How superstitious are most golfers?

Are we as bad as the baseball players who don’t change their socks during playoffs? Or hockey players who have to tape their sticks just the right way? Perhaps needing to wrap the adhesive around the top grip 16, not 17 times, and forbidding anyone to touch it after?

I used to say “no.” I never was a superstitious golfer. The most extreme lengths I ever went to was solely using wooden tees rather than plastic. Yet, that seems more like an equipment preference than a ritualistic habit.

That was all before I played in the 2023 LPGA Amateurs Championship Open in Bloomington, Indiana.

Now, I’m a competitive golfer up there with the MLB and NHL players.

After playing in the July 2023 major LPGA Amateurs tournament I can now only compete while drinking at least one Blue Powerade.

Allow me to explain.

It was a sweltering tournament in Bloomington at the Pfau Course, home of the Indiana University team. Gorgeous rolling hills, relatively short holes, and some forgiving greens. Should have been a piece of cake for myself and the other competitors in the Championship Flight. There were about 20 of us out of the 110 competitors all broken up based on handicaps.

However, our biggest advisory wasn’t our competitors but Mother Nature herself thanks to a sizzling first day on July 28, 2023.

I met LPGA Chapter members from Texas, Florida and New Mexico, so naturally I heard that steaming temperatures in the 90s is not the worst a golfer can endure. But for a Chicago golfer like myself who typically doesn’t hit the links once it’s north of 80 degrees, this former competitive high school golfer was hurting in Indiana.

All until I had a Blue Powerade. Ergo, my new found superstition.

Annie and Her Dad at LPGA Ams Championship Open

I was beyond blessed to be able to travel to the tournament with my dad, Darryl Krall, who kept his distance during my round but watched from the clubhouse on my first day of the tournament. As so many wonderful parents know, there is a sense of security for being invested without being overbearing.

So, when I made the turn on Day 1 to the clubhouse, dripping sweat after our front nine, it didn’t take a genius to realize I probably needed to start consuming something more than water and protein bars.

Enter stage left our true main character of this play – the Blue Powerade.

Darryl had a portable cooler with two Blue Powerades in it for my back nine. I was appreciative, exhausted, and needed a boost. Sound familiar?

I had already come in with a very solid front nine. Competing against some unbelievable golfers, I wasn’t hoping to take home the trophy but I certainly wanted to make a good showing in my first LPGA Amateurs tournament.

When what to my wondering eyes should appear, after drinking approximately three sips of the Blue Powerade, but a bombed driver approximately 210 yards on a par-5. Not a bad start. A straight second shot set me up for the chance to get on in regulation. Then, I proceeded to hole out from about 140 yards away. I had just scored the only eagle of the whole day at the tournament.

I’m sure my superstition about Blue Powerade seems less silly now.

While this isn’t an advertisement for a sports drink, it is just one of the examples of how my golf game changed after competing in the LPGA Amateurs Championship Open.

I also learned that you could sub in positions with the other LPGA Amateurs tournaments. Not to mention be slotted in to play on the major, four-person Cup Finals at the end of the year. Nuggets of knowledge which came courtesy of LPGA Amateurs Cincinnati Chapter member Brandy Del Favero who I met my first night at the tournament.

“On the LPGA Amateurs website where you register for tournaments, there is an area where you can put your name as a potential sub,” Del Favero told me during the tournament. “It’s also for people who are trying to create a team and can’t find someone. If you go there and add your name, then people will contact you.”

Discussing the adrenaline rush of participating in multiple LPGA Amateurs tournaments each year, Del Favero and I had the pleasure of eating dinner with Amy Nelson from the LPGA Amateurs Madison Chapter. She further cemented the sentiment Del Favero had highlighted, where you need not be nervous (as I in-part initially was) regarding competing in my first LPGA Amateurs tournament.

“There’s so many friendly people here,” Nelson emphasized in Bloomington. “I didn’t know anyone in the LPGA when I first signed up but I’ve met a lot of great people just through the competitions. In terms of handicap, there are certainly really competitive people but there are also a lot of people with higher handicaps so I wouldn’t let that deter you.”

It would actually be another member of the LPGA Amateurs Madison Chapter, Rebecca Swartz, who would completely change my golf game (almost as much as that Blue Powerade). Swartz and I played on the final day of competition. She noticed my drives were going extremely high. Not from poor rotation, rather I just hit a very high ball.

Sitting in the cart after seeing a number of high fly balls, Swartz told me, my ball was “ballooning.” She said I likely could get an extra 30-40 yards with a stiffer shaft and new tech on my driver. Lo and behold, when I got back to Chicago from Bloomington, I took a TaylorMade Stealth 2 out for a practice round.

It instantly pushed my drives to 240-260 yards every time.

So, if you need inspiration for a new driver or just a new drink order out on the course, I can speak first-hand to how life-changing in so many surprising ways one weekend with the LPGA Amateurs can be.