Women's Golf
- Title:
- Volunteer Assistant Coach
Diaz is Wake Forest's most successful member of the LPGA Tour. The two-time LPGA champion has recorded a total of 57 top-10 finishes in 17 years and has made over $5.2 million in career earnings.
Diaz was a four-year letterwinner for the Demon Deacons from 1994-97. She won three collegiate events, including the 1995 ACC Championship. As a senior in 1996-97, Diaz finished outside of the top-7 just once in 10 events and that was a 20th place finish at the NCAA Championships. She was a two-time first team All-American and the 1996-97 Marge Crisp Award winner as Wake Forest's Top Female Athlete. Diaz finished with a 75.9 career scoring average as a Demon Deacon which is seventh-best all time.
After graduation in 1997, Diaz joined what is now called the Symetra Tour and won three times during the 1997 and 1998 seasons. She also played on the Women Professional Golfers' European Tour and was named the 1998 Rookie of the Year. In the winter of 1998, Diaz successfully made her way through LPGA Q-School and never looked back.
As a rookie on the LPGA Tour in 1999, Diaz finished tied for sixth at the Michelob Light Classic and then recorded a third place finish the following year at the Giant Eagle LPGA Classic. In 2001, Diaz finished runner-up at the Welch's/Circle K Championship, recorded the first hole-in-one of her LPGA career during the third round of the Cup Noodles Hawaiian Ladies Open and crossed the $1 million mark in career earnings.
Diaz enjoyed her best season on tour during the summer of 2002. She won both the Welch's/Circle K Championship and the LPGA Corning Classic and recorded a total of 10 top-10 finishes. She was also a member of the victorious U.S. Solheim Cup Team, where she posted a 3-1 record.
Diaz was also a member of the 2003, 2005 and 2007 U.S. Solheim Cup Teams. In 2005, she became the second player in history to compete for the U.S. Solheim Cup Team while pregnant and scored one point for the victorious U.S. Team when she defeated Iben Tinning, who was also pregnant at the time, 6&5 in the Sunday singles matches. In 2007, she posted a 1-1-1 record in helping the Americans to victory.
In 2008, Diaz posted six top-10 finishes, including a runner-up finish at the SBS Open at Turtle Bay. At the 2008, Women's British Open, she recorded three eagles in the second round becoming just the fourth player in LPGA history to record three eagles in the same round.
In the summer of 2014, Diaz became the second LPGA player to record a pair of hole-in-ones in the same event at the LPGA's Kia Classic. She then became the only player to follow the holes-in-ones with an eagle on the very next hole. In July, she opened the Marathon Classic with a career-low 62 (-9).
Diaz (formally Laura Philo) married Kevin Diaz in the fall of 2000. Kevin worked for the Ron Philo School of Golf from 1999-2006 before joining Laura on Tour as her full-time caddie. Kevin is now the assistant women's golf coach at Wake Forest. Laura and Kevin have two children, Robert Cooper who was born in 2006 and Lily who was born in 2010.
