The post This LPGA player is also an aspiring hip-hop artist appeared first on Golf.

The post This LPGA player is also an aspiring hip-hop artist appeared first on Golf.

Gigi Stoll (@gigistoll_) is an American professional golfer from Oregon, a 2018 NCAA National Champion with the University of Arizona, an Epson Tour winner, and … a hip hop artist? Yup. A hip hop artist. I also must mention she’s notorious for her Malbon fits on the LPGA Tour. And she’s just released some new music (which you can listen to on most major streaming services), so I reached to her about the new song and what might be next for this clashing world of golf and hip hop.

Q: What made you want to pursue music?

GiGi: I grew up playing different instruments and always enjoyed discovering new music. I have always loved the connection that music creates for people and it’s a way to express different emotions. I found music again in college, at a time in my life when I needed a spark. I started writing lyrics and found a lot of joy in making music for myself and my friends. It started a newfound love for me and my music ambitions.

Q: What’s the inspiration for your new song “Common Ground”

GiGi: I think golf is at an amazing time where more people are watching and playing the sport. The song Common Ground by Golf God is an emphasis on creating a soundtrack for the course. Everyone should feel a sense of belonging at the golf course and in life and song provides that anthem.

Q: Was there any specific moment that sparked the idea for this song?

GiGi: I’ve been thinking of making a song with a theme like this for most of this year. With the golf community growing, it felt so fitting to make a song for golfers of all walks of life. The green is the Common Ground.

Q: What’s the future look like for ‘Golf God’ as an artist?

GiGi: I love that this song is an introduction to who I am as an artist and a person. Golf God will be dropping more music in 2026. Get ready because this is just the beginning.

Gear

You can keep up with Gigi on Instagram @gigistoll_ or follow Golf God for new music on most major streaming services.

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The post Master the takeaway with this tour-trusted two-ball drill appeared first on Golf.

The post Master the takeaway with this tour-trusted two-ball drill appeared first on Golf.

A great golf swing starts long before impact. In fact, your takeaway — the first move you make in your swing — sets the foundation for everything that follows. Nail this initial motion, and you’re more likely to keep the club on plane, maintain a stable clubface and rotate your body in the correct sequence, which later translates to power and speed.

Christine Wang, currently fifth on the Epson Tour in Greens in Regulation percentage, knows this better than most. In a recent conversation about her iron play, Wang credited much of her success on approach shots to the time she’s spent perfecting her takeaway.

Wang explained that, early on, she had a tendency to hinge too quickly during her takeaway. This caused her swing to flatten and move off plane, making it difficult to maintain proper tempo, sequencing and get her clubface square at impact. 

“It’s just so much harder to time your face to square when you are not starting off straight [on plane] already,” she said.

To correct this mistake and get her swing back on plane, Wang turned to a simple but highly effective drill that helped her fine-tune this crucial part of her swing.

Two-ball takeaway drill

You’ve probably seen the two-ball takeaway drill that Wang relies on to keep her swing on track. It’s simple and only requires a club and two golf balls:

Step 1: Create a “gate.” Place one ball in your normal hitting position and the second a few inches behind it, leaving enough space for your club to move freely between them.

Step 2: Swing. Take your normal stance and setup, then slowly take the club back — halfway or even to the top of your backswing. Your clubhead should push the second ball along the path of your swing.

This gives immediate feedback on your takeaway. If the ball rolls straight back — or along a slight arc — you’re on the correct path. 

“It’s probably not going to go straight back, because your body is moving on an arc,” Wang says, “but as straight as it can.” 

If the second ball rolls too far inside (toward your body), it usually means you’re hinging too early or taking the club too far inside. If it barely moves, your takeaway may be too far outside (away from your body).

As you practice, you should start to notice your takeaway improving. One key thing to remember: it’s really just about the first two feet behind the second ball. There’s no need to accelerate through the ball or push it far away from your body — focus on the path, not the distance.

Wang says this drill remains a staple in her practice sessions to this day. While she might not use it as often as she once did, she says it’s a great tool whenever her swing feels off.

Beyond helping identify problems in the takeaway, the drill also builds confidence and reassures you that your swing is on the right path before you even make contact with the ball.

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The post What you can learn about gear from Epson Tour players | Fully Equipped appeared first on Golf.

