Chip Shots

Hey there Illini fans,

I've been living in Scottsdale, Arizona, since graduation and turned pro at the beginning of February. Since then I've been playing Cactus Tour events and have been doing pretty well in those. So, I decided a couple weeks ago to sign up for the KIA Classic LPGA Monday qualifier for March 23rd. I was very excited leading into this week to give my best effort Monday so I could have first taste of living my dream of playing on the LPGA. I had a two hour lesson a few days in advance to clean up my swing and proceeded to work on that over the weekend. I also worked hard on my short game, doing some games and drills on the practice green so that I would have confidence with those areas especially.

Sunday morning I left for Carlsbad, California, with my friend/caddy. We practiced for 2.5 hours before doing a practice round to get a feel for the course, check out the pin locations for Monday, and see how far I was hitting the ball.

Overall, I had a great attitude towards how I would play Monday morning. Unfortunately though, unanticipated nerves kicked in Monday at the beginning of the round and I made a couple mental errors from the start. I was 2 over through nine holes, so I told myself to just be patient for birdies since none had dropped thus far. However, none did drop the rest of the day and I ended with 3 bogies on my last three holes because I tried too hard to make birdies when I knew I needed them to qualify.

In the end, I shot 77 and two people shooting 70 qualified since it was a very windy day. I learned from this event that I need to work on three things, my wedge accuracy, how to flight the ball better in wind and, most importantly, to have more faith/trust in my own game. Going forward I know I will only be better prepared and more comfortable the day of since this was just my first LPGA qualifier.

Samantha Postillion