Walker's 80 at the ShopRite LPGA Classic was quite a ride

   The opening round of the ShopRite LPGA Classic Friday was no day at the beach for Brynn Walker, Radnor’s two-time PIAA Class AAA champion, as she finished with a 9-over 80, but it was anything but boring.

   Walker, who turned 18 this week and will graduate at Radnor next week, earned her spot in the field with a 2-under 69 over the Stockton Seaview Hotel and Golf Club’s Bay Course in an open qualifier that started in the rain Monday and concluded Tuesday.

   In a story in Friday’s Philadelphia Inquirer, Walker, who will start her collegiate career at North Carolina later this year, was wary of being too pumped up for her first start in an LPGA event.

    “I know my heart will be pumping so hard that you can feel your shirt moving,” Walker told The Inquirer’s Joe Juliano. “I’ve had that happen a few times before. Maybe experience will help me.

   “I just think as you get older, you get more level each time and you get a little bit more comfortable  with that feeling of being uncomfortable. So I think I’ll be pretty pumped and the adrenaline will be pumping for a couple of holes. That‘s the best feeling ever.”

    Walker started on the 10^th hole at Seaview and went bogey, bogey, bogey, bogey, quadruple bogey, bogey. OK, so she’s 9-over after six holes of her first start in an LPGA event. Her response? Four straight birdies. I don’t care what you want to say about the first six holes, but four straight birdies just to get your breath back is pretty special.

    Walker sprinkled a couple of pars in on the front nine after making birdie at one, but she also had a couple of double bogeys and a bogey. She finished up with a birdie, her fifth of the round.

   Walker will tee off at 7:37 Saturday morning for what will likely be the last round of her first shot at an LPGA Tour event. Regardless of what happens, Walker will be a better player next week than she was this week for the experience. And she was a pretty darn good player this week.

    One other observation from the ShopRite leaderboard comes from following the career of former Chichester standout Aurora Kan during her career at Purdue because the top 10 following Round 1 is littered with Boilers.

   South African Paula Reto, a freshman on Purdue’s 2010 national championship team, is tied for the lead with ShopRite defending champion Anna Nordqvist and Ai Miyazato after Reto carded a 7-under 64 Friday.

   The 26-year-old, third-year pro continues to pop up on LPGA leaderboards. Reto was a senior and Kan a sophomore on Purdue’s 2013 team that finished third at the NCAA Championship.

   Two of Devin Brouse’s former standouts are in the group tied for seventh at 5-under 66, including the star of Purdue’s 2010 national champions, Canadian Maude-Aimee Leblanc.

   Nobody has ever questioned the talent of the long-hitting Leblanc. The 27-year-old is in her second try at the LPGA Tour with a back injury in between. A good finish at the shore would give Leblanc a confidence booster she could desperately use.

   The other Boilermaker tied for seventh after a 66 is Christel Boeljon, a 28-year-old from the Netherlands who has done most of her best work on the Ladies European Tour. Boeljon, who kept the heat on Nordqvist to the finish in taking second at the ShopRite a year ago, left Purdue after three successful years as the Boilermakers were building toward that 2010 championship.

   Because man cannot exist on blogs alone, I contributed a couple of stories to Joe Burkhardt’s Tri-State Golfer that you can find in pro shops all around the region. It’s a special edition focusing on the return of the Champions Tour to the Philadelphia area for next week’s Constellation Senior Players Championship at Philadelphia Cricket Club, a major championship on the senior circuit.

   I have a story recapping all the Senior/Champions Tour events in the Philadelphia area. I went back over the long run of the Bell Atlantic Classic from its days at Chester Valley Golf Club to Hartefeld National before dying as the Instinet Classic at TPC at Jasna Polana in Princeton, N.J. I covered a lot of the events at Chester Valley and the memorable first year at Hartefeld when local legend Jay Sigel shot a 27 on the front nine of his third round, a record for nine holes that still stands in the Champions record book, on his way to the victory.

   I also mention the two U.S. Senior Opens staged at Saucon Valley Country Club – I covered the 2000 edition won by the greatest senior ever, Hale Irwin – the Senior PGA Championship held at Aronimink Golf Club and the Atlantic City Senior International, held just once when the Senior Tour was literally just getting off the ground.

   And I have a feature on Joe Daley, a Plymouth-Whitemarsh graduate who won the 2012 Constellation Senior Players at the Pittsburgh Field Club. Daley’s professional career has taken him all over the world, but he recalls as a youngster riding his bicycle to the Cricket Club to caddy.
   Nate Oxman, the golf coach at Haverford High, also serves up a couple of pieces on some of the considerable golf history at the Cricket Club, America's first country club.