The post What you can learn about gear from Epson Tour players | Fully Equipped appeared first on Golf.

It’s common knowledge at this point that if an average golfer wants to improve their game, they shouldn’t be modeling their bag after a PGA Tour pro, but rather an LPGA or PGA Tour Champions player.

PGA Tour pros have insane swing speeds and are able to play shots that courses just weren’t designed for. They have very different golf clubs to meet their needs.

On the flip side, LPGA and older pros have much slower swing speeds and play courses more as the architects intended. That results in a very different golf bag setup and it’s one the average golfer can learn a lot from.

Drivers

On this week’s episode of GOLF’s Fully Equipped, co-host Jake Morrow, speaking from this week’s Epson Tour Championship, explained how all of the the players there leave their ego at the door when it comes to golf clubs.

Morrow explained that in filming multiple “What’s in the Bag” videos that day, he saw multiple players who had no irons longer than an 8-iron.

“I think replacing long irons with hybrids until the point that you’re comfortable is an extremely underrated equipment story, right?” Morrow said. “Like, if it’s a 7-hybrid, then it’s a 7-hybrid and who cares?

“If you hit your number and the ball stops where you want it to, then that’s great. And nobody should tell you that that’s wrong. Nobody should judge you for that.”

On the PGA Tour, players have largely rendered traditional 2- and 3-irons extinct, with the 4-iron coming next. Morrow was seeing lots of 7-hybrids this week.

The fact of the matter is that hybrids and high-lofted fairway woods are significantly easier to hit than the equivelent irons, and if some of the most precise and demanding ballstrikers on the planet are opting for them, then there’s no reason for an average golfer to play a set consisting of driver, 3-wood, 5-wood and 4i-PW.

For more from Morrow, co-host Johnny Wunder and this week’s guest, GOLF’s Maddi MacClurg, listen to the full episode of GOLF’s Fully Equipped here or watch it below.

Want to overhaul your bag in 2025? Find a club-fitting location near you at True Spec Golf.

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The post This pro tour is allowing electric caddies thanks to a new partnership appeared first on Golf.

The post This pro tour is allowing electric caddies thanks to a new partnership appeared first on Golf.

If you head out to an Epson Tour event this year, you may see something you wouldn’t find on any other major professional tour.

Beginning this week with the season’s first event at the Central Florida Championship, Epson Tour players will now be able to use electric, remote-controlled carts, or electric caddies, in competition.

The rules change was born out of a partnership between the Epson Tour and MGI, an Australian maker of electric caddies and power trolleys that entered the U.S. market eight years ago.

Epson Tour Chief Business and Operations Officer Jody Brothers said the partnership was born after the tour, the only direct feeder to the LPGA Tour, reached out to MGI, looking to level the playing field for all of their members.

“When I made a connection with somebody at MGI, that got me thinking about this whole idea of if we allowed you know the motorized caddies, would that level the playing field for somebody that maybe couldn’t afford to take a caddie week in and week out on the Epson Tour?” Brothers told GOLF.com this week. “And that’s that’s really how the whole thing got started.”

Brothers said about one-third of players on the Epson Tour use a professional caddie who travels with their player week-to-week and usually has prior experience on the LPGA Tour or another global professional tour. Then there’s a third of players who either use local caddies or a family member who doesn’t do much more than carry the bag and only gives advice a few times a round, if at all.

News

The final third are players who carry their own bag or use a push cart.

Brothers says he expects many of the players who fall into the latter two categories to take advantage of the Tour’s new partnership with MGI, which allows players to purchase their own MGI electric caddie at exclusive pricing.

Those who already use a professional caddie will likely continue using one, but the rule change and access to the discounted electric caddies could be a boon to those who couldn’t afford a pro caddie.

“What I felt like I saw just as an observer of the game was that those that could afford a caddie really probably had an advantage over those who potentially couldn’t afford a caddie,” Brothers said. “Our athletes come from a lot of different countries, a lot of different social backgrounds and I really just wanted to have the most level playing field possible.”

While caddie rates vary on the Epson Tour, Brothers estimated that on average, a player purchasing an MGI electric caddie on the discount would be roughly equivalent to the average caddie rate for a week. Obviously, the MGI cart can last for multiple weeks and likely years.

