Tag: Sarah White

How deep is the women’s game? Sophia Popov, Sarah White showed us all last summer

Longbow Golf Club is host of the Symetra Tour season-opening Carlisle Arizona Women’s Golf Classic. White edged Sophia Popov last time out.

Sarah White packed up her 2012 Ford Escape and headed west on March 13 at 2:30 a.m., determined to get from her San Antonio suburb to Mesa, Arizona, before sunset. White’s father taught driver’s ed for 32 years, and she picked up a few pointers along the way, hence the early wake-up call.

“You’re more awake when you wake up,” she said, “than you are when you’re coming down the last four hours. I’d rather drive in the dark in the beginning.”

Dad still called every 90 minutes though.

The Symetra Tour is the ultimate road warrior life. And the 14-hour drive back to Longbow Golf Club for this week’s season-opening Carlisle Arizona Women’s Golf Classic was especially sweet for White as it took her back to the place where everything changed instantly last August when she won the Symetra Tour’s Founder’s Tribute.

The victory kickstarted a 10-day stretch of golf that shined a light on the fine line between obscurity and stardom in the women’s game. Between uncertainly and security.

A fifth-place finish at the Texarkana Children’s Charities Open on the Women’s All Pro Tour earned White $1,690 and a spot in the Symetra Tour’s field at Longbow. White – who had no status of any kind – took full advantage of the opportunity by winning in her first Symetra start, edging Casey Danielson and Sophia Popov by one stroke.

“I was just a nobody on the mini-tours,” said White.

One week later, Popov, the player White had just beaten by a stroke, won the AIG Women’s British Open at Royal Troon. Suddenly a Symetra Tour player who didn’t have any LPGA status of any kind was a major champion.

Sophia Popov
Sophia Popov, the winner of the 2020 AIG Women’s British Open, poses with the her trophy at the FireRock Country Club in Fountain Hills, Arizona. (Photo: Thomas Hawthorne/USA TODAY Network)

Like White, Popov played her way into the AIG by virtue of a top-10 finish at the Marathon Classic, which doubled as a qualifier.

“It’s pretty unheard of to have non-members of two tours win back-to-back,” noted White.

When White first arrived at Longbow last Sunday to practice, the Clover Cup, a college event she used to play in at Texas State, was finishing up on the 18th with the identical hole location she faced last August.

“I could still vividly relive that 6-foot putt and still feel the chills of everything that happened,” said White of the putt she drained to win. “I can do that any point that I need to remember why I’m here.”

Popov left Longbow disappointed to have another runner-up finish, noting that she’d been “pretty patient” waiting for that first win. She rushed out of Mesa to begin the long trek to Scotland for her first Women’s British Open appearance in nine years.

“Every shot is pretty much going where I want it to go,” she said after the round, “so all I can do is just keep doing what I’m doing. Pick a good number, pick a shot and just hit, and it’s been working really well for the last three or four months. Honestly nothing is going to change next week except for the weather.”

Only everything changed at Troon, and a 304th-ranked Popov, like White, gave countless touring pros still waiting for their big break a renewed sense of hope.

People have asked White what they need to do to get on the Symetra Tour. What does it take? She tells them that she played to her strengths and worked on her weaknesses. There’s no set formula.

Sarah White
Symetra Tour golfer Sarah White.

This week 132 players will take their first step toward trying to earn an LPGA card. White will compete alongside the No. 1 amateur in the world, Rose Zhang, and Emily Pedersen, who ended her 2020 season on the Ladies European Tour with three consecutive victories. Zhang, 17, makes her debut on the Symetra Tour this week. She won the 2020 U.S. Women’s Amateur and finished tied for 11th at last year’s ANA Inspiration.

White won’t be battling triple-digit heat this time around at Longbow. She won’t have a caddie either as older brother Brett has his own tournament this week, and her dad slipped on some ice back home in Michigan and broke his tibia and fibula.

Sarah is battling her own injury as well, a stress fracture in her left ankle and tendonitis. She only really notices the pain though after the golf is done and she’s taking her shoes off in the parking lot.

But the vibes are still good in Mesa.

“Some people have a misconception that maybe it was a little luck,” said White. “No, absolutely not. We worked to get to that opportunity.”

The notion that anyone can beat anyone any given week still hangs thick in the air.

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Holey Moley: Sarah White’s leap from mini-tour unknown to Symetra Tour winner better than Hollywood

A nine-week stretch of focusing on putting has turned big-hitting Sarah White into a force on the Symetra Tour.

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Sarah White has known since age 5 that she wanted to be a professional golfer.

When a producer from ABC’s “Holey Moley” discovered White on Instagram and asked if she would be interested in trying out for the extreme mini-golf show, it wasn’t exactly the role she’d pictured growing up. But she’s competitive, and well, why not. It could be fun.

“I don’t know how to train for this,” she said of the ziplines, inflatables, hazardous port-a-potties, mechanical gopher and daunting solar system. The road to the LPGA doesn’t typically go through Hollywood, but nothing about 2020 has been predictable.

