Rachel Heck walked away from competitive golf in 2024 after clinching the winning point for Stanford in the NCAA Women’s Championship. She announced she wouldn’t turn professional and began a job in private equity. And now the 24-year-old will compete in the U.S. Women’s Amateur Championship at The Honors Course in her home state of Tennessee.
As she prepares to play in a USGA championship for the 13th time in her career, she’s feeling joy on the golf course again. And there have been golf-related opportunities this summer that haven’t involved competing. Heck served as an on-course commentator for the U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship in mid-July.
“I have no desire to be on tour and live that lifestyle, but I’m so excited to be back working in the golf world with Golf Channel and whatever opportunities arise from that, and starting to compete again,” Heck said. “It’s been such a blast.”
The U.S. Women’s Amateur, being played for the 126th time, has held a significant place in Heck’s golf life. She has competed in the championship eight times previously, and twice reached the semifinals, in 2021 and 2023.
This year’s event, which begins on Tuesday and runs through Sunday’s 36-hole match-play final, features a deep lineup of amateur stars in the 156-player field, including nine USGA champions. Among the most prominent names are Asterisk Talley, the No. 1-ranked junior in America and winner in the 2024 U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball; Aphrodite Deng, the 2025 U.S. Girls’ Junior champion; and Rianne Malixi, who captured both the U.S. Women’s Amateur and U.S. Girls’ Junior in 2024.
The golfers will compete at a venue that has a long relationship with the USGA. The Honors Course, which is north of Chattanooga in Ooltewah, was founded by Coca-Cola bottling heir Jack Lupton and designed by Pete Dye in 1983. It hosted its first USGA championship in 1991, when Mitch Voges beat Manny Zerman in the U.S. Amateur final. Three years later, the women’s Curtis Cup Match was played there and ended in a rare tie. More USGA champions would be crowned at The Honors Course: Kevin Marsh in the 2005 U.S. Mid-Amateur, Terry Frohnmayer in the 2011 U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur, Min Woo Lee in the 2016 U.S. Junior Amateur and Louis Brown in the 2024 U.S. Senior Amateur. The U.S. Amateur is scheduled to return in 2031.
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Considered radical in the early 1980s because of its acres of tall, native-grass rough, durable zoysiagrass fairways and terrifying greens perched atop bulkheads of rock, today The Honors Course is considered a well-preserved example of Pete Dye’s death-or-glory architecture. Other than reducing the contours in a couple of greens (particularly the 18th) in the late 1990s, and adjusting the bunkering in 2008, Dye left the course alone for most of his career. Georgia architect Bill Bergin created a new practice facility at the club in 2015, and Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner touched everything up again in 2022. View Course
To be back in the U.S. Women’s Amateur adds another chapter to Heck’s long and circuitous golf life.
As a freshman in high school, Heck committed to play college golf at Stanford. That summer, at just 15, she qualified for the U.S. Women’s Open and made the cut. She continued her strong play throughout high school, winning AJGA events, competing in more LPGA majors and the Junior Solheim Cup. But then she got hurt. A back injury forced her to take a few months away from golf in her junior year of high school, and during that time, she struggled.
Golf had been everything to her for so long that without it, she didn’t know who she was. She says she experienced an identity crisis. And even when she was physically healthy enough to play again, she didn’t feel right. The joy she had once felt towards the game had disappeared. She was depressed.
In searching for an answer, she decided that she would join the ROTC program when she started at Stanford. Her parents were understandably wary. Playing Division I golf at a school as academically intense as Stanford was an enormous task in and of itself. To voluntarily add the pursuit of a military career—was it possible for one person to do it all?
Heck proved that it’s not only possible, but it’s possible to do it really well.
She kept up academically, fulfilled her ROTC responsibilities and won six individual titles for the Cardinal. She won everything in the postseason her freshman year: the Pac-12 Conference Championship, NCAA Regionals and the individual NCAA Championship title.
Rachel Heck holds her NCAA trophy after winning the women’s individual title in 2021 at Grayhawk Golf Club.
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The next few years were harder. Heck faced an onslaught of injuries and illness. She got mononucleosis. The pain and numbness in her shoulder and arm, diagnosed as Thoracic Outlet Syndrome, became so bad that she had a rib surgically removed to relieve compressed nerves and vessels.