As a bonus, MGI was a logical partner for the Epson Tour over other manufacturers as it’s headed by two female CEOs, sisters Carrie Edwards-Britt and Miranda Turner, who joined their father’s business in 2005.

“We are more than excited to partner with the Epson Tour as it continues to redefine the future of women’s golf in the U.S. The Epson Tour is truly leading the charge, demonstrating innovation, talent, and the vital role it plays in developing the next generation of LPGA stars,” said Turner, in a press release. “At MGI, we are incredibly proud to support this exciting shift in the game, standing behind these driven athletes as they compete — state by state, course by course — on their journey to the top.”

Using an electric caddie in competition probably defies a lot of conventional norms to many people, and this isn’t something Brothers sees being entertained by the LPGA Tour with their larger purses and TV coverage.

Features

But it makes logical sense for the Epson Tour given it is a developmental tour.

“I understand that it’s gonna look a little different,” he said. “In a perfect world every one of our athletes would take a professional caddie and they would make enough money that they could afford it. They would be able to learn to use a caddie the right way and have somebody helping them read greens and carry their clubs and keep them clean and do all the things that a great caddie does for our athletes — that would be the perfect scenario — in reality, we just haven’t grown purses enough to really be able to support that.

“There will be some that will not like this at all, and there will be many who applaud us for maybe bucking the tradition of a golf a little bit and being innovative and trying to balance the playing field for those that can’t afford a caddy.”

For those who might be surprised to see professionals using electric carts, Brothers hopes it might inspire them to try one for themselves.

“It encourages people to walk and if there are fans that come out to watch an Epson Tour and they see that,” he said. “The only difference between them riding a golf cart with four wheels versus walking alongside a motorized caddie is the fact that they thought it was weird.”

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The post Gabi Ruffels forgot to sign up for Q-School. Now she’s rebounding in a major way appeared first on Golf.

The post Gabi Ruffels forgot to sign up for Q-School. Now she’s rebounding in a major way appeared first on Golf.

Gabriela Ruffels will always remember Nov. 6, 2022.

The former U.S. Women’s Amateur champion and USC standout was on the road, driving from Orlando to Mobile, Ala., for an advanced scouting trip to the site of the first week of the LPGA Q-Series. This was the first step to Ruffels getting her LPGA Tour card after coming just $5,390 short of earning it on the Epson Tour in 2022.

It was a seven-hour drive to Magnolia Grove Golf Course, and she was nearly there when she slowed her car down to stop at a red light. Then it hit her.

Am I even signed up?

“I was like, wait. Q-series is coming up in three weeks. I haven’t really registered,” Ruffels, age 23, told GOLF.com in an interview last month. “I haven’t really gone into the app. Is there anything that I need to do for that? What’s the process? I haven’t really done it and I hope that I’m OK.”

Ruffels pulled into a parking lot of the first gas station she saw and took out her phone. She checked the LPGA registration portal and it was confirmed: she was not entered. Worse, the deadline had passed. Her final opportunity to earn LPGA Tour status for 2023 was shot.

Yet in the days, weeks and months that followed, Ruffels learned more about herself than she might ever have on the LPGA Tour.

And there’s little doubt that’s where she’s headed in 2024.

But first, it wouldn’t be doing Ruffels’ story justice to skip over how we got here. If you had asked her 10 years ago what she’d be doing the first week of July 2023, she probably would have hoped to be at Wimbledon — not prepping for the U.S. Women’s Open of golf at Pebble Beach, where she’ll make her fourth career start in the national championship when she tees off on the 10th hole at 10 a.m. ET on Thursday.

Gabi’s father, Ray, is a former Australian professional tennis player and coach. He was ranked as high as No. 27 in the world in singles but was more well known for his doubles career, where he won 16 titles and reached the finals of both the 1978 Wimbledon and U.S. Open while partnering with Billie Jean King.

Gabi’s mother, AnnaMaria, had four career WTA doubles titles and won two national championships while at USC. She was the 1981 Broderick Award winner as the nation’s top female tennis player.

So naturally, Gabi and her older brother Ryan started off as tennis players. Good ones. Really good. And the sibling rivalry was fierce.

“Tennis didn’t create a very great environment for a friendship between Gabi and I,” Ryan, two years older, said with a smirk. “We were very competitive as tennis players. Even now, whenever we play. She was probably a better tennis player than I was, but because I’m an older brother, I was able to get in her head quite a lot and I was able to win most of the time.”

