Purdue women's golf has been shot out of a cannon and started the 2023-2024 season on the highest of notes after just two tournaments. The Boilermakers kicked off the season by defending their home course in the Boilermaker Classic, defeating the likes of Alabama, Notre Dame, Minnesota, Indiana and Louisville, among others.

Led by a trio of top ten finishes stemming from Kan Bunnabodee's (-9 and good for solo second place) and Jocelyn Bruch (-4) and Momo Sugiyama (-1), Purdue picked up its first victory of the year in its season debut.

Bunnabodee also had one of the best tournaments in school history in the win. After shooting a 75 in round one, the senior leader responded with a school record 63 during round two.

It was a special performance by Bunnabodee and the Boilermakers, but what they did as an encore has head coach Zack Byrd excited for what his team could potentially accomplish this season.

"The level of play that we showed [at Michigan State] was beyond my realm of thinking for this team. I mean, they were unreal," Byrd said. "It was top to bottom, all the way through the best I'd ever seen us play by far, which is encouraging."

Purdue traveled to East Lansing to compete in the Mary Fossum Invitational at Michigan State and showed something Byrd hadn't seen before.

Halfway through the event on their home course, the Spartans had a commanding 15 shot lead on the pack and even Byrd admitted it felt like everybody else was playing for second place.

Purdue clawed its way back to start the final round eight back of the Spartans. The Boilermakers completed the comeback by firing a -4 as a team in the final round to erase the eight shot deficit. The comeback was impressive, but what made it sweeter to Byrd was battling mother nature and a very tough Forest Akers course.

After a couple days of ideal weather, the conditions changed overnight. The temperature dropped by 15 degrees, the wind was whipping and the greens were more firm than they'd been all tournament.

That performance made Byrd do something he never does. He called a team meeting when the group got back to West Lafayette to make sure they knew the magnitude of what they had just accomplished.

"I never pull them into a meeting after a tournament but I said 'Hey real quick, before we leave. I want you to understand what y'all did today'," Byrd said. "This was big time. We beat teams that are favored to win the Big Ten, we beat teams that are better projected to go to the National Championships and compete."

Purdue defeated the likes of Tennessee, Ohio State and Maryland en route to its second straight tournament victory to start the year undefeated as a team. That type of performance was a long time coming for Byrd and the Boilermakers, who endured some adversity in the head coach's first year with the program in 2022-2023.

"This is the trajectory that I wanted to see us going. I didn't think it was gonna happen this quick but this team can do some special stuff this year if we keep doing this," Byrd said.

Zack Byrd had just left his post as associate head coach at Ole Miss, who had just won a National Championship in 2021, for West Lafayette to take the head coaching position at Purdue. After coming from one of the top programs in the country, it was somewhat of a culture shock when Byrd got to West Lafayette.

"I just did things a lot differently than the former coach here and I think that took a lot longer for them to get used to than I expected. You know, it's just a different way of doing things and I'm very stats based and I like to look into what we're doing wrong and trying to fix it," Byrd said.

Although Purdue made it to its eighth straight NCAA Regional and had four top five finishes in the 2022-2023 season, Byrd's first year with the Boilermakers left a lot to be desired in the head coach's mind. A difference in philosophy after 25 years of Devon Brouse would be no overnight fix.

"Last year was tough. When you don't recruit the players that you get, it's hard. You go from a program that all they cared about was success and winning and working hard and begging me to go over stats and practice and all this stuff to a program that hasn't had a ton of structure in the past," Byrd said.

Not only was the coaching different, but the players took time to adjust to Byrd's style of how he wanted to run a program. Not everyone bought in last season, but that has quickly changed as the Boilermakers' enter year two of the Byrd era, in large part due to the core of veteran golfers on the roster.

"We had a hard time getting everybody on board last year and everybody's on board this year. We've got a different group. We brought in four new players in and we got one out of the portal. We found some freshmen that kind of share our core values of what we're trying to do and trying to build. Now we've got everybody kind of locked in on the same trajectory and path," Byrd said.

Byrd feels that Purdue has seven or eight players that can "go" and play at a high level on any given round. That belief is being put on display through two tournaments.

Fifth-year senior Kan Bunnabodee has reemerged as the team's leader both on and off the course. The Thailand native was soaring as a junior in 2021-2022, earning First Team All-Big Ten honors and was ranked inside the top 100 of the national rankings. That momentum came to a screeching halt in what was supposed to be a special senior season.

Bunnabodee was in not just one, but two walking boots when Byrd first arrived to Purdue and struggled while getting back to full health last season. In what Byrd says is a testament to the work of herself and Directory of Administration and Performance of Golf, Alex Merrill, Bunnabodee has returned to her previous form and may even be better than before.

