A few weeks ago, LPGA Futures Tour player Kathleen Ekey was in Tuscaloosa, Alabama with the Alabama women’s golf team, serving up meals to victims of the late-April tornado that ripped apart her college town.
Today, the second-year pro served up a little grit on her final hole to sneak out her first professional win wire-to-wire by a single shot at the $110,000 Ladies Titan Tire Challenge.
It wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t easy, but Ekey (rhymes with streaky), who started today’s final round at Hunters Ridge Golf Course with a five-shot lead, held on for the win in spite of a scorecard decorated with four bogeys, one double-bogey, a single birdie and a final-round score of 77 for a one-under finish at 215.
“Do I like shooting 77?” she said. “Absolutely not! Today was a struggle and I never really got it going, but I hit the ball well enough to win the golf tournament. It’s still pretty special.”
The native of Sharon Township, Ohio held off rookie Jean Chua (72) of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and Carling Coffing of Middletown, Ohio (73), who tied for second at even-par 216 at the Futures Tour’s four-event Midwest swing kickoff in the Greater Cedar Rapids area.
Ayaka Kaneko of Honolulu, Hawaii posted the day’s low round of 5-under 67 to move into a tie for fourth with Dawn Shockley (68) of Estes Park, Colo., both finishing at one-over 217.
Ekey never relinquished the lead for 54 holes on the high-fescue-laced course, but Chua joined her today at the top of the leaderboard with a birdie on No. 14. That share of the lead was short-lived, however, when the former Wake Forest University player ran into trouble with water hazards on holes 15 and 17, making bogeys on two of her last four holes.
Coffing also chased Ekey in today’s windy final round, but ran into trouble with an errant driver. Four bogeys in the span of holes from No. 9 through 13 knocked Ekey’s fellow Ohioan off pace. But Coffing, known for scrambling around the greens, chipped in for birdie on the 17th hole to draw within one shot of the lead.
“I was really losing it out there, but when I chipped in, I thought, ‘Wow! I might still be in this,’” said Coffing.
And with Chua and Coffing hot on her heels, Ekey’s day full of hiccups had one more surprise waiting on the par-five 17th hole.
Ekey’s 4-iron second shot on No. 17 came off chunky, sailing her ball into a water hazard. With 230 yards to the hole from the drop zone, Ekey watched in disbelief as her 3-wood kicked left into the water once again. Taking a double-bogey, she had now lost a three-stroke cushion with only one hole to play.
Carrying her own bag, Ekey led by a single stroke as she walked to the 18th tee, trying to compose herself.
“I was really, really disappointed when I walked off the 17th green, but I took a deep breath and told myself to focus on hitting a good drive,” said Ekey, who has had two other top-10 finishes this season.
Ekey striped her drive on the final hole and two-putted for par and the win. Within moments, someone was handing her a crystal trophy. A Titan Tire executive was handing her the winner’s check for $15,400. And someone else announced that she had moved to the No. 1 spot on the LPGA Futures Tour’s season money list.
It happened that fast.
And while it was not exactly how she had imagined her first win would look, somehow it was something that Ekey completely understood. After all, only weeks ago, she got her first big lesson on the difference a day can make.
“In Tuscaloosa, when the tornado hit, people went from normal life to nothing in five minutes,” she said to media, who asked what she had experienced when she returned from a Texas tournament to Alabama to get her car after the storm. “I was very, very lucky because there was utter devastation everywhere around where I live.”
Earlier in the week, when Ekey spoke to media about helping to feed those who had lost their homes, she dabbed her eyes with a tissue. She said she “still gets goose-bumps” thinking about the destruction in the town she has called home for most of the last three years.
“You just never know,” she said. “It’s unbelievable how everything can be taken from you in a split second. It puts everything in perspective.”
And somehow, a day over par, is not such a bad day, after all.
