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Klasse Survives Belnap’s Back-Nine Charge at Bountiful Ridge

With a back-nine run at Bountiful Ridge Golf Course, Steph Belnap did everything she could to alter the seemingly inevitable outcome of the 34th Senior Women’s State Amateur.

In the end, though, Leigh Klasse became the latest winner of a Utah Golf Association event that has turned into the Kareen & Crew Invitational in the middle of this decade.

USGA legend and Minnesota Golf Hall of Fame member Leigh Klasse holds the championship trophy after winning the 34th playing of the Utah Senior Women’s State Amateur at Bountiful Ridge Golf Course.

After being 5 up at the turn of the 18-hole match Sept. 17, Klasse held on for a 1-up victory. So it could be said that Kareen Larson, the General Manager of TalonsCove Golf Club, is responsible for producing the last three winners, via her network of friends from winter competition in Arizona. Robin Krapfl, Larson herself and now Klasse, a notable player in the United States Golf Association and a member of the Minnesota Golf Hall of Fame, have held the trophy.

“This is special,” Klasse said. “I haven’t won a tournament in a long time. … This was a good, competitive tournament to play in to get ready for next week.”

The U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur in Portland, Oregon, will mark her remarkable 64th appearance in a USGA championship, during the week of her 67th birthday.

Keeping hope alive, two-time Utah Women’s State Amateur champion Steph Belnap plays from a greenside bunker during the championship match. Belnap got up and down for par on the 17th hole stretching the final match to the 18th hole.

She completed a successful tuneup only after Belnap extended her to No. 18. Belnap, the girls golf coach of Farmington High School and the 2025 UGA Co-Senior Women’s Player of the Year (with Larson), won four holes on the back nine. And she nearly forced extra holes. A 25-foot, downhill birdie putt from the fringe lipped out of the hole on the par-5 No. 18, where Klasse’s par was good for a tie of the hole and a victory in the match.

“It did not come easy,” Klasse said. “Steph put up quite the battle. She played the back nine awesome.”

So ended a four-day competition with a unique format among UGA tournaments: two rounds of stroke play and three rounds of match play. The group of quarterfinalists was deep and talented; as Klasse said, “Any one of them could win.”

Klasse was the co-medalist and No. 2 seed. She began match play by defeating seven-time champion Annette Gaiotti, who’s 73, then downed her friend Larson 4 and 3 in the morning semifinals. Belnap, the No. 5 seed, won No. 18 with a par to top No. 1 Molly Steffes (another member of the Kareen Crew). Steffes had survived the quarterfinals vs. 2023 champion Nuny Khamken by winning the last four holes.

Molly Steffes added co-medalist honors at the 34th Utah Senior Women’s State Amateur to an already strong 2026 season that included a victory at the Utah Senior Women’s Stroke Play Championship.

The other quarterfinalists were No. 4 Sharon Briggs and No. 6 Terry Hansen, a four-time winner of the Women’s State Amateur.

A familiar name returned to UGA competition as 2013 champion and four-time Utah Women’s State Amateur winner Terry Hansen advanced to the quarterfinals at Bountiful Ridge.

Klasse didn’t have to play beyond No. 16 in her first two matches and nearly ended the afternoon duel with Belnap on that par-3 hole. But her birdie attempt barely skirted the hole. Belnap then won No, 17 as Klasse made a double bogey, but the champion regrouped nicely to par the last hole and take the title.

Click here for complete bracket scoring from the Utah Senior Women’s State Amateur championship.

Tournament recap story written by Fairways Media senior writer Kurt Kragthorpe. Photography by Fairways Media Randy Dodson and Garrit Johnson.