Byrd shared that the senior standout is all the way back and has a different mindset coming into this season.

"Now you're healthy. Now you look good. Now you look like you can go out and compete at the highest level. She's done it. I mean, she's definitely a different person. She carries herself differently than she did last year. She's confident again," Byrd said of Bunnabodee.

The Boilermakers also have a couple of surprises to open the season with Jocelyn Bruch and Ashley Kozlowski both having strong starts to the year. Bruch has a pair of top ten finishes in her senior campaign, including a tie for seventh in Purdue's win at Michigan State earlier this week. She also has four rounds of par or better, which is tied with Bundabodee for a team high.

Kozlowski finished second at the Mary Fossum Invitational in what was the second runner up finish in her Purdue career. The senior had a strong finish to 2022-2023, placing fourth at the NCAA Raleigh Regional, carrying over the momentum to start this season despite missing a time this summer for an internship with Ping.

The early season showings from Bruch and Kozlowski have surprised their head coach.

"Jocelyn is playing like she did in the mid-season last year when she was in form. She's doing that you know, week one. I didn't expect that," Byrd said.

"Ashley finishing second this week after having a full summer internship in the engineering department at Ping Golf. For her to come back that sharp, I never expected that," Byrd said.

Former Hawaii transfer Momo Sugiyama was Purdue's undisputed leader in Byrd's first year in West Lafayette, tying the school record for rounds in the 60s with six and being named Second Team All-Big Ten during her debut season with the Boilermakers.

It's been a little different this year however. Sugiyama finds herself battling teammates for the opportunity to even have a chance to make it to tournament play, which was a given for her last season.

"Momo said this week that last year, if she played bad she never had to worry about not going to a tournament because she knew she was the top of the top and there was nobody I could replace her with that could beat her," Byrd said.

That's not the case this year. Byrd shared what he responded to Sugiyama with.

"Well, welcome to a team that's ready to compete at the highest level," Byrd told the junior standout.

Sugiyama's fear about potentially being left in West Lafayette for a tournament is actually music to Zack Byrd's ears. The Boilermakers' head coach believes that competition factor is something that all successful teams should have.

"Once you get a team that's deep, everybody works harder. Everybody pushes each other harder," Byrd said. "It's not like a football team or basketball team where the whole team goes. They may not play but they go. You know, we travel with five and that's it."

Byrd referenced his time at Ole Miss, when his players said that some of the qualifiers were more stressful than actual tournaments, which helped them be successful in competition. That is the territory Purdue is beginning to approach, which is a testament to how the mindset of the roster has changed in just one year.

"The transformation of how much more coachable our returners are and bought in this year compared to last year is just insane. They know what they need to do now and it just makes my life a lot easier when I've got my leaders out there," Byrd said.

Purdue is building something special on the course this season, but there is still seven months until the Big Ten Championships in Maryland this April. The road to Bulle Rock features a pair of tough tournaments over the next month, including the Schooner Fall Classic at Oklahoma and the Landfall Tradition at UNC-Wilmington.

There, the Boilermakers will go up against of the nation's perennial powerhouses like Duke, Wake Forest, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State. Those opponents will be tall tasks for Purdue, but Byrd says that his team has to fall back on its previous success when the going gets tough.

"The key when you have this early season success is understanding that there's gonna be a tough week here or there. Golf is hard. But remembering the fact that what we've done the last two weeks during those hard weeks should build our confidence throughout the season," Byrd said.

Coming into the season, one of the team's top goals was to have a chance at the Big Ten Championships. Now, that goal has shifted. The Boilermakers are looking to take their seventh conference crown in program history and the first time since 2013.

Byrd believed that this team would be better than last season's group, which he admitted may have overachieved a bit during the latter half of the season, but it gave him confidence heading into 2023-2024.

That confidence has turned into wins and now elevated expectations in West Lafayette.

"The conversation for the rest of the season will be about winning a Big Ten Championship," Byrd said.

Along with secure a Big Ten title, Byrd wants to send seniors Kan Bunnabodee and Ashley Kozlowski out on a high note for what they've done for Purdue and him as a coach.

"I would love to send [Kan] and Ashley out with a ring because of what they've done for me as a coach since I've been here, but for this university. You can't get two people that deserve a ring more than those two," Byrd said.

The Boilermakers will have the opportunity to do just that and potentially makes some noise in the NCAA's if the group continues to have a breakthrough campaign in West Lafayette.

Year one was "rough" according to Purdue's head coach, but the trajectory of the program is ahead of schedule under Zack Byrd.