By Matthew Dietz
NKyTribune sports reporter
Luke Muller is no stranger to winning state championship trophies in the state of Kentucky this year.
A recent graduate of Highlands High School, Muller was a starting forward on the boys basketball team that won the “Sweet 16” state tournament at Rupp Arena in April. He was the Bluebirds’ second leading scorer with a 16.9 average and led the entire state in 3-point field goals with 122.
This week, Muller won a state championship on his own at the Kentucky Junior Amateur boys golf tournament. He topped the leader board with a two-day total of 9-under-par 135 (66 and 69) at Nevel Meade Golf Course near Louisville.
“Going into it I felt pretty good,” Muller said of winning his first golf tournament. “I played in Florida the week before and shot a couple low scores, so I had some confidence going into it, knowing that I was playing good golf.”
Muller shot 6-under-66 in the first round on Tuesday, taking the lead in a field that featured more than 100 of Kentucky’s top junior golfers.
Heavy rain kept some of those golfers from completing the first round. As a result, they had to finish on Wednesday morning and that pushed back the starting times for the second round.
Muller lost the lead in the second round, but he didn’t lose his composure. He mounted a late comeback and carded birdies on two of the final three holes to come away with a two-stroke victory.
“Going into there, I knew I had to probably put something under par to have a chance to win,” he said of the second round.
Last fall, Muller had an opportunity to compete with many of the same golfers in the amateur field at the Kentucky state high school golf tournament. But he was disqualified after the first round due to a scorekeeping error.
Muller said he was keeping another player’s scorecard. On the 18th hole, that player told Muller that he had a different score than what Muller wrote down.
“I wrote it down and we signed our scorecards and I looked at it later and realized that it wasn’t the right score he told me,” Muller said.
Several months later, Muller got a chance to represent his school in an even bigger state tournament on the basketball court at Rupp Arena. He played such an important role on the Highlands team that won four games in three days to take home the championship trophy that he was named to the state all-tournament team.
“I was actually talking to people at the golf tournament and they were just congratulating me on that and how good of a shooting team we were, and that’s obviously what took us that far,” Muller said. “Playing for the community, all the community support was huge during that time, and that definitely propelled us to keep playing well.”
In a few weeks, Muller will join his former teammate and longtime friend Sam Vinson at Northern Kentucky University. Vinson was recruited to play basketball and Muller accepted a scholarship to play golf for the Norse.
“I was pretty much between there and Morehead State when it came down to it,” Muller said. “I liked NKU. I got a lot more connections around here, just looked toward the future and there’s a lot of golf courses I’m able to play with people I know.”