Rachel Rohanna back at sponsor-less Sara Bay Classic two years after pro golf victory

Rachel Rohanna’s first glimpse at Sara Bay Country Club gave her a good feeling. So Rohanna called her swing coach, grandfather Dick Schwartz, and told him how the Donald Ross-designed course fit her game.

That was in 2013 after a practice round to gear up for the Guardian Retirement Championship, the annual LPGA Symetra Tour stop in Manatee County.

But in the tournament, Rohanna performed like most players the first time they’re tasked with deciphering Sara Bay’s bowl-shaped greens.

She finished second-to-last.

Undeterred, Rohanna tied for fourth in the tournament in 2014 and then won it in 2015.

“Getting that rookie year start on that course out of the way and realizing you have to respect the course, you have to take your bogeys when you’re getting a bogey, and you have to just walk away with par and be happy sometimes,” Rohanna said. “That definitely helps, because that first year I was so excited to play that tournament. ... That was definitely a little learning experience, but it paid off in the end.”

Rohanna joins Christine Song as former champions in the 144-player field this year.

The first round is scheduled for Friday, and the tournament concludes Sunday.

The 2017 edition, though, has a wrinkle to it as Guardian is no longer the title sponsor. They pulled out in December.

“Sarasota doesn’t have a huge corporate base, so that makes it a little bit more challenging for us,” tournament director Ryan Ronk said. “But we’re doing our best, and we’re still hopeful that we’ll be able to play here as long as we can.”

The $110,000 tournament is unpredictable as they come, with five different players emerging victorious since the inaugural 2012 event. Combined, those five winning scores equal just a 12-under par, showcasing just how difficult it is to tame Sara Bay.

“It’s one of the tougher courses we play as far as scoring,” Ronk said.

After Rohanna won, she did something no other previous champion did: she pledged to use part of her $16,500 winnings to buy back a cow that was sold to a friend.

“I was like, ‘I don’t have the money to do that right now,’ ” Rohanna recalled. “A week or two weeks later, I win. I was really excited. It was my first win, so I wasn’t thinking or anything. That was the first thing I did think about, though, was buying her back. She’s back now, though. She’s back on our farm and she’s had two calves since then. Everybody’s doing well, so that was a good investment.”

Rohanna posted a 5-under par total for the 54-hole tournament, which tied Song for the best tally in the event’s five-year history.

She used that performance as a springboard to earn her LPGA Tour card. Every Sara Bay winner has either earned her tour card through the season-ending money list, automatic promotion for three Symetra Tour victories in a season or already had LPGA Tour status.

Rohanna, though, is back on the Symetra Tour after a 2016 that didn’t yield the results to keep her full card.

Prior to playing the LPGA Tour last year, Rohanna said she looked over her 2015 stats and said she was a little down after seeing how her putting ranked against LPGA Tour players.

“I felt like I played really well in 2015, I felt very confident and it’s going to take a lot to improve from that,” Rohanna said. “So going into 2016, I was like, ‘OK. Just go play the game. Try to not think about stats too much.’ ”

A usually sublime ballstriker, Rohanna’s best skill deserted her in 2016.

“That was one of the worst years I’ve ever hit the ball,” Rohanna said.

So she’s back this year and has made the cut in all four starts. That includes a season-best 11th-place finish at the Gateway Classic at Longbow Golf Club in Arizona.

Now she’ll enter this week’s tournament playing a course that she figured out two years ago.

“I’m feeling better than I was two years ago,” Rohanna said.

This story was originally published April 16, 2017 at 5:24 PM with the headline "Rachel Rohanna back at sponsor-less Sara Bay Classic two years after pro golf victory."