| Posted on: Thursday, August 30, 2001
• Gilder, Veriato in field for first Turtle Bay Championship
• Golf tips
Tomori making LPGA bid
By Bill Kwon
What will be the next feel-good story of the year in local golf? The Year 2001 already has given us that remarkable pair of 11-year-olds, Michelle Wie and Stephanie Kono. Then there is Steve Veriato's first Senior PGA Tour victory.
 |
| “I’m really happy that I passed the first qualifying stage,” Christel Tomori says.
Advertiser library photo
|
My top story would be Christel Tomori earning an exempt spot for the 2002 LPGA Tour with a successful showing in the final qualifying tournament, Oct. 10-13 at Daytona Beach, Fla.
Tomori finished tied for 13th in the sectional qualifying last week at Venice, Fla., to be among 30 golfers making the final field. They will be joined by 30 more qualifiers from next week's second sectional at Rancho Mirage, Calif.
Another 60 or so LPGA players looking to improve their status will also compete for approximately 20 exempt spots.
It will be Tomori's second try in the LPGA Q-School final. She missed the cut last year and wound up playing on the SBC Futures Tour again.
Not putting any pressure on Tomori, I think it will be a different story this time.
After all, she has always been a late bloomer and this could be the year in which it could finally come together for Tomori, like Veriato, a Big Island native.
"She blossomed late," said Earl Tamiya, president of the Hilo Junior Golf Association, who still remembers when Tomori first joined his program as an 8-year-old. "She was one of the tiniest junior golfers we've ever had. At first, she could only hit the ball 30 yards. But she never gave up. She came religiously to practice and was very focused."
He recalled that Tomori was never one of the better-known junior golfers. A 1992 Waiakea High graduate, Tomori was not recruited. Not even an offer by the University of Hawai'i.
Tamiya persuaded the University of Oregon women's golf coach to give Tomori some financial aid with the understanding that if she made the golf team, she would get an athletic scholarship.
"In the end, she got a full ride," Tamiya said. "In her senior year (1996), Tomori was named the team's most valuable player."
It was at Oregon that Tomori first began thinking seriously about a career as a professional golfer. Her game improved to the point that she began winning golf championships she never had won as a local golfer.
First there was the Hawai'i State Women's Golf Association Stroke Play Championship (1994); then the Match Play Championship; and next came the first of three straight Hawai'i State Open titles in 1998.
Now, she's seeking bigger game.
"I'm really happy that I passed the first qualifying stage. I really didn't have a good year (on the Futures Tour) this year," said Tomori, who is in Las Vegas while awaiting the SBC Futures Tour Championship in Lakeland, Fla., which runs Sept. 27-30.
The showing in the first-stage qualifying buoyed her confidence, according to Tomori, whose 72-hole score of 293 included a hole-in-one in the second round.
"I was shocked when it first went in, but when the players in my group and part of the gallery started cheering, I was very excited. It really helped because I was 1-over par going into that (15th) hole," Tomori said.
"I played well the first two days, very solid," she said. But a double-bogey and a triple bogey after hitting shots in the water hazard at the fifth hole led to 3-over 75s in the final two rounds.
"However, I managed to keep my focus and play hard the next 13 holes on both days," Tomori said.
Tamiya isn't surprised. He remembers Tomori as someone who was always focused.
That's the operative word in describing Tomori, who has come a long way since her days an a tiny 8-year-old junior golfer back in Hilo 17 years ago.
Bill Kwon can be reached at bkwon@aloha.net.
|