White turned pro at the start of the year and planned to attend LPGA Q-School after she finished her degree at Texas State in the spring. The COVID-19 pandemic, of course, canceled qualifying for the season.

Suddenly mini-tour golf was the only thing left.

A fifth-place finish at the Texarkana Children’s Charities Open on the Women’s All Pro Tour earned White $1,690 and a spot in the Symetra Tour’s Tribute at Longbow Golf Club in Meza, Arizona. White took full advantage of the opportunity by winning in her first Symetra Tour start, edging Casey Danielson and Sophia Popov by one stroke. Popov went on to win the AIG Women’s British Open the next week at Royal Troon in extraordinary fashion.

“I was just a nobody on the mini-tours,” said White, who won $18,750 for her efforts.

This week White enters the IOA Classic in Longwood, Florida, at 69th on the Symetra Tour’s money list with $2,505. Her winner’s check in Arizona doesn’t count because she was a non-member at the time. If her unofficial earnings and official earnings were combined, she’d be sixth on the money list. The top five players this season earn LPGA cards for 2021. There are five events left on the schedule.

White, 23, understands why her money isn’t official, but “it just stinks.”

“Just makes me want to work harder,” she said.

When the pandemic hit, White and her coach, Craig Piscopink, went to work on overhauling her putting. If you’re going to make a cake, her asked her, what’s the main ingredient?

Flour.

When it comes to putting, he said, speed is the flour.

White focused on the main ingredient for nine weeks and it changed everything.

Piscopink said she shaved a significant number of strokes on the greens. At the Texarkana event, White led the field with 20 birdies. At Longbow, she finished 15 under par.

Couple that with the raw athleticism White possesses, and her potential skyrocketed.

Sarah White
Sarah White poses with the Joan Waters Trophy after winning the Symetra Tour’s 2020 Founders Tribute at Longbow Golf Club. Photo courtesy Symetra Tour

White, inspired by older brother Brett, played boys hockey for 14 years. She started out as a forward until puberty hit and the game got more physical. Move to girls hockey, her dad told her, or move to goalie.

“You’re not getting thrown around on the boards,” he said.

Competing against the boys fueled Sarah’s competitive drive. She had to prove to that she wasn’t going to be scared off by a hard shot. Wasn’t going to be outworked either.

“I didn’t want to be as good as them,” she said. “I wanted to be better.”

Brett was on the bag for his sister’s Symetra Tour victory and won the Michigan Open two weeks later.

“He was trying to one-up me,” she said.

The White siblings have a habit of scripting remarkable tales. Golf Digest’s Joel Beall detailed Brett’s comeback from a life-threatening brain infection in 2017 that left him unable to walk or talk. In November of 2019, he won the Nevada Open.

The Whites are fighters. When asked about her goals for the rest of 2020, Sarah said she’s in a “never settle” mindset.

“I don’t necessarily write them down because I don’t want them to just be a stopping point,” she said. “I want to break through them.”

Watching the best

In high school, Sarah used to volunteer at the LPGA’s Meijer Classic, which takes place 25 minutes from her house. One year she directed foot traffic in a booth. One year she worked in the kids zone. She’d go out on the course and watch players like Gerina Piller and Lexi Thompson go about their business and noted that while she had the length, her short game is what needed to improve.

White currently ranks third on the Symetra Tour in driving distance at 295.63 yards. She carries her 3-wood 250. Piscopink said her cruising speed with the driver is 107 to 108 mph, but that she has an extra gear that kicks it to 115.

“When I first saw her walk in the door,” said Piscopink, “I said ‘Wow, this is it.’ She’s got the complete package.”

And it’s all coming to together at warp speed.

Michigan native Sarah White picks up momentum with Symetra Tour win in Arizona

Sarah White emerged as the champion of her first Symetra Tour tournament – the Founder’s Tribute at Longbow in Mesa, Arizona, in mid-August.

Sarah White emerged as the champion of her very first Symetra Tour tournament – the Founder’s Tribute at Longbow in Mesa, Arizona, in mid-August.

She did it in her first year as a professional and playing via an exemption earned for a fifth-place finish in a tournament on the Women’s All Pro Tour (WAPT), the official feeder tour to the LPGA’s Symetra Tour.

She opened 68-65 then logged closing 68 in the 54-hole championship at Longbow Golf Club, which included a final birdie for a one-shot win over Casey Danielson of Wisconsin and Sophia Popov of Germany. Popov, the very next week, shocked the golf world as a surprise runaway winner of an LPGA major championship – the AIG Women’s British Open.

And White, of Grand Rapids, Michigan, surmises she might be the person least surprised by the dramatic golf happenings.

“I always knew I had it in me,” said the 23-year-old former GAM Junior Girls State Amateur Champion (2015) and Division 1 state high school champion (2014) who played collegiate golf for a year at Western Michigan University before transferring to play at Texas State University.

