S.C. native Ernst poised to make impact in U.S. Women’s Open

Clemson would have been the ideal college for Austin Ernst to attend as a highly-recruited golfer coming out of Seneca High School in 2010.

It was close to home, and therefore close to her father and swing instructor, Mark, the longtime director of golf operations at Cross Creek Plantation in Seneca.

There was one problem.

Clemson did not have a women’s golf program.

So Ernst chose Louisiana State University, where she won three tournaments in two years, including the 2011 individual NCAA Championship as a freshman, and led LSU to consecutive third-place national finishes.

With Clemson beginning official women’s golf competition in the fall of 2013, Ernst decided it was time to go back home to work more on her game with her father following her sophomore season in 2012.

There was one problem.

LSU would not release her to play for the Tigers.

So Ernst chose another route. She took a semester off and entered the 2012 LPGA Tour Qualifying Tournament as a 20-year-old amateur, turned pro after getting through the first two stages to at least guarantee status on the Symetra Tour, and joined the LPGA Tour in 2013 after tying for 11th in the final stage of Q-School.

Now in her fourth year on the LPGA with more than $1.26 million in earnings, Ernst enters the $4.5 million U.S. Women’s Open on Thursday looking to earn a second career win that would increase her stature on tour.

Though her journey didn’t go through Clemson as she had hoped, it has been successful nonetheless.

“I had won a national championship for LSU, so I could see why they wouldn’t want to see me go,” said Ernst, who is still reluctant to speak about her attempted transfer to the Upstate. “But I felt that coming back home would help me get better. It’s one of those things where at the time you don’t really understand what’s going on. But after how everything worked out it ended up being great. Otherwise I might not have turned pro.

“I won in my second year and my game has progressed every year.”

Ernst is coming off her best finish and second top-10 of the season, a tie for fourth Sunday at 8-under 280 in the Cambia Portland Classic at Columbia Edgewater Country Club, where she won her lone LPGA Tour title in 2014 in a playoff over I.K. Kim after shooting a 14-under 274.

With brother and former Coastal Carolina men’s golfer Drew as her caddie for the past three years, Ernst has shown flashes of brilliance. In addition to her win in her second season, Ernst tied a tournament record with a 62 in the third round of the 2013 Portland Classic while playing alone with the starting tee time and finishing in just 2 hours and 40 minutes.

Ernst is ranked 64th in the Rolex Women’s World Golf Rankings as she attempts to achieve the level of play and consistency of No. 1 Lydia Ko and No. 2 Brooke Henderson – both teenagers.

Drew is a believer.

“I honestly think she could be No. 1 in the world,” he said. “I told her I wouldn’t caddie for her if I didn’t believe that, or she was at least a top five or top 10 player. Lydia’s a great player, but I do believe Austin has enough talent and enough game to contend with her week in and week out. She’s shown that when she gets hot she’s hard to beat. It’s about gaining a little more consistency. She drives it well and is a very good ball-striker, and she’s plenty long. … It’s really a difference of a couple 10-footers per round.”

Reason to believe

Ernst, 24, whose notable junior career included a win in the 2006 Charles Tilghman Junior Championship at the Surf Golf and Beach Club in North Myrtle Beach, attended summer school following her freshman year at LSU yet reached the semifinals of the 2011 U.S. Women’s Amateur – the only significant event she entered that summer.

She got into the first LPGA Tour major of 2012 – the Kraft Nabisco Championship – as the top-ranked American female amateur and made the cut. “I didn’t play very well and made the cut, and if I would have played well I figured I could have contended, so that was kind of eye-opening,” Ernst said. “That kind of helped sway that decision to think about turning pro.”

She did enough as an LPGA rookie in 2013, with a pair of top-10s, to retain her playing privileges for 2014. “So it all worked out,” Ernst said.

She picked up Drew as a caddie midway through her rookie year. The 2010 South Carolina Amateur champion graduated from CCU in 2011 and played about a year on mini-tours. “I had kind of gotten to the point where there just was not much desire to play anymore, so I was kind of just trying to grind it out and not having too much fun,” Drew said.

He missed the cut in the one Web.com Tour event he participated in after Monday qualifying, and the next week he caddied for Austin for the first time “just to kind of do it because it was in the Bahamas, and she ended up enjoying having me on the bag and wanted to continue,” Drew said. “We’ve been at it ever since.

“It was good being out there [as a caddie]. I enjoyed it, seeing it from the other side, and obviously I felt like I could lend a little insight and help her, because she’s obviously very talented. She’s got a lot of game.”

Drew, 26, isn’t sure how much longer he’ll caddie for his sister, or if he’s going to make a career out of caddying. “Honestly I don’t know,” he said. “I enjoy working for her, but it’s also tough being on the road all the time. It’s part of the gig, and the good definitely outweighs the bad.”

The siblings grew up regularly playing together, and Ernst believes she benefits from her brother’s playing talents, ability to read greens, and familiarity with her game and personality.

“He knows my game better than just about anybody else. The only person that would maybe know my game better is my dad,” Ernst said. “It’s nice having somebody that you can lean on whenever you need them.

“I can kind of tell him the shot I see and he can tell me if he agrees with that shot or he doesn’t. At the end of the day it’s my decision. He does a great job. He’s the best caddie I think for me, personality-wise and how good of a player he was.”

Ernst had seven top-25 finishes in addition to her win in her second LPGA season. “More than anything it just gives you confidence,” Ernst said. “You know you can win out there and play every week.”

Last year she recorded 12 top-25 finishes in 29 starts, including a tie for second at the Yokohama LPGA Classic in late August when she didn’t make a bogey in her final 40-plus holes. “It was a very consistent year,” she said.

This season she has made 12 cuts in 15 tournaments but has posted just five under-par weekends so her finishes have been largely mediocre.

She was also impacted by injuries early in the season. Discomfort in her back and shoulder on her left side caused her to pull out of the HSBC Women’s Champions in Singapore in early March.

Ernst is 72nd on tour in average driving distance at 254.3 yards, and her exceptional ball-striking is reflected in her greens in regulation rank of 23rd at 71.4 percent. But she is 140th in putting average and 127th in putts per green in regulation.

“Obviously the goal this year is to contend more in majors, contend more every week,” she said. “My game is much more consistent now and that’s why I think I can contend more and more. The main thing for me is to get my short game a little better, inside 100 yards and chipping and putting. If I can get that better and better I feel I can contend every week.”

She has lived for the past three years in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., where she can practice year-round and travel more easily. She visits her father for instruction when she can, he annually travels to Florida to work with her for two weeks prior the start of the LPGA season, and he’ll work with her at a few tournaments on tour.

Ernst believes she continues to make progress.

“I go to courses now and realize how much better I am now than I was my first year out,” she said. “Now if I’m not hitting it well I can get it around, I can kind of play to certain spots where I know I can get it up and down. I think that’s just knowing my game a little bit more and knowing how to get a score out of a bad day.”

This story was originally published July 6, 2016 at 7:58 PM with the headline "S.C. native Ernst poised to make impact in U.S. Women’s Open."