MSU’s Brooke Biermann Going to Augusta National
By Tom Lang
Brooke Biermann was a very young teenager competing in the 2018 Drive Chip and Putt at Augusta National and recalls being onsite when the club announced the inaugural Augusta National Women’s Amateur for 2019 – now considered the must-play women’s event in worldwide amateur golf.
Her invitation came in January.
“It really has been a dream of mine since they announced it,” Biermann told me about her upcoming appearance in what is considered the pinnacle of woman’s amateur golf. “I remember watching it that first year with Jennifer Kupcho and Maria Fassi coming down 18 and fighting for it. I was still a little girl at the time, and I was just saying ‘I’m going to get there.’
“So, I think my amateur career wouldn’t be complete without playing at Augusta this year.”
Yet it almost didn’t happen.
Biermann was a star at Michigan State in 2021-2025 and led the team to numerous accomplishments, including team runner up in the 2025 Big Ten Championship and earning multiple individual All-Big Ten honors and All-America honorable mention. She won the NCAA Palm Beach Regional as a sophomore, the first ever for a Spartan. Biermann, a St. Louis area native, qualified for and played in the 80th Women’s U.S. Open last summer, before finishing runner up in the U.S. Women’s Amateur at Bandon Dunes in August.
“I realized that after Bandon Dunes (U.S. Amateur) my amateur ranking was definitely going to improve, and it did.”
With a strong finish to her college career, she was all set to turn pro, even competing in the 2025 LPGA Tour Q-School in the fall. After clearing the first two stages to earn full-time EPSON Tour status at minimum for 2026, she went to stage 3 in late November in Mobile, Ala., where if you stay, you are required to turn pro. In the first one-and-a-half practice rounds Biermann played with severe neck pain.
“It was radiating down my back and my left shoulder, so ultimately, I couldn’t play the third stage, which was a real bummer – because that was my opportunity to get my LPGA Tour card right away.”
An MRI revealed two herniated discs in her neck.
“In a weird way, it sort of answered my questions,” she told me. “I was at a place where I could either turn pro right away at the third stage of Q-School, or remain an amateur for a little bit longer, and play at Augusta. In a way I feel like my decision was made for me. When the EPSON season starts, she’ll play two events as an amateur, then play at Augusta.”
Earning a trip to Augusta was heavily boosted by her incredible 2025 U.S. Women’s Amateur showing, and made her childhood dream a possibility. She was also a semifinalist in the Women’s Western Amateur. In 2024, she won the Missouri Women's Amateur and reached the quarterfinals of the North and South Women's Amateur in North Carolina.
Her wonderful national runner up showing at Bandon Dunes she relates directly to the training she got at MSU, because to play well on the Pacific Ocean coastline, you must play the wind – very similar to golf in Scotland.
Biermann now lives and trains temporarily in Naples Florida, where it’s “nice to be practicing without 17 layers on.”
Yet Biermann gives a lot of credit to all the bad weather practices and rounds of golf she played growing up in the Midwest.
“I think it makes you tougher and I think it means you can play in any conditions,” she said. “Coach Stacy (Slobodnik-Stoll) would have us outside in the wind all the time for practice in the spring, working on our knockdowns, that can really, really help you later on when you have a really windy day on the course. “I told coach about all the times I thought she was crazy for having us out here in the (cold and) wind. Well, I guess it paid off.”
Biermann (pronounced Beer-men) was revered as the U.S. Women’s Amateur favorite golfer among the caddies.
“Apparently there’s a bar where all the Bandon caddies go, and I heard that anytime I’d pop up on the TV screen they’d all raise their beers and call out my name,” she said. “So, I guess I was a crowd favorite. I had a lot of support behind me, and I didn’t even know it. Pretty funny story when I heard it (from a competitor’s caddie in one of the last few rounds). I really liked it.”
While playing at Bandon, Biermann checked off boxes of many things about her golf game:
“I felt like I confirmed the thought that I could always play at a high level and play consistently. To do that for 11 rounds in a row, very well, with both the mental challenge and physical challenge, I think the whole week was amazing. My whole family got to experience that with me, and with my dad (Bill) on the bag.
“Also, being down in matches and having the ability to fight back and end up winning, with three of my six matches going into extra holes. Being in sudden death where you have to make this putt or your week is over. That is about the highest level of pressure I have ever had yet. I’ll need to harness that week (going forward) to realize there’s no panic. I can stay very calm and rely heavily on what I’ve practiced.
For some perspective, Biermann said this about the Pacific Ocean winds:
“It was blowing the same (speed), but you’d wake up one day and it was blowing the opposite direction. So, a hole that was downwind was suddenly in … sometimes I’d hit a driver into the wind one day, and the next day I was hitting a 5-iron off the tee because it was so downwind I could get into trouble. On a par three I had a 3-wood in one day, and the next an 8-iron.”
When the time soon comes for the EPSON Tour (with three events in Michigan), Biermann said it will be a learning process, playing alone again after being part of a solid college program. Now she will be on the road and handling the logistics that were normally controlled for her and all teammates at MSU. Her father, Bill, will be on the bag the first few times, including Augusta National, as she navigates future caddie options.
“After all he has a full-time job to handle. And now golf is my job, I need to make money,” she said with a laugh.
