1. Duramed FUTURES Tour Kicks Off 2010 Season
The Duramed FUTURES Tour will kick off its 2010 season this week in Winter Haven, Florida, followed by the LPGA’s launch of its domestic tournament schedule next week in San Diego. Within two weeks, women’s professional golf in the United States will be in full swing.
This week’s second annual Florida’s Natural Charity Classic will bring together an eclectic mix of returning veterans hoping to take the next big step, new professionals transitioning out of collegiate and amateur golf, and more than a few pros hoping to improve on their performance from the 2009 season.
“Technically, I am an LPGA rookie, but I missed out on a full card for 2010 by less than $1,600,” said WHITNEY WADE of Glasgow, Ky., who finished sixth on the Tour’s 2009 season money list $1,546 behind No. 5 finisher SONG YI CHOI (who has full 2010 LPGA status).
“Having [partial] LPGA status this year is bittersweet,” added Wade. “I’m going to play a full [Duramed] FUTURES Tour schedule this season and I’m looking forward to it. Now I know that I can win because I did it last year. And if I play well, I’ll earn my way onto the [LPGA] Tour with a full card.”
CHRISTINE SONG, a 2009 rookie, finished last season eighth on the Duramed FUTURES Tour’s money list to also earn partial 2010 LPGA Tour status.
“Maybe I will have an advantage this year because most of the courses we are playing are the same,” said Song, 18, of Fullerton, Calif., who had six top-10 finishes in 17 events last season. “I definitely want to improve on what I did last year.”
“I was busy planning a wedding last year, so it was a good distraction,” added DANAH FORD BORDNER of Indianapolis, who finished 13th on the Duramed FUTURES Tour’s 2009 money list and posted a career-best five top-10 season finishes. “I am ready to play.”
Indeed, that was the consensus by players from both the LPGA and the Duramed FUTURES Tour at last week’s Florida Women’s Open. Many of those players will have the chance to get going this week, starting with the first tee times on Friday at 8:15 a.m., at Lake Region Yacht and Country Club.
The 2010 Duramed FUTURES Tour season opener will bring a talented field to Central Florida that includes 2009 winners ANGELA BUZMINSKI of Oshawa, Ontario, ALLISON HANNA of Portland, Ore., SAMANTHA RICHDALE of Kelowna, British Columbia, and DEWI CLAIRE SCHREEFEL of Diepenveen, Netherlands – all 2010 LPGA Tour members.
Other 2009 tournament winners in this week’s field are Wade, ELISA SERRAMIA of Barcelona, Spain, and JENNY SUH of Fairfax, Va.
Playing in her first full season as a professional will be 2009 rookie TIFFANY JOH of San Diego, who was the medalist of the Duramed FUTURES Tour’s Qualifying Tournament last November. Runner-up at that event was Canadian rookie pro DANIELLE MILLS of Pointe-Claire, Quebec, hoping this week to repeat the level of play she brought to Winter Haven last fall for the 90-hole Q-School.
Several promising rookies in the field will include: LEANNE BOWDITCH of Queensland, Australia (sister of Nationwide Tour member Steven Bowditch); NANNETTE HILL of Pelham, N.Y., potentially the most talented former Wake Forest University player since current LPGA veteran LAURA DIAZ; three-time U.S. Junior Solheim Cup Team member JANE RAH of Torrance, Calif., who left Oklahoma State University to turn pro this year; and Florida State University grad CAROLINE WESTRUP of Ahus, Sweden, a Swedish member of the winning 2006 Women’s World Amateur Team Championship.
One current amateur Tour member, JENNIFER SONG, will spend her spring break at the University of Southern California playing alongside the pros in this week’s tournament. Song, of Ann Arbor, Mich., won both the 2009 U.S. Women’s Amateur Championship and the U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links Championship, and was also the 2009 individual runner-up at the NCAA Division I Women’s Golf Championship. She is a sophomore at USC and will play as an amateur at the LPGA’s 2010 Kraft Nabisco Championship next month. Song has announced her intention to turn professional at the end of the spring collegiate season, rejoining the Duramed FUTURES Tour as a pro after the NCAA Championship.
