He finding some mojo on LPGA Tour

ROGERS -- Muni He has learned to play the waiting game on her first year on the LPGA Tour.

He, 20, is on the fringe of earning a berth as a regular, but currently she has tour alternate status only. There are no guarantees she will get into an event unless regular tour members withdraw and the alternates move up accordingly.

That was the case Monday when Women's PGA champion Hannah Green withdrew from the Northwest Arkansas Championship and an alternate moved into the field, but it wasn't He that got the automatic spot.

So the tour rookie opted for the next-best route into the field by competing in the Monday qualifying tournament at Pinnacle Country Club. She punched her ticket into this week's tournament by carding a 4-under 67 to win by one stroke.

"It's not very promising as an alternate," He said while waiting in the clubhouse to see if her score would be enough to get her in. "You never really know if someone is going to drop out of an event before the first day of the event, so we decided to try the Monday qualifier and just to kind of increase the possibility of me being in the field this week."

He has played in fewer than 10 LPGA events this season and has earned a little over $12,000. Her winnings are actually more than that, but three Asian events don't count toward her LPGA earnings, as they were no-cut events, she said.

He played a bogey-free round Monday, taking advantage of the softer greens from the recent rain in the region. The shorter course at Pinnacle also played to her advantage.

"I'm not the longest hitter out here, and it's definitely nice to have some shorter par-4s and shorter irons [into] the green," He said, "especially with the conditions being so wet. I like soft greens, so it's nice to be able to play the pitching yardage really close to the pin and know that it will stick around."

He just added a full-time caddie in Val Lopez, who has more than 20 years on the bag, mostly on the PGA Tour. Lopez is learning on the fly about his golfer and the LPGA Tour itself.

"I've only worked out here just a few weeks on the LPGA, so I haven't really got a chance to see a lot of the other golfers' games, just the ones we've been paired up with," Lopez said. "[He] hits it a lot straighter than everybody else I've seen. And the course setup has a lot to do with how the scoring is. It's different. I'm learning as I go."

He grew up in San Diego and played high school golf at Torrey Pines, where she was on several state championship teams. As a high school freshman, she committed to Southern California, calling it her "dream school." She spent just two semesters at USC before deciding to pursue a professional career.

"I was really honored to be able to go there on a golf scholarship, but because of the way the LPGA Tour is, the girls are getting younger and younger," He said. "I felt like if I would have stayed for three more years, I would have felt a little behind some of the girls who went straight to the tour after high school."

Last year, He played on the Symetra Tour, where she made the cut in 16 of the 21 events she entered and won the Prasco Charity Championship.

He finished tied for 27th at tour qualifying last year to earn Priority List Category 14 status for her rookie season.

She will enter this week's tournament playing her best golf of the season after making the cut in back-to-back events for the first time. He finished tied for 39th at the Meijer Classic two weeks ago after finishing 7 under and tied for 64th at the ShopRite Classic on June 7. Prior to that, she missed the cut in four consecutive starts.

As a young golfer, He looked up to LPGA Tour stars like Paula Creamer and Michelle Wie. Now she finds herself competing against the icons she idolized.

"It's pretty crazy now that I'm standing here in the same field as them, with these players I once looked up to," she said. "I think they brought a lot of good things to the game, and I hope that one day I'll be able to do that, be more than just a golfer and hope that I can influence little girls or people who don't golf to come into golf."

Sports on 06/26/2019