If anyone is looking for Madison Messimer during the holiday break, find a golf course in Myrtle Beach.

The freshman finished the fall season at Tennessee with her third top 10 finish in a row at the Stanford Intercollegiate in California following outstanding performances at the Mercedes-Benz Intercollegiate in Knoxville and the Canadian Collegiate Invitational in Ontario.

Coach Diana Cantú, a former Lady Vols golfer who now helms the program, wasn’t surprised to hear her standout freshman would be on the golf course on Thanksgiving Day and all weekend. That’s also the kind of golfer a head coach wants on the roster.

“Absolutely,” Cantú said. “She’s even somebody that prefers to go out and play rather than practice, which tells you how good she is with her golf game, because a lot of players just like to be on the range, hitting ball after ball. She’s a player. She plays the game of golf really, really well.

“Her mentality and the way she approaches the game is stellar, and something that a lot of our players are like, ’Hey, Madison, what are you thinking here? What are you doing there?’ They’re already learning from her, even though she’s a freshman. It’s been fantastic having her here and showing us what she does and how she goes about her game. She keeps it very simple, but she’s one that you’ll see out on the course a lot.”

The daughter of April and Jonathan Messimer, she was born and raised in Myrtle Beach, which is fertile ground for an aspiring golfer in South Carolina.

“I started doing summer camps when I was 5 or 6, and I was trying different sports out, like tennis, soccer, gymnastics, golf, but I really liked golf,” Madison Messimer said. “After the camps, they would tell my parents that I was pretty good and that I should come back next year to do the summer camps. I started coming back and doing more weeks each year and then I started playing in tournaments when I was about 8 or 9.”

The camps were held at Legends Golf Resort, which has three 18-hole courses and is also the location of The Classic Swing Golf School, where Messimer takes lessons. It’s become her home course and the place she sought while on holiday break.

In her final year at Myrtle Beach High School, she was ranked the No. 1 overall golfer in South Carolina and top 10 in the 2025 class by College Golf Commits, American Junior Golf Association (AJGA) and Junior Golf Scoreboard. Messimer had her choice of programs and opted for Tennessee.

 

“When I went on my visit, the facility was better than any other facilities out there, and I really liked the coaches,” Messimer said. “I met the team, and I really thought they had good chemistry, and I remember, on my visit they would laugh and there was no drama or anything. I feel like Tennessee, they really value women’s sports and individual sports. Other colleges that I went to, it didn’t really seem like that, so that was a big reason, too.”

Cantú and her staff, including assistant coach Anna Newell, who also played golf at Tennessee, took a purposeful approach to the recruitment that didn’t focus solely on Messimer as a golfer.

“We were very interested in getting to know her, build a relationship with her entire family,” Cantú said. “We showed her what our program was about and how we could make her better once we started working with her. The opportunities and the support that we give here at Tennessee for female athletes, that was huge for her. The Lady Vols brand and what we stand for in our traditions and legacy was something she really enjoyed. That’s a difference-maker for our athletics department.”

Messimer noted,  “Coach D and Coach Anna, after I would do well in a junior tournament, they would always be the first ones to reach out and congratulate me and tell me how much they wanted me to come to Tennessee, and that really meant a lot.”

Golf is a sport with mental and physical demands that requires both strength and deftness and a difficult one to navigate as no course is the same. Messimer’s success as a freshman is not common because of the steep leap from high school to college, especially since the players arrive in late summer.

“Being a freshman can always be tough, and with golf, we basically have them here for two weeks before we start competing,” Cantú said. “She’s made a phenomenal transition. It really is a big jump.”

Messimer’s acclimation process started a year ago after she signed with Tennessee as a high school senior.

“We made a big effort in getting her into our system, talking to her coaches at home, not only her swing coach, but also her strength coach and her parents, and really making that last year before getting here as comparable to what it is being here,” Cantú said.

“She started working out at six in the morning, just like we do out here. She started doing more practices like we do. We talked to her about the important things with our system, within our golf team and what are some statistics that we look at.”

Tennessee opened the fall season with an overall second-place finish Sept. 9 at the Cougar Classic in Charleston, South Carolina. Messimer finished at No. 42.

“My coaches really helped me with practicing and getting my wedges and putting dialed in, especially my putting,” Messimer said. “My first tournament I didn’t putt as well, so we fixed a couple things, and then my next three tournaments I started doing a lot better with that. I think that really helped my scores get lower, and this offseason, we’re working on wedge numbers, trying to get more dialed in 115 yards and in.”

Madison Messimer lines up a putt. (Drew Garrison/Tennessee Athletics

Tennessee won its hometown Mercedes-Benz Collegiate at Cherokee Country Club on Oct. 7, the first tournament win in the Cantú era, who was hired in 2021 with the task of elevating the Lady Vols golf program. Senior Manassanan Chotikabhukkana led the team effort by placing third at four under, and Messimer and freshman Thitikarn Thapasit both tied for ninth place at two under.

Tennessee now enters an offseason of training before the spring semester starts with the FAU Paradise Invitational on Feb. 2-4 at the Osprey Point Golf Course in Boca Raton, Florida.

Messimer isn’t anywhere close to her best golf – it is one sport where competitive maturity and getting older can help – and her offseason work with take place on and off the course.

“One of the things is just continue to mature her body and strengthen her body,” Cantú said. “I think the biggest test for her is going to be coming into postseason, where golf courses are a little bit longer, a little bit more difficult. That’s where people differentiate from each other, and the better teams rise to the top.

“Our goal is to get her ready for that. As she continues to grow and develop into herself here in college and getting stronger, I believe, if she can gain 10-15 yards off the tee and combine that with her awesome short game and way to go around the course, that’s where she’s going to grow the most.”

Messimer’s aspiration is, of course, to become a professional golfer, but she also has a backup academic plan.

“I’m majoring in finance, so after college, I’ll either go pro or become  a financial advisor,” she said. “My mom was a financial advisor, and I find it interesting.”

She also doesn’t confine herself to a golf course and was attracted to the recreational sport of pickleball while growing up in Myrtle Beach, which attracts its share of retirees.

“I really like playing pickleball,” Messimer said. “I started playing in high school. We would have courts where I’m from, and I would play with the older people, and they’re actually really good, and that’s how I got into it.”

Messimer also picked up another hobby while living at the beach.

“I know she loves fishing, but she hasn’t been able to do it,” Cantú said. “We were unaware that you needed a fishing license in Tennessee, so we haven’t been able to get her out there, but yes, pickleball and fishing are two of the things that she likes to do.”

Before she departed Knoxville for the Thanksgiving break, Messimer shared what she was thankful for in 2025.

“I’m definitely thankful for my teammates,” she said. “They’ve really been welcoming to me and the other freshmen on the team. I’m thankful for my parents. They’re always so supportive and definitely all my coaches. They’ve really helped me improve already, just from the time being here, and I’m really grateful for them.”

As a youngster, Messimer needed to pick a sport to focus on – she didn’t really care for soccer despite scoring two goals in her last game but liked tennis – and settled on golf.

“I thought it was really fun,” she said. “And everybody would tell me that you can play golf for as long as you live.”

Maria M. Cornelius, a senior writer/editor at MoxCar Marketing + Communications since 2013, started her journalism career at the Knoxville News Sentinel and began writing about the Lady Vols in 1998. In 2016, she published her first book, “The Final Season: The Perseverance of Pat Summitt,” through The University of Tennessee Press and a 10th anniversary edition will be released June 16, 2026.