GREENE COUNTY
Kallyn Black is a rising sophomore at Lake Oconee Academy and is a member of the Lady Titans golf team.
Even though she’s been playing at the high school level for only a year, Black has already made a great impact on the program. She recently shot four under par in the GHSA Class A Division II state championship as the low medalist and earned Player of the Year honors for her classification.
Black is currently the No. 2 ranked golfer in the state of Georgia and top 60 in the nation for the class of 2026, and her father, Bobby Black, revealed she only picked up the sport a handful of years ago.
“We’ve always been a golfing family, and we live down on a golf course, so she’s kind of picked it up through that. Her older brother (Rylan) played throughout high school and now plays at Kennesaw State. He’s four years older than her, so that’s about when she picked it up,” Bobby said. “In that time, she’s really fallen in love with the game and practices really hard to get better. She’s been lucky to excel in the sport, and we’re excited to see where it takes her.”
As a freshman, Black joined the Lake Oconee Academy girls' golf team with a ton of playing experience already.
At just 10 years old, Black excelled on the course. In 2019, she competed at a local Drive, Chip and Putt qualifier event that she placed first for her age group.
In 2021, Black got on the course even more and started playing in actual tournaments across the southeast on the Peggy Kirk Bell Girls Golf Tour. She competed in multiple events with a second-place finish, a third-place finish and another top-10 finish. She ended the year with her first-overall win at the Flat Creek Girls Classic.
After that, Black had another top-five finish before winning the RocketTour Players Championship, held at the University of Georgia Golf Course back in February of 2022. She was able to hone in on her skills throughout the rest of the year and finished second in her last three tournaments of the year.
That brings Black to 2023, where she’s already dominated the high school competition and competed in two outside tournaments. She currently gets instruction from Taylor Crosby at The Kingdom, and her father acknowledged the bulk of her events this year are coming up soon.
“Her tournaments for this year are mostly going to start within the next couple weeks with some big events in June and July,” Bobby said. “Her biggest tournaments are in the American Junior Golf Association where you have to qualify to play in these events, so she works really hard to be able to play in those. She was able to place fifth in one of the qualifier events at the end of last year, so she’ll be competing in a tournament featuring the best golfers from Georgia and South Carolina here pretty soon.”
Other than her recent success, Black learned to love the sport by playing with her family. Whether it’s with her older brother or her father, Black is always eager to fine-tune her game to get better.
“We always play a lot and practice a lot, and she’s able to play with her brother a good bit, which really helps her compete,” Bobby said. “She’s always wanting to get better, and like last night, we live behind a course, so she was able to go out in the backyard and work on her game. It works out well, because she just enjoys the game so much.”
Overall, Black is a well-rounded golfer that still has three years left with the Lady Titans.
She will be able to help others that come into the program while she continues to develop her own game and hopefully compete at the next level someday.