Blonien runs away with WOGA State Amateur, looks ahead to national slate
By Ken MacLeod
After steamrolling the field in both the Women’s Oklahoma Golf Association Stroke Play Championship and State Amateur Championship (Match Play) in the past three weeks, it’s obvious Natalie Blonien needs bigger fish to fry.
And she’ll soon have that opportunity. One day after her 6 and 5 victory over Sydney Hermann in the championship match of the WOGA State Amateur at Oakwood Country Club in Enid Thursday, Blonien will leave for Pinehurst, N.C., site of the next week’s North and South Amateur. After that the Western Amateur. And because she prevailed at Oakwood, she was bestowed an invite to the U.S. Women’s Amateur Championship Aug. 4-9 at The Honors Course in Ooltewah, Tenn.
All of these will be great tests for the University of Arkansas rising junior from Altus, who certainly appears to have the potential to become one of the top female golfers to come from Oklahoma since the great Stacy Prammansudh practiced relentlessly on this same Oakwood course in the late 1980s before going on to the University of Tulsa and the LPGA Tour. The two WOGA championships Blonien added of late just showed how far afield she is of her in-state competitors at this time.
None of her four matches in the State Amateur advanced past the 15th hole and this one was no different, ending on the par-5 13th hole. She birdied three of the first five, led by five at the turn, added another birdie on the par-4 10th hole to go six up and closed it out with three consecutive pars.
Hermann, the 2023 champion from Ponca City, recently earned her Master Degree in Sports Administration from Cumberland University and has been seeking a position as an assistant coach for her future. She didn’t decide to enter the tournament until the deadline was extended last week and jumped in at the last minute. But she then rolled to the finals with impressive victories over Dia Singh, Maggie Ruby and Lucy Darr, using her combination of power and finesse.
After an opening birdie to halve the first hole with Blonien, Hermann didn’t have her A game however. That was her lone birdie against three bogeys and a double bogey. The crushing hole came on the par-4 sixth, when Blonien hit her tee shot in a fairway bunker, hit the lip coming out but managed to get it in a greenside bunker, then hit a long bunker shot to within 4 feet of a back pin and saved par. Hermann hit the green in regulation but three-putted to fall three holes down.
“Natalie is a great player and I knew I would have to be making birdies,” Hermann said. “I just really played bad. You can’t make bogeys in match play and that’s what I did.”
Hermann was a graduate assistant coach at Cumberland in 2025-26 and called it “the most fun I’ve ever had. It did feel like I was taking care of kids my own age, but it was just very fulfilling doing that.”
While Hermann will be a great addition to any collegiate coaching staff with an opening, Blonien has her sights set on a professional career. She’s been working hard with instructor Justin Poynter at Texas Rangers Golf Club in Arlington, Texas and has her distance control on her irons dialed in to a degree this reporter had not witnessed in watching previous events. She started four tournaments for national power Arkansas this year and fully expects to earn a regular spot in the rotation for her junior year in the fall.
“My game has gotten a lot better,” Blonien said. “I’ve been working hard on my irons and wedges with Justin and that makes your whole game better. I’m looking forward to these big events and I’ve been trying to prepare myself for playing really well in them.
“Today I knew when Sydney made that birdie on the first hole it would be a tough match and I was going to have to get on my A game and go flag hunting. To give myself those birdie opportunities early was important.”
Among the spectators supporting Blonien was her older sister Megan, the former four-time state high school champion who reached the championship match of this event twice. She helped start Natalie in the game at age 6.
