Murphy Closes Championship Career
October 31, 2012
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
The hardest-working athlete Dan Young has coached stuck around long after practices ended, perfecting shots often by the light of nearby street lamps.
The player was motivated by the chance to win the school’s first girls championship, and an individual title too after falling just short of both the year before.
It sounds like a scene out of a high school basketball movie, and Young has coached that sport at the prep and collegiate levels for 20 years.
But this fall he coached girls golf for the first time, and from senior Kelsey Murphy saw a drive like he’d never seen from one of his athletes before.
Motivated by just-misses from the season before, Murphy willed Plymouth to its first MHSAA team championship in any girls sport and claimed the individual title as well Oct. 19-20 at Michigan State’s Forest Akers East.
“That means a lot, coming from him,” Murphy said. “Our team really made the push this year.
“My main goal for my season was to win the team championship. Winning the individual with this was just a little extra. … It was a nice extra.”
And an extra-nice comeback story.
Murphy gets a Second Half High 5 after making good on her hard work heading into this fall, and sticking it out when tough weather and tough putting threatened that individual opportunity again.
She shot a first-round 73 at the Final to lead by a stroke with one round left in her high school career. But Murphy started the second 18 with five bogeys – and it was hard to not consider the 2011 Final, when Murphy led with four holes to play before finishing third.
Meanwhile, her team led by seven strokes, a nice advantage but hardly comfortable.
“It was mainly putting, and I just went back to the basics. (I learned in 2011) to always make sure you finish the round; any stroke will matter,” Murphy said. “I didn’t used to finish out. I’d give up some strokes at the end. It’s just telling yourself to focus on the next shot. You have to hit every shot.”
Murphy fought back with two birdies during her final nine holes, and finished with a second-round 75 and a two-day 178 – good for the individual win by a stroke. And her Wildcats cut their collective score by three from the first day to win the team championship by 11.
Young told his players the night before the tournament’s start that they deserved to win because of the work they’d put into this season. And at the front of that effort was Murphy.
“I’ve never had somebody who works harder than this girl,” Young said. “We’d get to the range at 2:45 and leave at 6 o’clock, and she’d be there until 7 o’clock every single night. It would be dark, and she’d be using street lights to putt and chip.
“She was grinding it out, not leaving any stone unturned. And the thing about it is all the other girls felt they needed to stay too.”
Murphy averaged 36 strokes for nine-hole matches this fall and 74 for 18-hole events. Her second-most impressive win might have been Aug. 23 at the Highland Invitational at Heather Highlands Golf Club, where she shot a 69 to finish ahead of a strong field. Murphy also shot a 74 to win the Regional at Ypsilanti’s Pine View Golf Course by four strokes as her team won that title by 19.
Keep in mind that Murphy is a relative newcomer to the sport. She’s been playing for a little more than five years, picking up the clubs for the first time after a dislocated knee ended her swimming aspirations.
But with younger sister Sydney in tow – the sophomore shot a 173 at the Final – and their grandmother Emma showing them the ropes, Kelsey picked up her new sport quickly. She’s always been a long hitter and drives the ball 240 yards consistently. Her work on pitching has paid off over the last year, and next up is a focus on longer approaches.
The last 10 days have been a lot of fun for the Wildcats, who have continued to hang out together and were recognized during the football team’s playoff game Friday. Murphy will sign to continue her career at Eastern Michigan University and is among favorites to win the statewide Miss Golf award later this month.
That would be another "nice extra" touch to a finish she'll remember most because of how she ended it.
“I was able to keep my game and get it back on track. It’s the lasting impression, to show I can get my game back,” Murphy said. “I knew through other rounds I could do it. But it was just getting back mentally on track and doing it and being able to come through.”
PHOTO: Plymouth's Kelsey Murphy prepares to tee off during the second round of this month's MHSAA Division 1 Final at Forest Akers East. (Click to see more from HighSchoolSportsScene.com).
After Finding Drive for Golf, O'Grady Grows Into GR Christian Ace, Finals Contender
By
Dean Holzwarth
Special for MHSAA.com
September 26, 2024
Lillian O’Grady will be the popular choice to win when she tees it up in this week’s Ottawa-Kent Conference White championship tournament at Thornapple Pointe.
However, at one point in her early life, the Grand Rapids Christian junior standout was admittedly uninterested in the sport in which she would soon thereafter excel.