But this week, Song will have to face the player who edged her out of the 2009 national title. Returning will be 2009 NCAA individual champion MARIA HERNANDEZ of Pamplona, Spain, who will be in the Winter Haven field. Playing in her first full professional season, Hernandez has 2010 LPGA and Ladies European Tour status. She was a member of the Duramed FUTURES Tour in 2009.
Looking for break-through seasons will be 2009 rookies CINDY LACROSSE of Tampa, Fla., who had five top-10 finishes in 11 starts last year, former Duke University All-American and U.S. Curtis Cupper JENNIE LEE of Henderson, Nev., who recorded three top-10s in 10 starts, and KRISTIE SMITH of Perth, Australia, who finished with three top-10s in an injury-plagued 2009 season that allowed her to compete in only nine events.
“I’m hitting it well and putting well and I feel like I’m doing everything right,” said LaCrosse, a 2010 LPGA Tour member who won two Florida mini-tour tournaments during the off-season. “I’m antsy to get started and I think the experience I got last year will make a big difference this year.”
Last year, PAOLA MORENO of Cali, Colombia was busy completing her degree at the University of Southern California, where she was the 2008 Pac-10 Conference individual champion and member of USC’s 2008 NCAA Championship team. Moreno managed two top-10s in only seven events last year, including a tie for second in New Hampshire, but expect to see more of her this year. She also is a 2010 LPGA Tour member.
Also expect to see a revived SOFIE ANDERSSON of Angelholm, Sweden step up this year. Her last Tour win came in 2007, but Andersson underwent a regimented off-season routine that she hopes will kick-start her year. She recently won a tournament on the Cactus Tour in preparation for the 2010 season. [Check out Andersson’s player blog in this Thursday’s Entertainment section of duramedfuturestour.com.]
Long-hitting GERINA MENDOZA finished the 2009 season 12th on the Duramed FUTURES Tour’s money list and earned 2010 LPGA Tour membership at Q-School, but Mendoza plans to play a full-time schedule this year on the developmental tour.
“It will take a lot of stress off if I don’t go back and forth between the two tours,” said Mendoza, a third-year pro out of Roswell, N.M. “Now I know that when I wanted to be on the LPGA Tour two years ago, I wasn’t ready. But I’m getting a lot closer and this year, I’ll work on winning and getting my full [LPGA] card that way.”
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2. LPGA Commissioner To Caddie For Tour’s Alvarez
There’s nothing like having a celebrity caddie to kick off the new season in the first round, but third-year professional LILI ALVAREZ vows that she is up to the challenge of having LPGA Commissioner Mike Whan tote her bag on the opening day and help her kick off the year.
“It’s a great opportunity to show him what the Duramed FUTURES Tour is about and to show him around,” said Alvarez of Durango, Mexico. “I think he will be surprised. People don’t realize the level of golf played here. It’s good golf.”
Always quick with the zingers, yet thoughtful in her analysis, Alvarez said the commissioner will learn more about the LPGA’s developmental tour by walking the course in competition than in hearing about it from others at LPGA headquarters.
“We face different challenges out here that we need to face to be more appreciative when we get to the next level,” added Alvarez, one of seven Mexican players on the 2010 Duramed FUTURES Tour. “And there’s a lot of education that we get on this tour, traveling mostly by car for 17 weeks, staying in private housing and sometimes knocking on the wrong doors.”
Alvarez says she is excited to help show the commissioner that “this is where the next LPGA stars will come from” and she is also proud for him to see how more Mexican women professionals are stepping up on the Duramed FUTURES Tour.
“I feel very honored for him to join me in the first round on Friday and I hope he sees the need for more LPGA Tour cards [awarded at the end of the season],” said Alvarez, who will make her TV debut in June as a member of the cast in the Golf Channel’s “Big Break Sandals Resorts.”
And then the Mexican demonstrated her usual flair for fun, adding, “Of course, I’m here to win the tournament, so he better help me make some birdies. If he doesn’t, I might have to fire him.”
