FRANKLIN, Tenn. – Former Belmont women’s Golf team coach Lissa Bradford was honored with the 2024 Career Distinction Award by the Tennessee PGA Section, announced by the organization on Thursday.
This honor is the second Lissa has received from a Tennessee golf organization. Earlier this year, she was inducted into the Tennessee Golf Hall of Fame.
Bradford has an impressive history in Tennessee golf, spanning more than five decades. She began her career as one of the top junior and amateur golfers in the state, before devoting the last 30 years of her life to building the Tennessee Golf Foundation’s junior golf program into an internationally recognized model. national scale.
During the nearly 20 years she led the Belmont women’s golf program, the Bruins won six team championships, seven golfers captured a total of 12 individual titles, and the team finished in the top 6 in the conference tournaments nine times. This program has also produced one player named the conference’s Player of the Year and nine other golfers who received All-Conference honors. In 2011-2012, she began a four-year term on the NCAA Women’s Golf Committee. After her tenure, she continued her work with the NCAA, serving as a rules official each year at NCAA regional and national championship events.
Lissa also embraced Belmont’s ideal of developing true student-athletes, which resulted in her program receiving numerous academic honors. During her tenure, 15 golfers were recognized as All-American Scholars by the Women’s Golf Coaches Association (WGCA), while 49 golfers received academic honors from the Ohio Valley and Atlantic Sun conferences. Additionally, the program has earned the NCAA APR Recognition Award for 12 consecutive years.
Bradford shined as a high school golfer at Harpeth Hall, where she won a TSSAA state championship in 1981. She then went on to a notable career at the University of Alabama, where she captained the team 1984 to 1986 and named a Southeastern Conference Academic All-American her senior year.
She also won two Tennessee Women’s Amateur Championships (1983,1985) and qualified for the 1983 United States Women’s Amateur.
Upon leaving college, Bradford achieved his PGA Class A membership in 1989 and has maintained that professional standing ever since. Her first job as a golf professional was as an assistant professional at Gleneagles Country Club in Texas. She also held assistant professional roles at Dallas Country Club and Springhouse Golf Club at the Opryland Hotel. In 1990, she became an assistant professional at Belle Meade Country Club, where she remained until joining the Tennessee Golf Foundation in 1995. Currently, she is the Senior Director of Junior Golf for TGF at Golf House Tennessee.
During her career, Bradford has served on numerous committees and boards, including the Golf Growth Committee for the TPGA, the NCAA Women’s Golf Committee Competition Link, and many others.
His honors and awards include: the 2010 Gladys Palmer Award for Meritorious Service from the WGCA, the 2019 Kim Evans Award from the PGA, the 2019 Bill Strausbaugh Award from the Tennessee PGA Section, as well as entries into the Athletic Hall of Fame from Harpeth Hall in 2018.
For additional information on the honor awarded, visit www.tennpga.com.
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