Riordan sets sites on Duramed Futures Tour

Comments (...)

E-mail this story

Print this story

Comments

Share

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.”

Riordan’s next leg on her road in launching a professional career will be competing in the Duramed Futures Tour qualifier on Nov. 2 in central Florida. The Futures Tour was her original plan all along, but she elected to try qualifying in the two LPGA sectionals, a more direct route to the LPGA tour.

“I’m going to be ready for the futures. I know this isn’t the end of my adventure, only the beginning,” she said.

She will continue to stay at her grandmother’s house in Cocoa Beach and practice daily at a nearby golf course, the Viera East golf club. She is also hopeful to make her way to the Davenport, Winter Haven and Lakeland area to get some practice rounds in at the sites of the Future Tours.

Riordan said the club pro at Viera East is happy to have her work out there. Riordan learned current LPGA rookie Vickie Hurst launched her career there at Viera East and she’s hoping to take the same path.

While her grandmother, Florence Riordan, won’t join her from Chicago until Oct. 24, Riordan is being taken in by her grandmother’s two friends in Cocoa Beach, who she says are “like my adopted grandmas.”

A total of 34 players advanced from Venice, along with the top-30 players and ties from the Palm Springs, Calif. sectional will advance into the LPGA Final Qualifying Tournament, set for Dec. 2-6, at LPGA International in Daytona Beach, Fla.

Rookie professional Stephanie Connelly, of Maryland took medalist honors at Venice with a 3-under-par 285.

Comment on this story at www.bcrnews.com.

Comments