“I really didn’t like golf when I was younger,” O’Grady said. “I thought it was boring and just not fun. My dad made me go out and practice.”
O’Grady was 7 years old when she started playing golf with her parents and siblings. She got her first hole-in-one a year later.
While that ace is the pinnacle accomplishment for every golfer, O’Grady was less than enthusiastic.
“I remember that I didn’t want to golf that day, and it was the second hole at Cascade Hills Country Club.” O’Grady recounted. “I was hitting off the U.S. Kids Golf Tees, and I hit my 5-iron right of the hole and it just rolled down into the hole. My brothers (Max and Sawyer) are still jealous of it.”
Despite her hole-in-one, which is still the only one she’s ever had, O’Grady still wasn’t fond of golf.
But that all changed a couple years later, when at age 10, she took part in a Drive, Chip & Putt Regional event at historic Muirfield Village Golf Club in Ohio.
“That’s when I realized I was pretty good at this and I could go pretty far with it,” O’Grady said. “From there I was like, ‘I want to play in college and be the best I can at it’.”
O’Grady became engulfed in the sport and kept her promise to be the best she could be by practicing diligently and taking part in several tournaments throughout the summers.
Fast forward to the summer of 2022, just before her freshman year, and O’Grady’s hard work paid off. She was named the 15-and-under Junior Girls Player of the Year by the Golf Association of Michigan (GAM).
“That was super cool and amazing,” O’Grady said. “I just played well and was consistent in a lot of those tournaments. I had a really great summer.”
“Consistent” is the word that best describes O’Grady, according to Grand Rapids Christian girls golf coach Seth Davies.
“I think I’ve seen her maybe hit two bad shots. She would say it was a lot more, but she doesn't have a lot of those kinds of shots,” he said. “She’s a little off-line at times, but it’s part of the competitiveness that makes her so good – and most of the time she’s just consistent.
“She’ll bomb a drive down the fairway, hit something on the green and then she has a really good short game. She has a good feel as a putter, too. If you look at her game, there isn’t anything that you could identify as a major weakness.”
O’Grady wasted little time making her mark on the high school scene.
As a freshman, she placed fourth at the Lower Peninsula Division 3 Final as an individual. Last year, she finished in a tie for second.
“My goal is to always win,” O’Grady said. “I’m a very competitive person, so even though I was a freshman and sophomore. I wasn't going to let that stop me from trying to win.
“My goal coming into high school was to win everything I could and be No. 1 on my team, which was building at that point.”
Over the last three years, O’Grady has been winning – a lot.
The two-time conference and Regional medalist has won all three of her 18-hole tournaments already this season and has a 35.57 scoring average in conference play. She’s had only one round over par.
“The last couple years she has worked a ton just to improve,” Davies said. “She has a goal of playing big-time college golf somewhere, and she has done a lot of work on her own. She enters all kinds of tournaments in the offseason, and she's working out and getting stronger and longer with all of her clubs. She is just someone that puts a lot of time and effort into it.”
O’Grady is thrilled with how she’s been swinging the club this fall and is looking forward to the postseason.
“I’ve been playing really well this year, and that makes me excited for state,” she said. “I always go into the state finals to play my own game and be confident in myself because I can’t control anybody else.”
While O’Grady has qualified for Finals the last two years as an individual, she hopes to have some company this time around.
“I really hope my team can join me this year,” she said. “We are ranked third in our region right now, so that’s a big goal for our team. It would change the experience for me.”
Davies believes O’Grady has all the tools and talent to make another run at the top spot.
“That’s one of her goals this year,” he said. “This year, next year. She has as good a shot as anybody in Division 3 to be a state champ.”
Dean Holzwarth has covered primarily high school sports for Grand Rapids-based WOOD-TV for five years after serving at the Grand Rapids Press and MLive for 16 years along with shorter stints at the Ionia Sentinel and WZZM. Contact him at [email protected] with story ideas for Allegan, Kent and Ottawa counties.
PHOTOS (Top) Grand Rapids Christian’s Lillian O’Grady powers through an approach during last season’s Lower Peninsula Division 3 Final at The Meadows at Grand Valley State. (Middle) O’Grady points out her score, which tied for second among individual competitors. (Top photo by High School Sports Scene; middle photo courtesy of the O’Grady family.)