Media

31 March 2011

Playing Through the Pain

RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. – Reilley Rankin shows you the bloated blister on her left hand.

It hurts just looking at it.

She shot 3-under-par 69 with that hand Thursday at the Kraft Nabisco Championship, her best score in eight months in an LPGA event, her best in almost three years in a major. She’s tied for seventh.

Rankin pokes the blister with a finger on the driving range and winces.

“If you focus on it, it hurts more,” Rankin says.
Rankin knows all about pain, overcoming it.

Gary Gilchrist Coached Nicole Hage and Reilley Rankin Earn 2011 LPGA Tour Cards

Nicole Hage and Reilley Rankin both finished in the top 10 at the LPGA Tour Qualifying Tournament Sunday to retain their playing privileges for the 2011 season.

Rankin’s total of 2-under-par 258 earned a tie for fourth in the 90-hole event contested on the Champions Course at LPGA International in Daytona Beach, Fla. It marks the seventh consecutive season that the Hilton Head, S.C. resident will play on the Tour.

The 31-year-old University of Georgia product has worked with Gilchrist for nearly two years. Rankin has not been back to LPGA Final Qualifying since 2002, leading to her two Futures Tour wins in 2003: the Northwest Indiana Futures Golf Classic and the Betty Puskar Futures Golf Classic.

09 December 2010

Three share LPGA lead after first day

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Aree Song, Reilley Rankin and Libby Smith shot 5-under 67s in chilly conditions Wednesday to share the first-round lead in the LPGA Final Qualifying Tournament.

14 August 2010

Reilley Rankin leads Duramed Futures Tour Greater Richmond Golf Classic

A familiar name rose to the top of the leaderboard in today’s first round of the $100,000 Greater Richmond Golf Classic. LPGA Tour member Reilley Rankin of Hilton Head Island, S.C., carded a 6-under score of 66 in her first round back since earning her full LPGA status at the end of the 2003 Duramed FUTURES Tour season.

“I don’t feel like I’m too good for this,” said Rankin, a two-time winner on the Duramed FUTURES Tour and a seven-year LPGA Tour member with earnings of nearly $1.2 million. “I look at this as an opportunity to play. And I was excited to see how much the tour has grown.”

21 November 2009

Making a Living on the L.P.G.A. Tour Becomes Tougher by the Year

RICHMOND, Tex. — Reilley Rankin is a college graduate who earned more than $400,000 two years ago plying her trade. Now she is merely another member of the L.P.G.A.’s middle class trying not to slip through the economy’s cracks.

With her work schedule cut drastically this year and the bills piling up, Rankin lost her financial footing.

20 November 2009

Life-altering leap jump-starts Rankin’s outlook

RICHMOND — Golf can be a game of inches.

Reilley Rankin handled those often frustrating inches as well as any player in the field at the LPGA Tour Championship on Thursday, rolling in seven birdies to shoot a 5-under 67, one shot off Lorena Ochoa’s first-round 66.

Life can be a game of centimeters. Or a half-centimeter.

That’s what it came down to for Rankin in June 1999. That is how close she came to death or paralysis. How close she came to never playing golf again.

16 July 2006

Rankin likes to let her game do the talking

Reilley Rankin, a nonwinner in her third year on the LPGA Tour, admits she is shy.

“The golf course is probably my comfort zone,” she said. “I try to speak from the heart, and when it’s just me and my friends and I can be myself, everything is OK.

“But I’ll be the first to admit I need to have better interview skills. It’s sort of new to me. I’m not very good. I know I have to get better.”

12 June 2004

Mcdonald’S LPGA Championship presented by Coca-Cola

WILMINGTON, DELAWARE

Q. Good playing today, Reilley, nice little 67 there. 5 under after two rounds. I’m wondering if you could just talk about your day and what was working for you out there.
REILLEY RANKIN: I tried to stay patient and remember par is your friend this week, and just prepare. I took advantage of yesterday to prepare myself.

Q. Any part of your game that was on today in particular or just solid all around?
REILLEY RANKIN: I hit a lot of fairways and a lot of greens, a few putts fell, so that was good.

09 May 2004

Q&A: Reilley Rankin

Derer Lowe is her favorite player, but it should be A-Rod.

WILLIAMSBURG — The first LPGA Tour event Reilley Rankin ever played in was also the first event she had ever attended.

Rankin’s only exposure to pro golf growing up in Hilton Head Island, S.C., was the PGA Tour’s MCI Heritage Classic. She worked at the men’s tournament, handing out bibs to the caddies and carrying a scoreboard.

26 May 2003

Reilley Rankin Wins Futures Tour Tournament

Merrillville, Ind. — Reilley Rankin, an All-American for Georgia’s Lady Bulldogs in 1998 and 2001, won her first professional golf tournament on Saturday — the Northwest Indiana Futures Golf Classic presented by The Horseshoe Casino.

The second-year professional from Hilton Head Island, S.C. fired a final-round 70 at Innsbrook Country Club and survived a two-hole playoff against Soo Young Moon of Keumsan, Korea, who posted a 69 to tie Rankin at 211 (-5).

Moon and Rankin replayed the last hole twice in a sudden-death playoff.

05 March 2000

Classic Profile: Reilley Rankin

Reilley Rankin, 20, entered the University of Georgia as one of the best collegiate golfers in the country. In 1998 she was named national Freshman of the Year and first-team All-America by the National Golf Collegiate Association, and also was Southeastern Conference Champion and SEC Player of the Year. She has a great attitude, loves challenge and is a natural athlete.

Then, on June 4, she jumped off Chimney Rock at a lake in Alabama and her life changed in a moment. In her 75-foot jump into the water, she broke her back in three places, split her sternum right down the middle and bruised her heart, lungs and aorta.

Now she wants to help others to overcome adversity and problems and to use her experience to give hope to people who are challenged. Instead of using her difficulty as an excuse to give up, she is using it as a motivator, working to play golf once again at the level she was at before her accident.