HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (WHNT) — Huntsville native Michaela Morard is bringing home some hardware after winning her first professional golf tournament. She beat out 122 athletes from across the world.
Morard said golf has been her life as long as she can remember.
“My dad would leave the house all the time, and I, being a young kid, would just want to go with him,” she said. “I didn’t know where it was, but I wanted to go, and it turns out he was coming here to Valley Hill and playing golf.”
Michaela quickly found a love for the game.
She was a standout player in high school, winning two state championships and making her way down to Tuscaloosa, where she transferred to USC during her collegiate career.
“I think it was in high school when I was playing really well in tournaments and winning a bunch of awards… that’s when I really thought to myself, ‘okay, I can do this as a profession after college if I really wanted to,” she said.
Now, as a professional golfer, she hit a huge milestone: claiming her first tournament win.
“I haven’t felt this good about my game in a really long time,” she said. “I was having fun out there. I wasn’t getting ahead of myself. I’ve been really working on the mental side of game of the game.”
She said the off-season was long and full of hard work.
I would say that the game that I took to this tournament that I just won, I’ve been working on for five months,” she said. I went through a swing change, a pretty major swing change, over the off-season in the winter, and it was much needed.”
She describes the moments before she won:
“So my putt to win was a three-footer and I was nervous over it, so I did shut the face a little bit and it lipped in on the left side, and when I was walking off, I was just very relieved that it went in,” she said.
“After I hugged one of my playing competitors, I turned to my right, and there were people running towards me with water, and so that’s when I knew that I had won.”
While she’s the one putting in the work on the course every day, she said it wouldn’t be possible without the support of family, coaches, and friends.
“They have been there through every step of the way…even the ups and the downs and some of the downs have been pretty down, but they’ve always been my rock throughout all of it.”
Because of the win, Morard gets an exemption to an Epson tour event, where she will play in another tournament in three weeks in Las Vegas.
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