“Winning was relieving in a way. I had been working so hard on my game and I finally did it the way I knew I could. It was more like a big breath of fresh air, or even a weight lifted off my shoulders. I wasn’t necessarily surprised because I always believed I had it in me and finally I proved to myself that I could do it.”

She made $18,750 for the win and earned immediate Symetra Tour membership through 2021, which meant she hopped in a car and drove to California for the next Symetra Tour event. She made the cut, and then made the long car trip home to Michigan, stopping on the way to play in the Symetra event in South Bend, Indiana. She missed that cut, then hit the road for Florida and North Carolina and more Symetra tournaments.

“My life has changed drastically in that way, much more travel than I expected,” she said. “Brett (her brother, a professional golfer) told me my first year as a professional would be a huge learning experience. That is so right, but I know I belong out here.”

Brett White, 27 and like Sarah, a former GAM tournament regular, was her caddie in the Founder’s Tribute win, and again two weeks later in South Bend after he came home from winning the $115,000 Turtle Creek Casino Michigan Open Championship on The Bear at Grand Traverse Resort near Traverse City.

Their parents, Doug and Patty, were not golfers. Brett, a former Eastern Michigan University golfer, became interested in the game at a young age, and by age 5, Sarah was tagging along. She did the same in hockey, and even played goalie for the boys’ varsity team at East Kentwood High School.

Their father said their dreams were in golf, however, and they pushed on.

“I have dreamed about being a pro golfer since I was 5,” Sarah said. “Brett got me into it and we had brother-sister rivalry where he would always try to one-up me, but it is amazing to see both of us having this dream we’ve had for a long time come true. For both of us to win big tournaments within three weeks is truly special for our family.”

Doug said after his son’s Michigan Open win that he was still trying to grasp all that happened in recent days.

“Golf’s a tough game, both kids have had their bad days and tough losses, Brett’s had his health issues, so we’ve seen that side of it, too,” he said. “We like this though and we’re really proud of them. They kept working so hard and believing they could do it.”

Sarah, who is already third in average driving distance on the Symetra Tour (295.63 yards), has worked recently on her putting with Craig Piscopink, an award-winning teaching professional in Ypsilanti who also worked with Brett as he recovered his golf game after a debilitating brain infection three years ago.

“We’ve changed my putting drastically,” Sarah said. “Everything is different, a different putter, different grip. We didn’t change my stroke, but we changed my focus on putting from trying to hit the perfect putt to focusing on the speed of my putts. It’s made a big difference. In the tournament on the WAPT where I earned my exemption I had 20 birdies. In my win at the Founder’s Tribute I made some 20- and 30-footers and putted with a consistent speed. It’s boosted my confidence.”

When the global pandemic hit in March, Sarah had completed her golf at Texas State and had earned her business management degree. She lost a part-time job to the shutdown though and stayed in Texas because the golf course where she practices didn’t close completely.

“I took the extra time and practiced,” she said. “I was turning pro. I worked a lot so when the WAPL started I was ready.”

Sarah has never shied away from working on the game.

“I always tried to take the mindset that I have the potential and if I’m not working, then somebody else is working and could beat me,” she said. “Brett and I – we inspire each other. He’s a competitor. I’m a competitor. I believe I belong here. My thought now is how do I stay here? Work. The win was a huge boost in confidence. I don’t have to think I can win. I know I can do it.”

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Former high school hockey goaltender Sarah White wins Symetra Tour’s Founders Tribute at Longbow

Sarah White capped off a final-round 68 with a birdie on the 18th hole to finish at 15 under to win the Symetra Tour’s Founders Tribute at Longbow.

Sarah White capped off a final-round 68 with a birdie on the 18th hole to finish at 15 under to win the Symetra Tour’s Founders Tribute at Longbow.

White, the starting goaltender for two seasons for East Kentwood High School’s varsity hockey team in Grand Rapids, Michigan, edged Casey Danielson and Sophia Popov by a shot.

“I have that competitive spirit in me from playing ice hockey for so many years,” White said after Saturday’s second round. “I know what it takes, the grind and all of that. I hit a 354-yard drive today and this course sets up for me really well. I’m also putting well, which trusting that frees me up.”

Danielson shot a final-round 65, a score that was matched by Demi Runas and Min-G Kim for the best scores of the day. Popov’s 63 on Saturday was the best score of the week.

Founders Tribute at Longbow scores

Fatima Fernandez Cano finished solo fourth at 12 under. Lucy Li shot a final-round 66 and finished in fifth.

Sunday’s final round in Mesa, Arizona, was played under an excessive heat warning, with the temperature reaching 109. Longbow Golf Club in Mesa withstood high temperatures for all three days of the 54-hole event, the Symetra Tour’s second on its restart. It was 112 during Friday’s first round. The Thursday pro-am saw temperatures climb to 114.

The Symetra Tour should find cooler weather in Beaumont, California, for its next tournament, the IOA Championship Presented by Morongo Casino Resort & Spa, Aug. 21-23.

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