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3. They Come From Afar To Chase A Dream
The world gets a little smaller each year with members of the Duramed FUTURES Tour converging from around the globe to play professional golf. This year, members from 34 nations (including the United States) and 40 U.S. states have joined the Tour with the hope of advancing to the LPGA.
South Korea leads the international roster with 21 players, followed by Canada with 16 players. Australia, Mexico, Sweden and Thailand each has seven players on the Tour’s 2010 roster, with five players listed from Colombia.
For the first time, one player represents Costa Rica. Amateur Gloriana Soto will join the Tour after she graduates from Texas Tech University, where she is a member of the women’s golf team.
The state of Florida boasts the most Tour members from the United States with 35 players, followed closely by California with 33 players. Texas has 10 players on the Tour’s roster, followed by eight from North Carolina. Illinois and Michigan each has seven players, followed by Arizona, Indiana and New York each with six Tour members.
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4. Renee Powell To Receive Trainor Award This Week
The Duramed FUTURES Tour will honor LPGA Tour veteran Renee Powell of East Canton, Ohio this Sunday as the recipient of the 2009 Trainor Award.
The Tour established the Trainor Award in 1999, in honor of its founder and former president, Eloise Trainor, who retired in 1999. In the spirit of Trainor, who operated the FUTURES Tour for 20 years, the annual Trainor Award is presented to an individual or group that has made a significant contribution to women's golf.
Trainor will travel from Lebanon, N.Y., to present the award to Powell in a ceremony on Sunday that will follow the final round of the Duramed FUTURES Tour’s season-opening tournament, the Florida’s Natural Charity Classic.
Powell is the second of only three African-American women to play on the LPGA Tour in the Tour’s 60 years. She turned professional in 1967, and competed on the LPGA Tour for 13 years. She won the 1973 Kelly Springfield Open in Australia, and was also on four winning teams representing the United States during the 1970s matches between LPGA players and women pros in Japan.
Powell began playing golf at age 3 at the encouragement of her father, the late William Powell, who designed and built Clearview Golf Club in Ohio after segregation laws prevented him from playing on public golf courses. Named to the National Register of Historic Places, the course, now managed by Renee, is the only course in the world designed, built, owned and operated by an African-American. The Powell family was named as the 1992 National Golf Foundation’s Jack Nicklaus Golf Family of the Year for their contributions to the world of golf.
Renee won 30 tournaments as a junior and became the first African-American to compete in the U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship (1962). She also played college golf at Ohio University, and later, at Ohio State University. As a pro, she became the first woman named as a head club professional in the United Kingdom (1979). In addition, Powell became the first African-American Class A member of the PGA of America in 1996, and is the only African-American professional Class A member of both the LPGA and PGA of America.
She serves as an Ohio representative for the U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship Committee, and Clearview Golf Club hosts the Canton (Ohio) chapter of the Executive Women’s Golf Association. Powell also hosts the Renee Powell Golf Schools for Women at her course and holds golf tournaments to raise funds that provide scholarships to young women pursuing careers in non-traditional fields. Additionally, she teaches golf to inner-city youth and helped develop the curriculum and programming at The First Tee program.
“God gives everybody talents and mine is in this game of golf,” said Powell. “I’ve played, taught, written articles, designed golf clothes and mowed greens. But if we want the game to continue, it becomes a responsibility to pass things on to others. There are always those people who push and pull you along, and I think it’s our responsibility to give back. Hopefully, I can inspire the younger players.”
The ceremony will be held on the 18th green at Lake Region Yacht and Country Club.
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5. Malinda Johnson Nominated By Peers For Wilbur Award
The Duramed FUTURES Tour will honor Tour member MALINDA JOHNSON of Eau Claire, Wis., as the recipient of the 2009 Heather Wilbur Spirit Award this Sunday at the Tour’s first tournament of the 2010 season.
The award will be presented immediately after the Florida’s Natural Charity Classic trophy presentation on Sunday, at Lake Region Yacht and Country Club in Winter Haven, Fla.
