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John Sudbrink / Special to the Daily Press
There had to be something more productive Mina Harigae could do with her time.
She couldn’t help but think that was true last September in France when she shot 10 over par through two rounds and came nowhere near making the cut at the Evian Championship, one of the five major tournaments on the LPGA Tour. It was a fleeting thought, but understandable considering only three golfers finished worse in the tournament — an unacceptable fate for a golfer who once was considered a can’t-miss up-and-comer.
“I was like, ‘Is this really what I want to do?’ ” said Harigae, a Monterey, Calif., native. “Then, when I thought about it, my natural instinct pushed me and I thought, ‘All right. What can I do to get better? I’m not ready to quit yet.’ I had a great offseason, so now I feel like I know what I’m doing.”
She offered tangible proof Thursday she’s heading in the right direction, posting a 4-under-par 67 in the soggy first round of the Kingsmill Championship. Harigae, 28, enters the second round tied for eighth, just two shots behind five players tied for the lead, which is the kind of position she grew accustomed to being in almost a decade ago.
At the tender age of 12 in 2001, she won her first of four consecutive California Women’s Amateur Championships. She’d go on to win the 2007 U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links Championship, one of the biggest tournaments on the amateur slate.
Considered one of the top three juniors in the sport at the time, she made the Junior Solheim Cup team in 2007 and the U.S. Curtis Cup roster in 2008. It seemed nothing could derail her bright future in the game.
After spending less than a semester at Duke in 2008, she decided to turn pro. Her success continued in 2009, when she won three times on the LPGA Futures Tour (now called the Symetra Tour) and finished atop the money list on her way to earning Futures Tour Player and Rookie of the Year honors.
When she filled her schedule with mainly LPGA Tour events beginning in 2010, Harigae’s career hit a wall almost immediately. She could never find the same consistently strong game at the top level.
In 178 LPGA events, she’s finished top-10 just seven times and never better than fifth. She’s never finished better than 15th in 33 majors, missing the cut 14 times.
“Last year was probably my bottom,” said Harigae, who entered the week 346th in the world rankings. “I played worse the year before, but I think it was kind of a trend.”
This year, she’s missed the cut in five of six tournaments, but Thursday may have represented a turning point.
Hitting 11 of 14 fairways and 16 of 18 greens in regulation, Harigae took advantage of soft conditions and forgiving early-round pin placements with birdies at Nos. 1, 2, 7 and 16. She carded pars on every other hole, managing to avoid the lush rough on the River Course.
“I was just trying to keep it in play,” said Harigae, who played Monday in a 36-hole Women’s U.S. Open sectional qualifier at Contra Costa Country Club in Pleasant Hill, Calif., finishing fourth (had to finish top two to qualify) with an even-par score of 144. “The rough is really high this week, so hit fairways and you have a good chance of getting close to the pin.”
Getting back to some of her roots and getting serious about the mental approach during the offseason helped her regain some of the old edge. She won five tournaments from October through February on the Cactus Tour, a pro satellite circuit in Arizona.
Harigae also reconnected with Jeff Fisher, the coach she worked with when she enjoyed her most successful years as an amateur and on the Futures Tour.
“I basically feel like I’m playing like my old self again,” said Harigae, who added she’s consulting with Dr. Deborah Graham, a sports psychologist based near San Antonio who has worked with nearly 400 PGA, LPGA and Champions Tour players, 21 of whom have won 31 majors, according to her website. “In the last three years, it’s always been that I was searching for something, or something wasn’t quite natural for me.”
Fisher, who heads the Fisher Bryan Golf Academy at Longbow Golf Club in Mesa, Ariz., has simplified Harigae’s approach, getting her to work around some of the quirks in her game and reintroducing her to some fun on the course.
On May 7, Fisher had Harigae aiming for shots over buildings and off a tent to try to bounce them into buckets. He had her play from the ladies’ tees at Superstition Mountain Golf & Country Club in Gold Canyon, Ariz. The result was a 9-under round.
“I told her, ‘We’ve got to get your swagger back a little bit,’ ” Fisher said.
“For me, being Mina is feeling like she’s a world beater. … It’s when she thinks, ‘I’m going to hit this shot, because it’s the shot I want to hit.’ She’s never had a technically perfect swing. Her grip is a little jacked up, her thought process is a little jacked up. … When she embraces her imperfections and she learns to play with those, I think that’s going to ramp her to where she always should’ve been. She’s been an underachiever to this point, in my opinion, and I don’t think that’s going to be the case for much longer.”
In terms of results, she’s a long way from the player she was during her phenom days, but at least she feels like she has that kind of game within reach.
“I can recapture it,” Harigae said. “I’m back with my old coach, so now I’m hitting it like I was back then.
“Before now, I was kind of like hoping for a good tournament. It was very stressful. I was hitting and hoping. Even if I make a mistake, it’s good to know why, but I was kind of in the dark back then. Now, everything is much clearer and I’m in a much better place.”