Jenny (Coleman) Has the Number: Will Victory Come Calling Soon?

CU grad hopes big week in Florida is the breakthrough for her LPGA career.

By Anthony Cotton

During the final round of last weekend’s LPGA Drive On Championship presented by Volvik, Jenny Coleman, a graduate and former golfer at the University of Colorado, walked inside the ropes, playing in the tournament’s penultimate pairing and shooting a solid one-under-par 7—which resulted in a third-place finish, easily her best-ever result on the circuit.

As she completed her paces, Coleman was competing under the watchful eye of another CU graduate and former player walking alongside outside the ropes—her sister and identical twin, Kristin.

“She’s just as good as me,” Jenny said about the familial dynamics. “It’s just one of those things where I got hot (in winning her LPGA Tour card after finishing third on the minor-league Symetra Tour’s money list in 2019)…she’s neck-and-neck with me—it’s only a matter of time before she lights it up.”

Kristin, a regular on the Symetra Tour, tried to Monday qualify into the Drive On but fell short. As for Jenny, there were no indication of fireworks on the horizon; the tournament was just her second tournament of the season, following a missed cut in the previous week’s event. Even so, Coleman said she wasn’t overly discouraged; the missed cut was due, in part, to a quintuple-bogey 9 on the 10th hole of her second round—indeed after the calamity, she proceeded to birdie the 11th and went 2-under over the final eight holes.

“I fought back as best as I could,” she said. “I’ve been hitting the ball well for weeks—it’s just a matter of if the putts are gonna drop or not.”

Coleman finished the second round seven shots inside the cutline, ensuring that she would play on the weekend for just the fourth time in 25 LPGA events spread out over three years (2017, ’20 and ’21—in fact, the $5,000 she received for a fifth-place finish last June in the CoBank Colorado Women’s Open was her third-largest payday in that span). The impressive showing was the result of following a game plan that emphasized thinking more than power—”it’s a very strategy-oriented course, where there are pins that you want to attack and others where you just want to play it safe, leave it 2o-30 feet off to the side and take your par.”

Over her final 36 holes, Coleman had just two bogeys and a double, countered by seven birdies. While no one truly threatened the eventual winner, Austin Ernst, the $100,992 check she received was easily the best of Coleman’s career.

It also makes her anxious to show that stellar play can become a regular occurrence.

“Now that I’ve got a third, I want to better that—get a second, maybe a win,” said Coleman, who will next play in the Kia Classic, March 25-28 in her home state of California. “Now, it’s just having full confidence in my game—getting the best numbers and clubs with my caddie and knowing if I see the shot and hit the shot you’re all the way there. You just feel so full of confidence—you’ve seen it, you’ve done it, and you know you can do it again.”

That’s a feeling that Jennifer Kupcho has carried with her for a while now, and the Drive On once again brought the Westminster native to the verge of her first LPGA win. Kupcho was second in Florida, finishing five shots behind Ernst. Her tournament was made even more impressive because of the fact that she finished the opening round amid migraine headaches that at times literally left her unable to see the ball clearly.

Just one shot off the lead entering the final round, a double bogey on the 15th hole cost Kupcho a chance at pulling out the win—even so, overcoming the travails from earlier in the week while achieving the third runner-up finish of her LPGA career left her in a victorious mood.

“(I feel) really great. I was hitting the ball really well last week (a tie for 21st) and came into this week doing the same thing, so it’s nice to see all the work that I’ve put in over off-season to really come out and start the year really well.”

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