VERO BEACH — One measly shot. A lipped-out putt here. A flubbed chip there. If Jackie Barenborg wanted to, the Vero Beach resident could replay all 2,999 strokes she took during her 41 rounds on the LPGA Futures Tour this year and wonder, what if?
But when her final putt dropped earlier this month, and she finished tied for fourth in the Price Topper Tour Championship, she finished 12th on the season money list with $27,433.
Only the top 10 players earned their way onto next year’s LPGA Tour.
Had Barenborg, 25, been one stroke lower that week, finishing tied for third or fourth alone, she would have earned her 2012 card and not have to worry about getting through the dreaded final stage of Q-School in December.
“I could drive myself nuts and think about it a million times,” she said. “But I’m not going to because I did so much better than I expected. The thing is, I didn’t have my card going into the (final) tournament, so it’s not like I lost it in that tournament. I lost it earlier in the season when I missed too many cuts.”
That kind of pragmatic thinking should carry Barenborg far in a sport where there are far more failures than successes.
“A lot of kids would have been crying after coming up one shot short,” said Jackie Barenborg’s mother, Teri, who coached her at Vero Beach High. “She was like, ‘Not a problem. I just saved myself a lot of money by not having to go across the state for second stage.’ She has always had a great attitude.”
Thing is, even if Barenborg had cracked the top 10, she says she probably would have gone to Q-School to try and improve her playing status. She pointed out the player who finished ninth last year on the Futures’ money list (Hanna Jun), got into only two tournaments in 2011 because of the LPGA’s contracted schedule. Fewer events mean fewer opportunities for the youngsters.
Barenborg hasn’t lost sight of the big picture, and that’s she’s only been a touring pro for less than two years, and she came this close to making the LPGA Tour.
That was a drastic improvement over 2010, when she made just three cuts on the Futures Tour and finished 114th.
“It would have been awesome to get my card, but my goal this year was to finish in the top 20 and bypass the first stage,” she said.
Barenborg took up golf at age four from her parents, Ed and Teri.
Jackie Barenborg credited a strong junior program in Indian River County for creating an environment where she got to learn the game without having to travel across the Southeast.
Her first major setback came when as a freshman at Vero Beach High; she was left off the team that traveled to the state championship.
“It was close between me and another girl and the coaches picked her in part because I don’t think my mom wanted it to look like she was showing favoritism to me,” Barenborg said. “That gave me a kick in the butt. I wanted to make sure I got better so I wouldn’t put my mom in that situation again.”
Barenborg eventually earned All- Conference honors her last three seasons at Vero High, winning a regional tournament as a junior and helping her team win 101 consecutive matches.
She decided during her senior year she wanted to play in college, and even at that late time frame she earned a scholarship to Florida Southern, where she helped lead the Lady Moccasins to the national Division II title in 2007 by finishing 11th overall.
On the day she graduated with a degree in elementary education from Florida Southern, Jackie Barenborg surprised her parents again by saying she wanted to turn professional.
Three years later, that seems like a wise move.
Meantime, she will spend the next three months preparing, not brooding, for Q-School.
She plans to travel to Daytona Beach with her boyfriend/ part-time caddie, Travis Stoelting, an assistant pro at Fairwinds Golf Course, to play a few practice rounds.
She’s working on the shots she needs to hit, not worried about the one that got away.
