Emma Talley had her second straight top-10 finish — and fourth of the season — in the Marathon Classic at Sylvania Classic where she had rounds of 68-67-70-68 to finish 11-under par that pushed her earnings to over $338,000 in her rookie season. However, she still has one major goal in mind for the rest of her first season on the LPGA Tour.
“Fingers crossed, I want to win a tournament, but that’s obviously really hard,” said Talley, a three-time Kentucky state high school champion at Caldwell County and a NCAA champion at Alabama. “I mean, players go 20, 30 years and they never win a tournament.
“But I want to win a tournament, and a couple more top 10s would be great. And I want to make it into Asia (for the tour tournaments there), and I think I did that, so that’s good.”
She’s now 35th on the LPGA money list and up to 16th in driving accuracy at 78.1 percent.
Her father, Dan Talley, didn’t get to watch a lot of Sunday’s final round because his 5-month-old grandchild was visiting and took most of his attention.
“I am still working, so we don’t get to see her play as much as you think,” Dan Talley said. “We try to go watch her play about once a month. For years I caddied for her, including a bunch of big tournaments.
“But she is really playing well right now. It gets harder at the higher level to compete and do well because there are so many good players. She got to play 8-10 LPGA events before she turned pro. Only about one third of the rookies keep their (tour) card each year. It looks like she’ll do that, so we are really happy.”
Talley was scheduled to be in Rockford, Ill., Monday for a clinic on an off week for the LPGA Tour. She also did one several weeks ago in Wisconsin.
“She does a lot of stuff like that,” Talley’s father said. “She can get exhausted pretty easy but she likes to be out doing things.”
She’ll be back in Kentucky Wednesday to play in the pro-am at the Barbasol Championship at Keene Trace Golf Club in Jessamine County. It won’t be her first time to play in a pro-am before a PGA Tour event as she did the same thing at the Honda Classic while she was in college.
“It’s good that she gets to do those things,” Dan Talley said.
Emma Talley says it has been a “good year” that she hopes continues to get better.
“I’ve accomplished a lot of goals of mine, and I’m looking forward to hopefully doing the rest of my goals, because I haven’t achieved all of them,” she said. “I’ve had a couple good weeks now and I’m looking forward to an off week and then heading overseas (for the Scottish Open and then the British Open).”
Barbasol Championship officials are appreciative that part of her “off” week includes helping with their event. It’s something she didn’t have to do but her presence only adds to the “home” feeling for the PGA Tour event.
“Golf is so hard. You can have injuries, bad weeks, bad months,” Dan Talley said. “Golf is a fickle game. It’s hard to consistently do well. All professional sports are tough, but golf is really tough. You have veteran players who play for years and then have new, talented players coming out every year. That’s why we are just tickled to death with how she is doing.”
(STORY BY LARRY VAUGHT)