When this pro golfer isn’t chasing her LPGA dreams, she’s delivering food for Door Dash
The best high school athletes — the ones that lead their teams to championships, and earn all-city, all-county, all-state or maybe even All-American honors as individuals — often go on to become good-to-great athletes in college, or some sort of developmental league.
But the vast majority of the young men and women who have hopes of ascending to the top of their respective sports eventually come to a realization that we non-star athletes figured all along: Becoming a “major-league” athlete is very, very difficult, if not impossible.
Today, we’re introducing you to four of those from the Charlotte area, two men and two women who were sports stars at local high schools; who still maintain home bases here; who have struggled in their pursuit of stable top-tier pro careers; but who haven’t given up yet.
Anna Redding is now in her fourth season playing golf professionally on the Epson Tour, which serves as the developmental tour for the LPGA and is designed to help up-and-coming players qualify for it.
Sounds like a decent gig, right? She certainly doesn’t blame anyone for assuming that.
“When someone asks me what I do, I say, ‘Oh, I’m a professional golfer,’ and their first response is, ‘Oh my gosh! That’s so cool!’ And I’m like, ‘Yes, it is,’” says the 26-year-old former Charlotte Observer girls golfer of the year and ex-University of Virginia star. Then she quickly, always, adds this: “’But there’s a lot more to this that you don’t understand.’”
Mainly, she’s talking about the brutal financial cost of chasing her dreams.
Let’s use last season as an example. In 2022, Redding competed in 13 Epson Tour events, each of which cost $450 out of her own pocket just to register for; that’s a total of $5,850 on entry fees alone. She often had access to free lodging via host families, but she had to either fly or drive herself to every tournament, and paid for all meals not provided by her host family. If a course was really difficult to walk, she’d hire a caddy — who she was personally responsible for compensating. Then there were equipment costs.
All told, her expenses easily amounted to tens of thousands of dollars.
Redding’s total 2022 winnings? $6,381.
So after returning home to the Charlotte area for the off-season last October, she kept working on her game, at least four hours a day six days a week, hoping 2023 would be the year she broke through to the LPGA. But she also dedicated non-golf time to something that’s become another off-season tradition: working as a Door Dash delivery driver, to help make ends meet.
“It’s a grind,” Redding says of the Epson Tour. “I think only the top five actually make a living on this tour. You do kind of know that going in, so you try and get the help, or have another job to help you get around.”
The good news, she says, is that there are individuals at both Cabarrus Country Club (where she played as a student at Cannon School in Concord) and Carolina Golf Club (where she trains now) who have provided monetary support to help defray some Epson Tour-related costs. Also, this past spring, she picked up a sponsor — Access Golf — that she says will relieve “a little bit” of the financial burdens.
The less-good news is that she’s earned just $3,324 to date this season, and hasn’t been in the money at all since early May. It would take a minor miracle for Redding to meet the qualifying standards for a 2024 LPGA Tour card at this point (which are a bit complicated to explain but largely involve needing to be among the upper echelon of earners on the Epson Tour).
Still, she remains hopeful that her day will come eventually. That she’ll recapture the magic of her pandemic-shortened 2020 campaign, when she made seven of nine cuts on her way to earning a second-place finish, two thirds, and a total of more than $35,000 in winnings. That the mental struggles that plagued her in 2021 — manifesting as tension in her hands and stomach, leading to serious problems driving off the tee — are permanently behind her.
She has a taste of what’s waiting for her if and when she makes it.
As a newly minted Virginia graduate in 2019, Redding received a sponsor’s invitation to play in the LPGA Marathon Classic at Highland Meadows Golf Club in Sylvania, Ohio, four years ago. She shot an impressive 1-under par 70 in the first round, but was 5-over in Round 2 and missed the cut.
She never imagined that, four years later, she’d still be waiting for a second chance at an LPGA event.
But Redding remains optimistic that she won’t have to wait forever.
“I believe in myself,” she says, as she sits in the restaurant at Carolina Golf Club during a break between self-coached practice session, “and I believe in my ability, and I don’t want to stop until I’ve reached my goals.”
At the same time, she’s trying to be realistic. “If I’m doing all the right things and I’m not making it, then something’s gotta change. And if I can’t figure it out and I’m just going through the motions, then maybe it’ll be time to do something else.” Redding pauses, and sighs. “I don’t know. I really hope not. Because I love this game and ...
“I mean, you never know. You just never know.”
This story was originally published August 2, 2023 at 6:00 AM.
