My Golf Journey: Competitive Golfing Girl Turned Sports Broadcaster

“Can you hear me alright, Annie?” A quick but crucial question that comes through my earpiece hidden beneath my well-coiffed brunette curls hermetically sealed into place with a generous dose of hairspray

“Got you, Taylor.” I fire back to my T.V. producer through the ABC emblazoned microphone in my hand as I stare down the barrel of a video camera the size of a small suitcase.

This is a routine question and answer I’ve done a hundred times before.

I’m about to go LIVE on the local evening news.

A mic check follows soon after to make sure my audio levels are synced up with the video channels that will travel from the legendary international golf tournament the Ryder Cup. Hosted at Whistling Straits in Sheboygan, WI, in 2021, the Ryder Cup was being held 45 minutes away from Green Bay and my station WBAY. I was the lucky broadcast news reporter who was tasked with investigating three days of tournament play at one of the most premiere and arguably exciting golf competitions in the world. A rowdy gathering hosted every two years across the American and European continents which is more comparable to a Super Bowl than the Masters.

I’m familiar with the mic check and ear piece choreography I’ve just performed. It’s a dance I’ve done standing in front of the aftermath of a police officer being shot on-duty, cargo freights trying to sail under broken city bridges, and before the Packers take on their eternal rival, the Chicago Bears.

Yet, THIS live shot is different. This time, I’m breaking news I never thought I’d be fortunate enough to share with the world. The United States team has just beaten Europe for the 2021 Ryder Cup. It’s a sea of red, white, and blue on Sunday September 26, 2021, in Wisconsin that would have rivaled any Fourth of July celebration in the nation’s Capital.

Annie Krall with her parents at the 2021 Ryder Cup.

So, how did I get here?

I was one of the few Green Bay ABC news reporters with even a fundamental knowledge of golf. I’ll never forget when my Green Bay news director asked me, “Annie, you like golf, right? Do you want to cover the Ryder Cup for us?”

I didn’t just like golf, I loved it.

It was a lifelong passion and area of expertise I didn’t realize that would help me so much professionally. In fact, unbeknownst to me, I started preparing for this story assignment at the ripe old age of six when I started golfing competitively.

If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me “did you get into golf because your dad plays?” I’d have a purse size comparable to Minjee Lee clocking in at $3.8 million in official winnings for the 2022 season, according to the LPGA. Much to my economic chagrin but actually to my dad’s delight, it wasn’t he who first encouraged me to golf. It was my mother, Joan Etten-Krall. She put me in golf lessons starting at six. Admittedly, “lessons” is potentially an over exaggeration since the local Northwest Wisconsin summer program for first graders involved putting approximately five-feet from a very flat green and hoping to simply get a ball airborne off the driving range. However, something clicked in my recently graduated kindergarten brain.

I loved and understood golf.

Annie Krall playing golf in high school.

I loved the mechanics of the sport. How if you could do the same movement, over and over again, it would result in a stronger and straighter result. A self-proclaimed math and science student from very early on, I relished in trying to calculate the correct force needed to project my tiny white golf ball, only slightly smaller than my own little fist, into the hole. While my peers found it oftentimes more enjoyable to chase each other around the putting green with their putters swinging above their heads like swords destined for battle, I found solace in the solitude of the sport.

Not too much solitude though.

In fact, I was able to make a lot of friends through golf. A group of local first-grade girls and I became pals thanks to the sport. We each looked forward to Friday mornings at 8:00am to see each other at the local golf course. It was the first time I found a sorority of golfers. Luckily, it wouldn’t be the last. Plus, it didn’t hurt that I had my best friend in the world at all the Wisconsin golf lessons. I was always joined by my twin sister, Katie Krall. She was just as driven and dedicated to the sport as I was. In fact, at the age of six, she was much better at judging the speed of a 10-15 foot putt than I was. A skill that to this day rings true whenever we hit the links together.

Two decades ago, I won my first medal in golf for the summer lessons end of season competition. An all-around putt, pitch, and drive contest that is more comparable to a gymnastics meet than your typical total score golf tournament. However, I won the six-year-old division and realized I was pretty darn good at this sport; I would eventually come to find just how good this sport would be to me.

As a first grader, getting dressed in a collared shirt that would barely fit one of my childhood teddy bears now, I learned that golf was about friendship, fun and focus. It made me more confident about how much control I could have in my life. The kind of speedy relationships you could build over a shared interest. Not to mention the rewards that come from taking a risk. A sentiment every golfer knows who has ever tried to hole out an eagle or birdie putt only to maddeningly leave it five feet short.

It was a risk for me to move away from my Chicago-based family and become a news and sports reporter in Green Bay, WI. I didn’t know a soul in the city. Life was moving fast as I unpacked boxes in June 2021 from Illinois and into my downtown Green Bay apartment. Up until that point my whole life had been in Chicago, attending Northwestern University for my undergraduate career and also getting a masters degree from the Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications. However, had I solely stayed in my Chicago comfort zone I wouldn’t have had a multitude of life experiences – including covering the Ryder Cup. An opportunity I now cherish.

Golf, and by extension life, has taught me two things. Always club up when hitting into the wind, and let it rip. As the saying goes: fortune favors the bold.

Admittedly, I’d make one small edit to the philosophy: fortune favors the prepared.

“And we’re LIVE in 3…2…1. Que Annie!”