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Life on the Fringe with Becca Huffer

DENVER’S BECCA HUFFER ON LIFE JUST A FEW PUTTS AWAY FROM THE BIG-TIME

By Jim Bebbington

Denver native Becca Huffer is one of the LPGA’s grinders. She is among the LPGA pros plying her trade between Epson Tour, state tours, Pro-ams, Q-Schools, Monday qualifiers, and the occasional LPGA Tour opportunities. With solid games, Huffer and the others are often just one or two shots away from bigger opportunities. But after a decade in the trenches, Huffer continues her career and will likely be among the players returning in May to the Inspirato Colorado Women’s Open.

Her story is a small window into the reality that the women’s game has a host of players working every day to keep their dreams of touring golf success alive.

In January Ryan French, who operates the “Mon- day Q Info” social media platform, sent this tweet to his 160,000 followers: “Because there just isn’t enough money in the women’s game, you just don’t see many grinders. Becca Huffer is one of the few. Played on the Epson Tour from 2013 to 18 before graduating to the LPGA. Then made just one cut in 2019. Kept grinding on back on Epson. Today Monday (qualified) for first LPGA event in over 4 years.”

Why do it?

“I love the competition for me,” she said. “I know I keep improving. I’m a much better player than I was the last time I played on LPGA. I think the competition on the women’s side has gotten so much better. But then also the whole LPGA and even Epson Tour has gotten so much better.

So it’s fun to be part of the growth of women’s golf and it’s one where I know I can compete out there. I just need to get the opportunity to do it again, which right now is what I’m waiting on because there are a lot of players that I’ve played with over the years who have had a lot of success out there. So it’s kind of like – I could do it.”

“I love the competition for me. I’m a much better player than I was the last time I played on LPGA. It’d be different if I knew something was missing, but I fixed up my putting last year and it’s been good.”

Huffer, 33, grew up in Littleton and played golf at Littleton High School despite neither parent, Mary and Gary, being active in the game. She got her start after her younger brother Zach was born and her mother would drop her and her older brother Chris off for lessons at Wellshire Golf Course. She was six.

She won some AGJA tournaments. She won two state high school titles and played golf at the University of Notre Dame.

“Her game is just solid all the way through,” said retired Notre Dame women’s golf coach Susan Holt. “When I coached her what really stood out was her ability to create shots. If she got herself in trouble she got herself out of it.”

Huffer is the only Notre Dame golf alumni to make the LPGA Tour. “She’ll always be the first one,” Holt said. After graduating Huffer had almost immediate success.

“I went home from college, finished second at the Colorado Open, qualified for the U.S. Open,” she said.

But she also had a nagging wrist injury. She missed the cut in that 2012 Open and for another two years had to soak her wrist in buckets of ice after rounds to deal with the pain. Even then, she played again in the 2013 Colorado Open and won. (She won a second time in 2019 and finished second last year.)

During the time of her wrist ailments, she worked briefly for a golf course but decided that tour golf was still what she wanted to do. It took two years, but doctors eventually removed a cyst that was in the wrist and the pain went away.

After the fast/slow start, she has been on the Symetra/Epson tours ever since and is among the players regularly trying to qualify for the LPGA tournaments with their larger purses.

She says her pattern has been to play well in tournaments through the Epson season and other state tournaments like the Colorado Open. Then each fall she tries to earn her full LPGA Tour card through their version of Q-School.

“I think for me it’s just one like unfortunately, I play well through the season, but the one that matters is Q-School,” she said. The one Q-School that she did well in, 2018, led her to partial LPGA status for 2019. She played in 15 tournaments but made just one cut and earned a little less than $4,000.

“I tried way too hard that year was just missing cuts by one stroke and, you know, just kind of rest is history,” she said.

Near misses are part of the job. At the end of last season’s Epson Tour, she was near the top 10 overall on the money list. The top 10 finishers received cards for this year’s LPGA Tour. On the final day of the season-ending Epson Tour Championship in October Huffer fired a final-day 65 and as she walked off the course would have won enough to finish 10th on the money list.