The Heather Wilbur Spirit Award was established in 2003 in honor of Tour alumna, HEATHER WILBUR of Canada, who played on the FUTURES Golf Tour from 2000-2002. Wilbur lost her 11-month battle with AML Leukemia in October 2003. This award is presented each year to a Duramed FUTURES Tour player who best exemplifies Wilbur’s dedication, courage, perseverance, love of the game and spirit toward achieving goals as a professional golfer. The inaugural award was presented to Wilbur in 2003. Subsequent awards have been given based on nominations by Duramed FUTURES Tour members.
“Malinda exemplifies Heather's perseverance, love of the game and spirit toward achieving her goals on the Tour,” said Nancy Henderson, chief operating officer of the Duramed FUTURES Tour. “Her ability to come back from adversity is truly inspiring."
Members of the LPGA’s developmental tour nominated Johnson as the 2009 honoree. Johnson turned pro at age 22 and joined the Tour in 2004, immediately after graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She went into the Tour’s final 2004 tournament in 11th place on the season money list and won the event in a playoff from two shots back to move into the top five and earn full 2005 LPGA Tour status.
During her 2005 LPGA rookie season, the big-hitting lefthander recorded a season-best tie for 15th at the LPGA’s Safeway International, but in May that year, she suffered a shoulder injury. By February 2006, she underwent surgery to repair a torn labrum, and by the end of the year, she had lost her LPGA card.
Johnson worked as a substitute teacher for six months in the Eau Claire public school system, and then took an assistant club professional’s job, where she oversaw programs for women and nearly 300 juniors. By 2007, she was swinging a club again, and by the summer of 2008, she had won the Wisconsin Women’s Open Championship.
Johnson returned to the Duramed FUTURES Tour Qualifying Tournament in the fall of 2008 and regained status to play on the 2009 Tour. Her goal was to use the 2009 season to prepare for LPGA Q-School. Johnson came up two strokes short of advancing into the final round of LPGA Qualifying, returning to the developmental tour in 2010.
“In a way, the injury was a blessing in disguise,” said Johnson, 28. “I came back to golf and this time I appreciate it. I realize now that our days are numbered, so I want to feel that I gave it everything I had when I had the chance. It makes me feel good that others recognize what I’ve done and where I came from, and I feel truly honored that my peers chose me.”
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6. Tiffany Joh Receives LPGA Sponsor Exemption
Second-year Duramed FUTURES Tour player TIFFANY JOH of San Diego has received a sponsor's exemption into the Kia Classic Presented by J Golf. The tournament will be held March 22-28, at La Costa Resort and Spa in Carlsbad, Calif., and is the LPGA's first full-field event of the 2010 season.
Playing this year in her first full season on the LPGA's developmental tour, the four-time All-American at UCLA was the medalist at last fall's Duramed FUTURES Tour Qualifying Tournament.
As an amateur, Joh was a member of the 2008 U.S. Curtis Cup Team and is a two-time winner of the U.S. Women's Public Links Championship. She also played in the LPGA's Kraft Nabisco Championship last spring as an amateur, finishing tied for 21st.
"This [tournament] is about 20 minutes from home for me," added Joh, who was the 2002 San Diego Junior Golf Association Player of the Year as a student at Rancho Bernardo High School. "I'm hoping [UCLA] Coach [Carrie Forsyth] and my friends and family will be able to come out and watch that week."
Joh turned professional following graduation from UCLA last spring and competed in eight tournaments on the 2009 Duramed FUTURES Tour in her first season as a pro. She finished 2009 with a season-best tie for 35th at the Falls Auto Group Classic in London, Ky., before winning the Tour’s 90-hole Q-School last November.
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7. Tour Celebrates 30 Years Of Competition
Two milestones in women’s professional golf will be saluted this year as the LPGA celebrates 60 years of competition and the Duramed FUTURES Tour cranks up its 30th season this week.
