MAY & JUNE 2007
Futures Tour: Teaches players how to win

This season marks the Duramed Futures Tour’s 27th year of operation, and among the scheduled events is a return visit to Wisconsin on the weekend of June 1-3. The Aurora Heath Care Championship at Geneva National GC in Lake Geneva will be the Futures Tour’s 11th visit to Wisconsin, so state golf fans ought to be familiar with this whole developmental golf tour concept.

But for those who are not, we offer up Meaghan Francella as Exhibit A.

Francella, a resident of Port Chester, N.Y., and a former University of North Carolina player, joined the Futures Tour in 2004 and placed 74th on the tour money list in her first season and 15th the following year. She won her first and only title on the developmental tour in 2006 with a victory in the season-opening Lakeland Duramed Futures Classic in Lakeland, Fla., March 10-12.

Francella followed up the victory with six more top-10 finishes during the 2006 season, including a tie for fourth at Geneva National. By season’s end, Francella had earned $39,416 on tour, good for fifth place on the Futures money list. Since the top five money-winners earn LPGA Tour cards, Francella’s ticket to the big show had officially been punched.

Exactly one year after her Futures Tour win in Florida, Francella won again, this time on the LPGA Tour, and in a four-hole playoff over LPGA Tour Hall of Famer Annika Sorenstam, no less.

Teaching young professionals how to win is the reason the Futures Tour exists, but Francella recently implied that getting to the LPGA Tour can be more difficult than staying there.

“I spent two and a half years on the Duramed Futures Tour,” Francella said in an interview posted on lpga.com. “I was prepared to be in that situation on the final day with Annika, and I knew how it felt to be in the lead.

“I put so much pressure on myself on the Futures Tour. I wanted to get my card. Now, I can go out and enjoy myself.”

Like Francella, some of the game’s best young players have earned their way onto the LPGA Tour by way of the Futures Tour, including Lorena Ochoa, Grace Park, Julieta Granada, Cristie Kerr, Christina Kim and Stacy Prammanasudh, to name just a few.

The list also includes four other players who, along with Francella, advanced to the LPGA Tour as the top Futures Tour money-winners in 2006. They are Song-Hee Kim, the tour’s runaway player of the year and winner of the 2006 Aurora Health Care Championship; Charlotte Mayorkas, who tied for 27th here; In-Bee Park, who tied for 15th, and Kristy McPherson, who tied for 43rd.

After a two-year absence from Wisconsin, Futures Tour players and officials enjoyed their return visit last June. Tournament Director Howard Storck said tour players were surveyed at the end of last season and asked to rank the tournaments in a variety of areas, everything from the quality and condition of the golf course to the food served in the clubhouse.

“We were surprised, we came out No. 1,” Storck said. “So we’re just going to try to maintain that high level. Just do it all over again.”

Perhaps most impressive was the manner in which the Geneva National community welcomed the young pros. Approximately 85 players stayed with families who live at Geneva National, and many will be back this year staying in those same homes.

“The players were spoiled by their hosts,” Storck said. “They took them out to dinner. One guy even went out and caddied for his pro the whole week.”

The Aurora Heath Care Championship is in the second year of a three-year commitment with the Futures Tour. The purse for this year’s tournament has been raised to $90,000, and it will go up to $100,000 next year.

Other events will be held at Geneva National throughout tournament week, including an instructional clinic on the afternoon of Wednesday, May 30, and two pro-ams on Thursday. The pro-ams, which sold out last year, are capped at 30 foursomes each to keep things moving. There is no admission fee on Wednesday and Thursday.

And speaking of no admission fees, there will be an open qualifier for amateurs held on the Palmer Course on Tuesday, May 29. Local female amateurs with handicaps of 5 or less may participate, with the two low scorers advancing to the Aurora Health Care Championship. There is no charge to enter the qualifier, which was won by Kenosha high school player Carly Werwie last year.

Storck defines local players as “anyone within 200-300 miles. Basically, anyone around the state, and northern Illinois is fine, too.”

Single-day tickets cost $7.50, and a week-long pass is $15. A family package is also available this year which offers four tickets, four hamburgers or hot dogs, four bags of chips and four sodas for $40. Tickets and additional information are available at www.aurorachampionship.org.