Delaware County native, 17, shooting toward golf stardom

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - Ginger Howard, a 17-year-old Delaware County native, just off the golf course after flying through the first stage of qualifying for the LPGA Tour, can see her future.

"My goal is to be a top-ranked LPGA professional," said Howard, whose family has deep Philadelphia roots. "That's my dream."

This isn't some quixotic quest, more like the continuation of a path. Howard, who turned professional in June, has devoted most of the last decade to golf, much of it at the IMG Leadbetter Golf Academy in Bradenton, Fla. She's serious to the point of giving up that most common of teenage pursuits, Facebook.

"It, like, consumed me," Howard said of the Web site. "It was bad. It was very addictive. It's not a regret of mine. It was a learning experience. It's just a distraction. Distractions lead to no putting every single night."

She has an eight-foot putting mat in her bedroom, she explained.

"I like to make 100 putts in a row, five-footers," Howard said. "After that, I like to see how much I can do. One day - a week ago - I got to 1,000. I was happy about that. It took me about two hours."

Her teaching pro at the IMG Leadbetter Academy said Howard's swing is refined and repeatable, her "tremendous" putting the strength of her game - but her ability to handle pressure when it is applied is her most impressive trait.

"Being able to hit the shot when you have to hit it," said Nathan Bertsch, an IMG Leadbetter Academy pro who has worked with Howard for 18 months. "Anybody can have a good day. She's able to hit the shot when she has to hit the shot. To me, there's no question she's ready. I honestly think that it's going to come to a point where she's going to get silly good."

Growing up in West Philadelphia, Gianna Howard, Ginger's mother, couldn't have predicted any of this when Miss Tootsie, the neighborhood matchmaker, called Gianna across Catherine Street to meet this young man Robert, who lived not far away, at 62d and Race.

Just out of West Catholic High, studying nursing at Presbyterian Medical Center, how could Gianna know that she and this man, also a West Catholic graduate, would get married and have four children and eventually end up in Florida, all because of a sport neither had ever played in Philly?

Growing up, Robert Howard had been a serious tennis player. Everybody says the competitiveness in the family comes from him. After playing the sport at Temple and briefly working as an instructor at the Arthur Ashe Tennis Center in Manayunk, Robert Howard had joined the corporate world and soon took up golf, getting hooked, he said, to the point where Gianna, working her own full-time nursing job, got tired of his being gone for hours every Saturday and Sunday. ("No problem. I'll take them with me.")

After first living in Sharon Hill, Delaware County, the Howards had moved to Maryland. Ginger was 6 years old, and her sister, Robbi, was 4 when they first picked up a club. They've never stopped. When they began picking up age-group trophies, the family decided to go all-in and move to Florida to see how far this could go. After a stop in Jacksonville, they ended up at the IMG Academy, the laboratory for big dreams in all sorts of sports.

After being home-schooled in the morning, the IMG Leadbetter Golf Academy has been Ginger and Robbi's afternoon home. Their 8-year-old brother, ArJay, now is there, too. The whole family is driving this week to Indianapolis, where Robbi, 15, is in the Junior PGA national tournament.

Last week was the biggest tournament of Ginger Howard's life, this 72-hole Stage I of the LPGA's Q School, featuring 146 players from 19 countries, with the top 50 advancing to the second of three stages. After 54 holes, Howard was at 11-under par, in second place behind only the current teenage phenom of the sport, 16-year-old Alexis Thompson. Playing the last day with Thompson, Howard battled back from early struggles for a 72 and finished tied for fourth, easily advancing.

Never over par in her earlier rounds, when she shot 70, 67, and 68, Howard made the turn at 3-over that last day. Her goal at that point, she said later, was to get back to even for the day. "I got a little bit angry," Howard said. Her irons got dialed in, and four birdies followed, including at 17 and 18, as she reached her goal on the number.

Why turn pro so young, spurning top colleges that already had dangled scholarship offers at her?

To put it simply: That's where the money is.

"I think earning money for playing well, that motivated her," Gianna Howard said.

"Yeah, it's a good reward," said Ginger Howard, adding with a smile: "And then ice cream after."

This isn't an anti-college decision, both her parents said, reiterating that they know the value of a college degree. Gianna Howard said there's no reason Ginger can't go to college on a different timetable. Right after Howard turned pro, she played four tournaments on the SunCoast Ladies Series minitour, winning three of them, earning $5,700. The competition isn't LPGA caliber, but Bertsch, her teaching pro, thought this represented another threshold.

Howard was tied for first going into the final round of her first tournament. Bertsch said a couple of veteran pros in that tournament wondered why she was turning pro. She showed them, shooting a 31 on the front nine, finishing with a 64 for a 9-stroke victory.

The family has talked about how there have been only four African Americans golfers on the LPGA Tour, only one currently, and none has won an LPGA tournament.

"I don't think of it so much, but I do know that I am the top African American teenager right now," Ginger Howard said. "I thought about it a lot at the Junior Ryder Cup [last year] because I was the first African American to make the team."

Ginger Howard may still like to go get a cup of cookie dough ice cream after good rounds and calls her dad right after a tournament round if he isn't there. But she wants to make sure even her family understands she has the mind-set of a pro now.

"Sometimes I'll try to say some encouraging things to her," Gianna Howard said, "and she's like, 'Mom, you don't even need to say to me. I'm past that.' "

17-year-old golf pro Ginger Howard talks about how she got started in the sport and her goals. www.philly.com/gingerhowardEndText