The LPGA Tour is in Texas this week and the Tour doesn’t have just one hometown favorite, but multiple hometown favorites this week. There are eleven Texas natives in the field this week, including three players with LPGA wins under their belts.
Three players that are currently residing in Texas Brittany Lang (McKinney), Angela Stanford (Fort-Worth) and Gerina Piller (Plano) all stressed the importance of having an LPGA event in the state of Texas and what it means to them.
“I love that all my friends get to come enjoy it.” Lang said. “I think it's great, too, because we bring out a ton of people from McKinney and Stonebridge and they get a great view of the LPGA and they start following, so it's great for us.”
Former TCU Horned Frog Angela Stanford emphasized the location of Las Colinas Country Club and how it helps bring familiar faces out to watch the Volunteers of America North Texas Shootout.
“Seeing people that they have purple on and they're yelling, Go Frogs,” Stanford said. “That's fun. I actually like the location. I like it where we can pull from Dallas, we can pull from Fort Worth…the metroplex is so big, you want to be central here to pull everybody.”
For Gerina Piller, playing at home is always great, but sometimes it does create a little confusion in her schedule and regular tournament routine.
“It's kind of odd because you're at your house,” Piller said. “And I don't know about these two girls but I get like this, cleaning out my closet, and I'm like, hold on, you need to stay focused, we're at a tournament here…but like they said, it's great just to be somewhere familiar…you just have that feeling and that sense of the connection with the city and the town, and you just feel like you're ‑‑ like people are behind you and they're rooting for you.”
It will not just be the people that will be familiar for the Texas players this week, but the course here at Las Colinas Country Club.
“It's kind of nice because I know we all have home courses but it's kind of like a secondary home,” Stanford said. “That speaks volumes for the people here and the staff here because they have welcomed us and they have welcomed the LPGA, and that's awesome.”
McKinney resident Brittany Lang admitted that she does not make the drive out to the course here as much as she should, but has still had taken the opportunity to get a few good looks at the course.
“I think I played three rounds recently,” Lang said. “I played one with Angela and then two with my husband, but it's good to get out and just learn something else, and the course was soggy the last time, so it's a completely different course to last year with it being firm last year.”
As for Piller, when she has the chance to be at home during a break from the Tour, she tries to stay away from the golf course. That doesn’t mean that she didn’t have an insider’s perspective on the course though.
“I actually caddied for husband in a U.S. Open qualifier here before they even had the tournament,” Piller said. “So I was like, yeah, I felt like I had a one‑up on everybody.”
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