Then Kristen Gillman, a five-year pro from the University of Alabama, finished with a birdie and an eagle, leap-frogged into 4th place in the tournament, and took a top-10 spot in the season-ending money list. Huffer finished 11th on the final money list, $1,700 behind Gillman. This year the Epson Tour changed the criteria and the top 15 will get cards; if that rule had been in place last year Huffer would be playing in more LPGA events this season.

“So I was like, well, you’re too late,” she said. This past December she played well in the six-day LPGA Q-School tournament, finishing at 8-under par at the event held in December at the Robert Trent Jones Crossings and Falls courses in Mobile, Alabama. That was good enough to give her partial access to some LPGA events this year.

“And that’s why no one really likes Q school,” she said. “I mean, maybe the first time it’s an adrenaline rush, but then after that it’s … it’s a tough week.” So, this spring she has pursued a familiar mix of Epson Tour and LPGA qualifying events. The travel can be daunting. She drove from Denver to Beaumont, California in April where she finished 11th in the IOA Championship. She then played in the nearby U.S. Open Qualifier in Ojai, California, and was not one of the top two players to advance. Next, it was travel to Tucson where on the first weekend of May she did well in the Epson Tour’s Casino Del Sol Golf Classic in Tucson, finishing 11-under.

Photo by Chip Bromfield, courtesy of the Inspirato Colorado Women’s Open

She shot a 65 on the second of the tournament’s three days. She entered the Monday qualifier for the LPGA’s Cognizant Founders Cup but did not make it to that event in New Jersey. The Epson Tour stops were next in Scottsdale, Ariz., for the Carlisle Arizona Women’s Golf Classic.

The Monday qualifiers for the LPGA are very competitive. Like with the men’s qualifiers, there is zero benefit to finishing anywhere except in the top two or three. Everyone is trying to go low. They cost $200 each to enter, plus the travel and hotel required. This season the LPGA has 15 tournaments with Monday qualifiers.

There are a lot of good players on the LPGA grind- train. Former University of Colorado player Jenny Coleman has also been out on the tours, and last year finished 10th in the Epson Tour money list including a win at the IOA Classic.

Huffer is planning to return to Denver in May to play in the 2024 Inspirato Colorado Women’s Open. With $100,000 to the winner, the Colorado Open stands out not only from the other state opens but pays more than any of the Epson Tour events. It is typically held opposite the U.S. Women’s Open and attracts dozens of players like Huffer – great pros who missed out on qualifying for the LPGA major.

“I think just when you accomplish something that is possible with golf, it’s one where it’s like obviously everything isn’t in your control,” she said. “It’s, you know, you never know what somebody else is going to do if they finish birdie/eagle and kick you out.”

Grinder life is not easy. But it’s the one she’s opting for for now. “There are more of us than you think,” she said. “And it’s usually one where it’s like a lot don’t stick around because they don’t have success. There’s not a whole lot of money if you’re missing cuts on the women’s side. But if you’re doing OK, you can kinda chug along.”

Photo by Jim Bebbington

She does not know how long she will continue. Some peers have dropped out recently and moved on. Huffer feels she is still too close to success. “It’s not one where I’m like, OK, I’ve just been doing nothing for the last 10 years, you had no success and it’s just like chasing a wild dream and I’ve made $12,” she said. “It’s like, no, I’ve won some tournaments.”

And later this summer she may win some more.

 

Jim Bebbington is the Director of Content at Colorado AvidGolfer. Contact him at [email protected]

Colorado AvidGolfer Magazine is the state’s leading resource for golf and the lifestyle that surrounds it, publishing eight issues annually and proudly delivering daily content via coloradoavidgolfer.com.

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Life on the Fringe with Becca Huffer

DENVER’S BECCA HUFFER ON LIFE JUST A FEW PUTTS AWAY FROM THE BIG-TIME By Jim Bebbington Denver native Becca Huffer is one of the LPGA’s grinders. She is among the LPGA pros plying her trade between Epson Tour, state tours, Pro-ams, Q-Schools, Monday qualifiers, and the occasional LPGA Tour opportunities. With solid games, Huffer and

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