Both kids played golf, too, but not seriously, tagging along with their parents, who picked up the game after their playing careers ended.

Ryan remembers one day when he lost a tennis tournament in the morning and entered his first golf tournament that afternoon. He placed third. Slowly but surely, Ryan started playing more golf than tennis and quickly became a can’t-miss junior, who ended up turning pro just before his 18th birthday (he played on the Korn Ferry Tour last season).

But Gabi did it differently. Not long after Ray took a job with Tennis Australia and relocated the family there, Gabi rose to the third-ranked player in her age group in Australia. She won the country’s national championship for girls 12 and under. She showed little interest in trading in rackets for 7-irons. In fact, according to her mom, she rarely wanted to play golf or even watch Ryan compete.

“I had to lure her by buying her an ice cream or something like that,” AnnaMaria said. “Or riding in the golf cart.”

When she was 13, Gabi was invited to join Australia’s National Tennis Academy, and the coaches recommended she be homeschooled to focus on tennis. Before the year was over, Gabi was burnt out. A sports psychologist advised her to take a break from the sport. On her first tennis-free day, she had an idea.

“She’s like, ‘Mom, do you want to go hit some golf balls?'” AnnaMaria recalls. “And I said, ‘Sure, let’s go hit some golf balls.'”

Gabi was hooked. A natural, she took formal lessons and entered tournaments. She also fell in love with the atmosphere.

“She’s like, ‘This must be a really piddly tournament because everybody’s chatting with each other,'” AnnaMaria said of her first event. “I said, ‘No, that’s what happens in golf.’ ‘You’re kidding?” Gabi said. ‘Oh my God, I think I’m going to like this.'”

Tennis Australia kept asking when she would come back. It only took a month, but Gabi was a golfer now.

Ruffels switched from tennis to golf at age 14 and before her 15th birthday, she had already broken 80 and was playing for national championships. Soon she was touring schools like Stanford, Duke, South Carolina, Florida, Pepperdine and, most importantly, the University of Southern California.

AnnaMaria didn’t want to push her daughter toward her alma mater, but when Trojans coach Andrea Gaston offered a full-ride scholarship, Gabi had her mind made up. Although Gaston ended up leaving USC after Gabi’s first semester on campus, her intuition to recruit a talented-but-inexperienced player like Ruffels paid off. By her sophomore season in 2018-19, she was one of the best players in the country with eight top-16s and her first collegiate title.

“That’s kind of an ode to her athletic background,” said Justin Silverstein, who took over for Gaston. “She was really raw. She really didn’t know much about golf. And that was kind of interesting.

“You could tell by being around her she’d been trained by high-level professional athletes,” he continued. “She would almost look like at times she was kind of going through the rolodex in her brain of how she was supposed to react to things based on what she’d been taught by her mom, dad and brother. I don’t know if I’ll ever have that again.”

Never was there a better example of that from Ruffels than in the 2019 NCAA Championships.

The Trojans made it to match play for the second straight year and in the quarterfinals, they drew Arizona. Ruffels faced Haley Moore, one of the nation’s best players, in the second-to-last match. Ruffels let a 2-up lead slip away on the second nine and Moore, who clinched the national championship for the Wildcats the year before, made a 15-foot putt on the final hole to send Ruffels and USC home.

“She was really affected by the heat of that moment,” Silverstein remembered. “It was something she hadn’t been in before. I have never asked her about it. I don’t know what it was. But after that Haley Moore match, something changed. … That triggered something in her brain about either how to handle uncomfortable times on the golf course or handle a little bit of failure and move on from it. It quite honestly put her on a different level.”

Ruffels dominated the amateur ranks that summer, winning the prestigious North-South Amateur at Pinehurst before lifting the Robert Cox trophy at Mississippi’s Old Waverly. In August, she won the U.S. Amateur, birdieing three of the final four holes to flip her championship match and beat Stanford’s Albane Valenzuela 1 up.

A year later, the world was very different. The Covid-19 pandemic cut Ruffels’ junior season short before the Trojans could get another chance at the national title. She still had every intention of returning to USC, even after coming oh-so-close to a second straight Women’s Am title, before losing to Rose Zhang in 38 holes in the final.

