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WALLY HALL: El Dorado a perfect host for Symetra Tour

El Dorado is racing full speed into becoming the cultural capital of LA (Lower Arkansas).

The Murphy family, headed by Madison, is ensuring the peaceful village continues to thrive and grow through educational opportunities. Elsewhere in Arkansas, population in smaller towns is shrinking and young people are seeking new opportunities.

This week, though, El Dorado is putting on its perspiring-arts face as it hosts the Murphy USA El Dorado Shootout as part of the Symetra Tour for aspiring female golfers.

The Symetra Tour is the official springboard to the LPGA Tour, and the El Dorado event carries prize money of $150,000, which keeps dreams fed, housed and mobile.

More than 600 have gone through the Symetra Tour to make the LPGA Tour, and 427 tour titles have been won by those who competed in tournaments like the one in El Dorado.

This is the first of four huge golf tournaments in Arkansas this spring and summer, including the NCAA Championships, the Arnold Palmer Cup and the Southern Amateur.

The El Dorado Shootout will be played at Mystic Creek, one of the most beautiful and challenging courses in the South.

A friend once promised $300 if your scribe could break 300 on the course. While the money would have been nice, playing anything but miniature golf is a distant memory.

The El Dorado Shootout, presented by Pepsico, will have a local flavor as at least four golfers who have competed in the state will be vying for first-place money.

Megan Vaughn is a former University of Arkansas at Little Rock golfer who also has won the 2011 Arkansas Women's Golf Association Stroke Play Championship.

Sarah Wright is from Fayetteville and played at Henderson State University. She was the 2016 ASGA Women's Player of the Year and Arkansas match play champion. In 2017, she won the amateur state championship.

Julia Roth is from Sweden and played at the University of Central Arkansas. The 2013 Southland Conference Women's Golfer of the Year, Roth, has played in this tournament three times.

Summar Roachell, a Conway native who played for the Razorbacks, was the first Arkansas golfer selected for the U.S. Junior Solheim Cup in 2011.

Last year's champion, Hyemin Kim, will defend her title.

The El Dorado Shootout benefits the Boy Scouts of America.

Festivities started Monday, but tournament action begins Friday. Thanks to First Financial Bank, admission is free.

. . .

If it wasn't enough that Clemson has proven Nick Saban is human, the Alabama football coach -- winner of six national championships -- had hip-replacement surgery Monday.

According to a story by our man George Schroeder in USA Today, Saban started experiencing pain on the first day of spring football. He finally went to a doctor when it got too painful.

Saban expects the recovery to take six to eight weeks, so he should be in tip-top shape by the time fall ball starts, and maybe even for his July 17 date at SEC Football Media Days.

Of course, recovery is an inexact science and different for everyone. Saban is 67 years old, although he puts up a good fight against looking his age.

When you make his kind of money, you can afford for a guy to come to your office every week and trim your hair and do whatever it takes to keep it from looking gray and thinning.

Going strictly off past observations, he won't be an easy patient and Mrs. Terry (his wife) will get her patience tested early and often.

Still, hope everything went great for one of the greatest college coaches in the history of the game.

Sports on 04/23/2019

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