“Mentally, it was more painful than any physical pain I experienced,” Heck said. “Just the constant loop of getting sick or injured, being out for a little bit, then trying really hard to get back, then playing for a little bit, and then getting hurt again.”
During her senior year, Heck was in her coach’s office, weeping, still dealing with flareups in her shoulder and arm. Coach Anne Walker asked Heck if it would make sense to call it. She didn’t want to see Heck in pain anymore. But again, Heck decided to play. She announced that she would not turn pro after college. The injuries were part of it, but moreover, golf had felt like a job for long enough. When she entered the postseason in 2024, she experienced a newfound freedom on the course.
“My senior year postseason, I think, was the most fun I’ve ever had on a golf course,” Heck said.
The Cardinal made it to the match-play finals at NCAAs, and it was Heck who earned the point that clinched the title.
“Everything about that postseason felt absolutely magical,” Heck said.
She pursued something completely different after graduation. She put her golf clubs away, and even when her now-fiancé, Grant Worthington, wanted to play, she’d just ride in the cart and watch him. She interned for a private equity firm and worked there for a year. At the same time, she was serving in the U.S. Air Force Reserves.
But Heck realized working in finance has something in common with high-level competitive golf: It can consume your entire life. And she knew that wasn’t quite what she was ready for. She wanted to continue with the military, and she’s now a First Lieutenant. Her base is in Illinois, and she’s required to spend a minimum of a month there throughout the year, though she goes more.
Heck is artistic and wants to continue painting and selling her work through her online business, Caddie Corner. And then there’s something else she wanted to spend time on: She started to miss golf.
She credits her fiancé with inspiring her to want to play again. “Seeing how much he loves playing, I was like, alright, I’ll bring my clubs and I’ll go play,” Heck said.
They’d play a scramble together from the front tees, or a quick nine, anything to just have fun on the golf course. They’d play with friends and Heck would surprise them with how unbelievably good she is at this sport they’d never seen her play. She told her fiancé about her experiences in golf and got to see how incredible it all was through his outside perspective. The joy came back.
Now, the pair find every opportunity they can to play. It’s not easy, living in Manhattan and trying to get a tee time. But they have family and friends with country club memberships near the city, so they’ll make a day of it to get out and play. And within the city, they go to indoor simulators to practice.
In 2025, Heck used vacation days from work to play in the Augusta National Women’s Amateur, and later in the summer played in the U.S. Women’s Amateur at Bandon Dunes. While missing the cut in both (although she missed the playoff for match play at Bandon by just one shot), golf had crept back into her life.
The photo Rachel Heck posted after getting her invite to the 2025 Augusta National Women’s Amateur.
A mentor she worked with gave her advice, telling her a career in finance isn’t going anywhere. And that if there are all of these other things she wants to pursue, she should do it now. So Heck left her private equity job and is playing competitive golf again.
“I think I really needed time away,” Heck said. “And I think now it’s been a couple of years, I really miss it.
“I look at my life almost like a creative project in a certain way. I’m trying to put all these pieces together and mix and match things and just figure out what I like and what works. I want to be creative and flexible and build a unique, interesting, fulfilling life.”
She played in a Monday qualifier for an LPGA Tour event in New Jersey earlier this year, where she didn’t advance. She’s played in a couple of amateur events and is taking her shot in the U.S. Women’s Amateur at The Honors Course that is about five hours from where Heck grew up in Memphis. She is age eligible for the U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur starting in 2027.
Heck, who was the medalist at the 2020 U.S. Women’s Amateur, is looking forward to playing in Tennessee. She misses that southern hospitality—her chatty and friendly demeanor that she learned growing up in the region isn’t exactly a fit in New York, she admits with a laugh.
After playing in the U.S. Women’s Am, Heck thinks she’ll be done competing for the summer. She hopes to get out of New York in the winter for a few tournaments in sunnier locations. While not quite sure what this next phase of her golf career will look like, she knows she’s enjoying it and wants to play more.
Getting back into competition has felt familiar and new at the same time.
“I’ll find myself getting frustrated on the course and I’m like, OK, I have no right to be frustrated because I haven’t practiced chipping in a year and a half,” Heck says, laughing. “It’s a funny mentality shift because once I tee off, I get right back where I was: I’m competing, I’m frustrated when I make mistakes, but it’s totally different now.”
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