New York native Eloise Trainor was a young golf pro hoping to make it to the LPGA Tour in January 1981, when she started the Tampa Bay Mini-Tour. Trainor began with 10 tournaments in the Tampa area of Florida, with the fledgling tour steadily growing in popularity. Like Trainor, young pros with the same ambition to compete in tournaments leading up to the LPGA Qualifying Tournament, joined the Tour.
By 1984, Trainor decided to change the Tour from a mini-tour format, in which players competed for the “pot” of cash entries, to a tour that offered guaranteed purses of $10,000 in each event. She changed the Tour’s name to the FUTURES Golf Tour and scheduled events nationwide. By the end of that first decade, tournament purses had risen to $20,000, continuing to increase throughout the next 20 years.
Trainor ran the FUTURES Golf Tour for 20 years, eventually selling the Tour to insurance executive Zayra Calderon. Duramed Pharmaceuticals, Inc. became the Tour’s title sponsor in 2006, changing the name to the Duramed FUTURES Tour. And while the Tour had licensed with the LPGA as its “official developmental tour” since 1999, the LPGA bought the tour in 2007 and moved its operations to LPGA Headquarters in Daytona Beach, Fla.
The 2010 Duramed FUTURES Tour offers 17 tournaments in 13 states and Mexico, with every event offering a prize purse of $100,000 or more. The top 10 money winners each season earn automatic memberships on the LPGA Tour for the following season. With more than 500 alumnae moving on to the LPGA, former Duramed FUTURES Tour players have won a total of 353 LPGA titles, including 37 major championships.
The Tour is playing for a record season purse of nearly $2 million this year, with Duramed FUTURES Tour events contributing more than $4.65 million to charitable organizations throughout the nation since 1989.
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8. New Staff Additions Announced For 2010
The Duramed FUTURES Four has added several staff members to its team for the 2010 season.
Mike Valicenti of Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., joins the staff as the Tournament Operations Assistant. Valicenti graduated from the University of South Carolina-Coastal in Conway, S.C., with a degree in business administration/marketing. He has worked in golf operations at Palm Beach National Golf Club and at PGA National Resort and Spa. As a touring professional, he played four years on the Gateway, Golden Bear and Tar Heel Golf Tours with three starts in Nationwide Tour events. He also has worked as an LPGA Tour caddie and is a two-time New York State Men's Amateur Champion (1996 & 2000) and winner of the New York State Mid-Amateur Championship (1997).
Coming aboard as the special events intern is Ashley Janser of Bristol, Conn. Janser earned a degree in sports and leisure management with a minor in health and physical education at Eastern Connecticut State University in Willimantic, Conn. She has worked as a game-day operations intern with the WNBA's Connecticut Sun and also served as the on-site director at Sky Hawks Sports Academy in Connecticut.
Tammy Borden of Ormond Beach, Fla., joined the Tour late last year, but enters her first full season as the Tour’s manager of player services. She graduated from the University of Central Florida with a degree in business management and administration. Borden worked from 2001-2009 for the LPGA Teaching and Club Professionals (T&CP) until transitioning to the Duramed FUTURES Tour last fall. Her previous work experience includes more than 10 years in the hospitality industry.
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9. Members, Alums Go Low At Florida Women’s Open
LPGA Tour veteran Maria Hjorth of Sweden was this year’s winner at the season warm-up Florida Women’s Open last week in Orlando. Hjorth posted a three-day total of 7-under 209 to win the event at Rio Pinar Country Club.
Finishing second at 4-under 212 was Tour alum HAEJI KANG of South Korea, followed by alum M.J. HUR of South Korea, and current Tour members CINDY LACROSSE of Tampa, Fla., and GERINA MENDOZA of Roswell, N.M., who all tied for third at 3-under 213.
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10. Quote Of The Week
“I’m going to play this year like it’s my last in competitive golf and try to have more fun.”
-- Seven-time tournament winner and 17-year Tour veteran LORI ATSEDES of Ithaca, N.Y., when asked if she is coming back to play in 2010?
Contact: Lisa D. Mickey, Duramed FUTURES Tour, +1-386-214-9726, or lisa@duramedfuturestour.com
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