Riordan sets sites on Duramed Futures Tour

VENICE, Fla. — Carrie Riordan has been around the game of golf long enough to know there’s going to be some ups and some downs.

The Spring Valley native certainly has plenty of high points in her career from her days as a state qualifier at Hall High School, to conference champion for Eastern Illinois University and as a five-time Illinois Valley Open champion.

In Florida last week, Riordan experienced the downside of golf.

She got off to a great start in the LPGA Sectional qualifier in Venice, Fla., shooting an opening round of 70 Tuesday on the Bobcat Course at the Plantation Golf and Country Club. She tied for the seventh best score of the day.

Riordan’s hopes to advance to the LPGA Final Qualifying Tournament in December began to unravel quickly over the course of the next three days, however, with rounds of 78, 82 and 79.

She finished with a 72-hole total of 309 to place 65th in a field of 69 hopeful golfers.

Riordan, 22, is viewing that experience as a positive one, rather than negative. She now knows what she has to work on to give her a better chance when she competes in the Duramed Futures Tour on Nov. 2 in Florida.

“I learned from that experience. It was a creative experience,” she said Monday morning from Cocoa Beach, Fla. “I need a lot of practice in this Bermuda. It will eat you alive if you don’t know how to play it. It’s a big difference.”

Riordan found the native Florida Bermuda greens to be challenging for a northern golfer like herself unfamiliar with how to play them. She said the Bermuda greens provide a much different break depending if you’re putting with the grain or against it. She’s found the Bermuda to affect her shots in the fairways as well.

“I was frustrated,” she said. “I played it exactly the way I wanted to. It just never broke. I’ve got to get used to it, but it will come. I will be practicing a lot down here and I will get used to it. I’ve got to stop thinking of how it works back home, but how it breaks here.”