But the NCAA fall season was canceled and the spring was looking uncertain at best, especially for a California school like USC, where pandemic restrictions were some of the strictest in the nation.

“I just didn’t know what was happening,” Ruffels said. “And school for us was all online. So I knew that if I turned pro, I was also able to finish out my degree online from wherever I was. And also I had like three or four pro events lined up, and I thought I might as well play them as a pro rather than as an amateur.”

Ruffels made her professional debut at the Gainbridge LPGA in February 2021 and finished T36.

Through sponsors’ exemptions and a couple of Monday Qualifiers, she made eight LPGA Tour starts in 2021, but earning a Tour card her first year with so few starts proved to be too difficult.

“I mean, right decision or wrong decision, I don’t know,” she said. “But it’s what I did. And you know, I really feel like I learned a lot in that year.”

She entered Q-Series in 2021, and, for those unfamiliar, LPGA Q-Series is a grind. It’s eight rounds over the course of two weeks, on two different golf courses. Forty-five LPGA Tour cards are at stake. But despite being exempt into the second stage, she failed to move on to the final stage.

“I remember telling my mom who was there with me as my caddie,” Ruffels said, “‘I’ve played in a U.S. Am — a final U.S. Am. I’ve played in a couple of majors, but nothing can quite compare to the pressure at Q-School.'”

It was a big lesson for her, she said, but the miss meant she’d play out most of 2022 on the Epson Tour (the LPGA equivalent of the Korn Ferry Tour), which awards LPGA status to its top-10 finishers in its season-long points race.

Ruffels welcomed the opportunity for another year to learn more and grow as a player. After all, she had only been playing for seven years to that point. She racked up nine top-12s in what was ultimately a solid campaign but fell just a few thousand dollars short, finishing 15th on the money list.

She was headed back to Q-Series, but this time, she had more confidence, learned the lessons she needed and felt her game was trending in the right direction.

She just had to sign up.

As soon as Gabi checked her phone outside the gas station in Mobile, Ala., she called her mom.

“My heart just sank,” AnnaMaria remembers.

Gabi, alone, in a full panic, quickly called anyone that may have been able to help her, but there was nothing that could be done. The registration deadline had passed three weeks before. She never made it to the course.

“It was a long seven-and-a-half-hour drive back to Orlando, that’s for sure,” Gabi said.

There are a number of reasons both Gabi and her mother attribute to the mishap, but they don’t call them excuses. The registration deadline was a few days after the conclusion of the Epson Tour Championship, and Gabi said she was still processing just missing out on her card.

The LPGA Tour had also switched the mechanism it used to give players notifications about upcoming registration deadlines. While she was having problems with her email accounts at that time, she was still getting general emails from the LPGA, so she thought she was signed up for everything. She owns the mistake.

“I thought I was fine,” she said. “I was wrong.”

“There was no way Ray and I could comfort her,” AnnaMaria said. “Other than—”

She sighed and paused for a moment.

“Maybe this was meant for a reason.”

Gabi could have dwelled on the mistake, but less than a week later, it seemed like she had moved on. She posted a swing video on her Instagram. Ryan replied with a comment that showed they were already laughing about it.

“Only thing stopping that swing from making the LPGA Tour is the registration deadline,” he wrote, accompanied by a shifty eyes emoji. (Before you ask, yes, she “liked” the comment, too.)

“I think a lot of people absolutely grilled her for missing that deadline,” said Ryan, who is currently on the European Challenge Tour. “But Gabi couldn’t have handled it any better. … She was laughing about it. She kind of didn’t take herself too seriously. Kind of acknowledged that that was a bit stupid and didn’t blame it on anyone else.”

With her schedule suddenly freed up for the first two weeks of December, Gabi took the opportunity to return to Australia and play the Australian Women’s Open for the first time in her career.

She finished 19th at Victoria Golf Club but her year wasn’t over yet. Gabi decided to play in a different Q-School, Ladies European Tour Q-School, where she finished 8th to earn LET status for 2023. That’s where she made her first three starts of the season.

Then she hit the ground running on the Epson Tour.

In her second Epson event of the season at the Carlisle Arizona Women’s Golf Classic, Gabi was tied for the lead through 36 holes and took a two-shot lead into the final round. She said she was restless the night before, her first sleeping on a lead as a pro. She played off the adrenaline on the front nine and opened up a five-shot lead. She knows because she glanced up at the leaderboard.

