The University of Nebraska golfer from Park City took a 3-and-1 semifinal victory Wednesday at Wasatch Mountain Golf Course. She advanced to Thursday’s 36-hole final match vs. Crimson Cliffs High School senior Kate Walker, a 1-up winner over Ashley Lam.

Louchheim did not need to be reminded about last July’s 5-and-4 loss to Chugg in the round of 16. “Anyone watching could tell you it really wasn’t a match,” Louchheim said. “She definitely kicked my butt.”

As well as Chugg played that day, that’s how Louchheim performed Wednesday. “Coming back this year, my game feels a lot better,” said Louchheim, a Rowland Hall graduate. “Everything feels like it’s coming together.”

She needed something close to her best to beat Chugg, who’s now 41-8 in 14 years of Women’s State Am match play. Louchheim followed the pattern of Berlin Long, who lost to Chugg in 2020 and won in the ’21 semifinals. Coincidentally enough, Long caddied for Louchheim in the afternoon after losing to her friend in the morning’s quarterfinals.

Louchheim was 1 down at the turn, when Long told her, “Let’s go have a back nine.”

The turnaround started with Louchheim’s tricky birdie putt on the par-4 No. 10, followed by Chugg’s violent lip-out. That foreshadowed the rest of the match, as Chugg bogeyed the two par-3 holes on the back nine and Louchheim remained steady. She closed out the match with a birdie on the par-5 No. 17.

“I definitely felt nervous,” Louchheim said of playing a Utah golf legend. “I did feel like the underdog, I’m not going to lie, but I like playing from there.”

So does Walker, actually. That’s the outlook she carried right through the winning stroke, even if she didn’t realize what was at stake in that moment. Her 15-foot par putt on No. 18 clinched the victory.

Walker was surprised when Lam, a Westminster University golfer, congratulated her. “I had no idea,” Walker said of the putt’s significance. “I was just trying to make it.”

Asked if that worked in her favor, she said, “That’s kind of what I have to do. I just pretend, like, ‘You’re down. You’ve got to get up and down here, or you give one back.’ So that was kind of my mentality all day. It worked.”

Walker, whose St. George-based family spends most of the summer in northern Utah, had to withstand Lam’s barrage of four putts from 20 feet or longer. She took it in stride, realizing that there’s no playing defense in golf. But then Lam gave her a gift on the par-3 No. 16, which proved pivotal. Lam three-putted for a double bogey. That enabled Walker to win the hole with a bogey, after her tee shot sailed to the right and landed in the basket of a rules official’s golf cart.

“That should have counted as a hole-in-one, I think,” Walker said.

In that case, a “4” was good enough. “Being the 29th seed and making it to the final is crazy,” she said. “So I’m proud, either way.”