fell this week. I thought ‘well honey, is this really good?’

“It’s unbelievable. These are so hard to win. There’s so much goes into this and the fortitude and mental strength these young women showed and everything they’ve been through. I’m actually just blown away by this group in particular and I am the luckiest coach in America to have been able to lead them this year and share this moment with them.”