Lauren Todd swung her first club at age 3. Her father and brother had started playing golf, and she recalls that she didn’t want to be left behind. Zack Miller got his clubs when he turned 7. “My grandfather took me out and bought me a set for my birthday.”
This summer, the two senior varsity golfers are launching pro careers, but without the contracts and bonuses that student-athletes turning professional in football, basketball and baseball often enjoy. “It’s financially challenging,” says women’s head coach Caroline O’Connor, who played for two years on the Futures golf tour, the official developmental wing of the Ladies Professional Golf Association. “In golf, when you decide to turn pro, you’ve got nothing but your clubs.”
All-American Todd led the Cardinal women to a fifth-place finish at the NCAAs in May, and tied for ninth place individually by firing an 8-over-par 296 (70-74-76-76) at Daytona Beach’s Legends course. Following the best showing of her collegiate career, she will be playing on the qualifying LPGA circuit this summer—at a time when O’Connor says there are 100 players waiting to get into every tournament. How to measure success? Says Todd: “I’d be happy with full status on the Futures tour.”
Men’s head coach Conrad Ray, who won the Eaton Golf Pride Dave Williams Award as National Coach of the Year, and also was named Regional and Pac-10 Coach of the Year, says “Anyone can call himself a pro, but on the PGA tour, there’s a pretty elaborate process of qualifying stages. And you have to put up $4,000 to play the Open.”
Miller has been playing qualifying tournaments since his sophomore year. “You drive around every spring, hoping you have a hot hand, hoping you’re on top of your game and hitting it where you need to.” Last summer, he also decided to invest in lessons, find a personal swing coach and change to a long putter. “Before, I had the mindset that, ‘I can figure this out by myself, I know enough to go at it on my own,’” he says. “But I came to think that even the best players in the world have coaches.”
Ray has seen a lot of seniors at a similar fork in the road. “They have to decide, ‘Is golf going to be a career?’” For Miller, answering yes was a defining moment, Ray says. “I definitely encouraged him to seek someone out whose sole job was to help with swing mechanics, and his swing definitely improved and had more consistency.”
The Cardinal men were ranked No. 2 in the nation by Golfweek, after winning six of 11 regular-season tournaments. Seeded 12th, they won the NCAA championship in June, with Miller tying freshman Joseph Bramlett for 15th on the individual leaderboard. Miller says he had the benefit of the latest technology during his four years on the Farm (we’re talking TrackMan Launch Monitors that measure ball speed, spin and launch angle), but the personal touch also was a huge help: Tiger Woods, ’98, often drops by the Stanford golf course when he’s in the area.
“He drove up by himself [last fall], and he had his backwards hat on,” Miller begins, suddenly animated. “I’d only seen him on TV, so it’s weird knowing he actually exists. We watched him hit some balls—awesome. And he had lunch with us, and was talking about the Master’s like it was a junior tournament, and how he was playing horribly.”
Todd looks back on her collegiate career and points to the life lessons she’s learned on the signature courses she’s played, from Scotland’s St. Andrews to California’s Pebble Beach. “Everybody has rounds where you’re two- or three-over on the first six holes, and you get those strokes back with birdies,” she says. “You have to be a real optimist and know that one good shot can turn everything around.”
And when she’s challenged, as she was on the 16th hole of Utah’s Snow Canyon Country Club, at the NCAA western regionals in May? “If it’s an especially difficult shot, I want someone there to hold my hand,” Todd says. She waves her arms in the air, reprising the “Help!” signal she sent to O’Connor. “I’ve been known to flail.”
The Cardinal men won the 2007 NCAA championship on June 2—their first title since 1994, and eighth overall. Junior Rob Grube led with a 6-under 274, posting 18 birdies and finishing third individually.