“I just remember thinking, no matter what happens, this is such a great learning experience,” Gabi said. “I feel like I go back to that, but I hadn’t really been in that position before and I just want to — you know, if I win, great. If I don’t, then I’ll learn something for next time.”

She cruised to a bogey-free final round and won by two for her first professional title. Her mother had a front-row seat, caddying for her as she has for most of her Epson Tour events.

“She just played such pure golf,” AnnaMaria said of the final round. “I think just having that experience of being in contention and playing to win on Sunday on the back nine, all that is such a great experience. But she was able to deal with, you know, the nerves and everything else. I just think, Wow, that’s just fantastic. It doesn’t matter what level you’re winning at, it really doesn’t. That winning just breeds confidence, whether it’s college or amateur or whatever.”

Seven weeks later she did it again.

At the Garden City Charity Classic at Buffalo Dunes, Gabi opened with 62-64, breaking the Epson Tour 36-hole scoring record that had stood for 21 years.

She managed just a one-under 71 on the final day, but it was still enough to forever leave her mark on the Tour, tying the 54-hole scoring record of 197. It was a four-shot win that she said was actually harder to finish off than the first.

“Just putting yourself in contention and being able to close out a golf tournament is something that no amount of practice can teach you,” Gabi said. “My first win, it was a little bit of a hurdle to try and pull it off. I was so nervous, I just wanted to get it done and on the back nine on Sunday, just all the emotions were kind of running through me and I hadn’t really experienced that before.”

The pair of wins vaulted Ruffels to a wide lead in the Epson Tour season money list. Entering the U.S. Women’s Open this week, she has about a $14,000 lead on second place, which should likely be enough to earn her LPGA Tour membership for next season.

Pretty much everyone close to Ruffels is in agreement that she has been better off having the extra year on the Epson Tour.

That includes her.

“It was almost a blessing in disguise,” she said. “Maybe if I went through Q-School and got my LPGA Tour card, I might not have been ready. And I think a big thing in golf as well, it was learning how to win and I didn’t kill it on the Epson Tour last year in 2022. I came in 15th and I didn’t win at all. I was in contention only, maybe, like twice throughout the year. I feel like there’s still a lot to improve on and use this year as kind of a way to try and improve and really try and show myself that I can compete with the best out here and hopefully bring that to the next stage.”

And just because she isn’t an LPGA member yet doesn’t mean she’s not getting the chance to play in some of the “big” tour’s events.

After her two Epson Tour wins, Ruffels earned a sponsor’s exemption into KPMG Women’s PGA Championship two weeks ago, her eighth start in an LPGA major.

She made the cut and a third-round 68 pulled her into the top 15 heading into Sunday. She finished T24 against the best the women’s game has to offer. That competition took notice.

“It’s hard to look at the positives when you do miss Q-School and you miss signing up — and then you come out and play really well,” said World No. 2 Nelly Korda. “Props to her for being mentally tough … and coming out and dominating the next year.”

While Ruffels is likely to be one of Korda’s peers on the LPGA next season, she’s not looking ahead, despite teeing it up in the same events as her that week at Balustrol and this week at the U.S. Women’s Open at Pebble Beach. Ruffels punched her ticket when she earned medalist honors at a qualifier in Vancouver, British Columbia. In her three other U.S. Open appearances she’s missed the cut twice and tied for 13th in 2020.

She’s treating the majors the same way she would Epson Tour events. As of now, she has no offers to play any more events on the LPGA Tour this season, but she’s OK with that.

“I’m excited about it,” she said. “I’m excited to keep learning out here and keep playing with these girls and keep testing myself each week just like I have been doing.”

While there’s a ton Ruffels has learned over the past eight months, perhaps she’s most proud of becoming a more organized person — she doesn’t intend on ever making the same mistake twice. Whether it be regularly checking the entry portals and calendaring registration deadlines, she’s doing it. So far it’s working.

“That was definitely a slap in the face to tell myself, OK, you have to be more mature and you have to just be better at organizing yourself with all aspects of my life and I feel I’ve changed that,” she said. “That starts with little habits every day.”

