Rohanna opens final tournament of the season
Rachel Rohanna has crisscrossed the United States for the past 10 months with stops in Arizona, California, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, New York, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, South Dakota, Kansas and Arkansas.
All that travel and all those tournaments essentially boil down the season-ending Symetra Tour Championship, beginning today at the LPGA International, Jones course, in Daytona Beach, Fla., as Rohanna looks to complete the season by earning her LPGA card.
Although she missed the cut last week, Rohanna remained in 10th place on the Symetra Tour money list with earnings of $52,314. Rohanna won her first professional event this year and has six top-10 finishes.
Haruka Morita-WanyaoLu is in 11th place with $51,594 and Brianna Do is 12th with earnings of $51,037. Augusta James sits in ninth place with $53,077.
Those golfers in the top 10 at the end of the weekend earn full-time status on the 2016 LPGA Tour.
The four-day tournament has a purse of $150,000.
Rohanna opens the tournament today at 12:43 p.m. with James and Cassie Grice, who sits eighth on the money list.
“It’s nice to be with a good pairing,” Rohanna said of her opening-round playing partners. “It’s good playing with girls who have a good rhythm going.”
Rohanna believes she feeds off the good rhythm of the playing group, but sometimes the opposite occurs.
“The last tournament, all three of us missed the cut. It was pretty frustrating,” said Rohanna.
The field is somewhat weakened with some of those sitting in the middle of the pack, around 25th on the money list, opting out of the tour championship to get practice rounds in before next week’s LPGA Q School.
“The middle of the pack took the week off. It’s unfortunate they would do that,” Rohanna said. “It’s around 20 girls. Now, in the last tournament, there are girls who haven’t played much all year.”
Rohanna said back in the summer months the tour championship would end up the key weekend.
“I felt more than likely it would come down to the last tournament. “
Rohanna came out of the gate strong in last year’s tournament, going 67-67 in the first two rounds to sit at 10-under going into the weekend. She stumbled in the final two rounds, shooting 73-74 and dropping three strokes to finish 7-under. Rohanna tied for seventh and won $3,524.
“The course plays a little longer for most girls. The fairways, for the most part, are wide open,” said Rohanna. “I like the speed of the greens. They roll pretty true.
“You have to score on this course. My goal is 2-under each day. Shooting 2- or 3-under each day would be ideal.”
Preparing and playing in a tournament such as the Symetra Tour Championship is why Rohanna traversed the country this year.
“I’m happy to be where I am. If you told me at the beginning of the season I’d be sitting in 10th place (coming into the final tournament), I’d be ecstatic,” said Rohanna. “It’s staying patient. I have to keep trying to smile.”
Being patient is what Rohanna has matured into this season.
“Forty percent of the time, I didn’t do what I wanted to do. Given the position I’m in, doing what I want to do 60 percent of the time shows me I can do it,” explained Rohanna. “It’s such a fine line sometimes. It’s difficult to do in the moment. I just have to let it go and play one shot at a time.”
Rohanna’s father was on her bag when she won the Guardian Retirement Championship at Sara Bay and Tom Rohanna will be on her bag in what she hopes to be the final tournament of the season.