Plus, if there’s anything we’ve learned about Gabi Ruffels, it’s that she’s a quick learner.

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The post Making it to the LPGA Tour isn’t easy. This pro has to do it twice appeared first on Golf.

The post Making it to the LPGA Tour isn’t easy. This pro has to do it twice appeared first on Golf.

So often we hear stories of the grind to make the PGA Tour from the Korn Ferry Tour, but this week we’re looking at Jillian Hollis’ journey from the Epson Tour to the LPGA Tour. Hollis won twice and finished fifth on the 2019 Epson Tour money list to earn her LPGA Tour card but then dealt with the fallout of the pandemic and injuries.

She lost her card after the adjusted season ended in 2021. She played both tours with dual status in 2022 but is again full-time on the Epson Tour this year as she works her way back to the LPGA.

(Ed. note: This Q and A has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.)

Jack Hirsh: I know it’s only been one event, but how would you say your start to 2023 is going so far?

Jillian Hollis: It’s good. We had a pretty long offseason, so 2022 and 2023 sort of melt together and that like November, December, January, February, March area. I had a pretty productive offseason and had a lot of rest as well, which is really great. I had a good tournament last week. I played some steady golf and some kind of tough conditions and it’s really great to see my hard work paying off pretty early. I thought it was nice to have the week off to fine-tune some things.

Hirsh: You had almost as good of a start as you could hope for with a second-place finish last week. Does that change anything moving forward as you try to get your card back?

Instruction

Hollis: It doesn’t change anything. My goal is to just get a little bit better every day and every week. I think when you get too results based, you get too much thinking of, okay, I need to finish here, I need to be here. I love playing competitive golf. I love winning. I love, you know, I love going out there and meeting people that’s what I love about this game is like you put all this work in on your own and then you get to go and put it to the test. And I love having that little bit of nervousness or pressure and it’s where the historic golf shots come from. That’s the most exciting thing about getting to play every week or every other week for a living. It’s the best job ever.

Hirsh: This is your second stint on the Epson Tour, what was that first season like?

Hollis: It was different from college golf because it’s the same grind, but different. In college, you play a tournament and have two weeks off or three weeks off. You have all your college stuff in between. When I started on the Epson Tour in 2019, I was still finishing my degree at Georgia. It was a good balance of golf and life. It doesn’t even feel like work. The grind has always been fun for me.

Hirsh: How motivating is it coming from a school like Georgia that has so much success in both the men’s and women’s pro games?

Hollis: I’ve never played with Harris English, but he’s in St. Simons Island, Ga., where I live. A lot of the guys who graduate then move down here. I played two years with Greyson Sigg on the golf team. I play with Sepp Straka. They’re all really good players who have had success on the PGA Tour. Harris is one of the nicest people I have ever met, Hudson Swafford as well. I’ve gotten to ask them questions and talk to them and it’s a really cool environment. It’s really nice when you see PGA Tour golfers rooting for you. Any little tidbits I can get from people who have had that experience of winning at the highest level is definitely great to have.

Hirsh: You earned LPGA status after one year on the Epson Tour and then lost it in 2021 after a pretty crazy couple of years. Did you treat that as a setback?

Hollis: We took five months off of golf [because of the pandemic] in the middle of the busiest stretch. I got in contention in a tournament with Inbee Park before that. And she’s a legend. It was so fun watching her play. Then we get this email about the coronavirus but that it was only in China. Our next tournament in China got canceled. Then I go back to the States and I’m getting ready for the next tournament and they’re like, ‘Okay it’s here now. We’re going to take a month off.’ Then one month turned into two months, then three. We had no idea what was going on. But I mean, to have that as my rookie year? It was maybe a little bit of a letdown. I then had an injury that was bothering me at the beginning of 2021 and I took seven weeks off. I missed applying for a medical by one tournament. You need to miss so many in a row.

Hirsh: What lessons did you learn?

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Hollis: Don’t kill your body just to try to make cuts because it’s your first year. It stunk at the time, but now I’m so grateful for everything that happened at the time. It’s made me mentally tougher in that sense.

Hirsh: What did you wish you had known?

Hollis: That there would be a global pandemic [laughs]. You mean actually on the tour? I’ve hired a trainer. I never really wanted to take care of my body in school. But when you play 20 to 25 weeks out of the year, you need to work out while playing too.

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