University of North Carolina Athletics
Ashley Prange: Born to Golf
April 18, 2002 | Women's Golf
April 18, 2002
By Phil Perry
Student Assistant
UNC Athletic Communications
If ever an athlete were born into a sport, it happened on Nov. 24, 1981, when UNC women's golfer Ashley Prange entered the world. Prange's father and three uncles are all PGA professionals. Her mother played Pebble Beach when she was eight months pregnant with her. And Prange had a real club in her hands - not the plastic Fisher-Price kind, she insists - when she was four years old. Talk about your golf pedigree.
"You can pretty much say golf is in my blood," Prange says. "I think the first time I was on a golf course I was two weeks old and I sat on a putting green."
Since then, little has changed. Now a sophomore and the Tar Heels' number one starter, Prange began playing junior golf when she was about eight or nine, then played in state tournaments until she was 13. After that, the Noblesville, Ind., native took her game to the national level. As if to prove she belonged, Prange hit her first hole in one in her first national tournament. But the businesslike Prange, who walks so fast between holes that her opponents place bets on who can keep up with her, didn't even see it happen. She had turned her back on the shot after launching it well past the pin.
"I turned around and started doing my thing and I guess the ball just started rolling in the hole," she says. "So I turned around and I'm just looking at my dad and my dad just starts jumping up and down and I have no clue what he's doing. And then he's like 'That went in.' It was amazing."
ut golf wasn't always that exciting for Prange. At one point in her early teens, she wanted to trade in her clubs for knee pads and play volleyball, which was also a fall sport. Her parents managed to talk her out of it, but it wasn't easy.
"I remember absolutely just fighting with my parents for hours and hours on this subject," she says. "I'm actually very fortunate that they kept me on golf, obviously, because that's naturally where I would have my talent."
That talent made it hard to ignore that golf needed to be her primary focus, so Prange quit playing other sports during her sophomore year in high school so she could play golf year-round. The extra practice paid off, as Prange won Player of the Year honors at the Indiana state championships her senior year. She also won the Indiana Women's Amateur Championship and earned a top-30 junior ranking in 2000.
Prange's serious nature certainly helped her improve her game. But for someone who takes her share of grief from friends for not joking around enough, she does have one amusing little idiosyncrasy.
"You know how you have to move a ball if your mark's in the line of somebody? I move it, and I put it in the opposite pocket, and then I will stand there at this tree and I have a song that goes through my head so I don't forget to move it back," she says.
What's Prange singing by the tree, you ask? "Henry VIII" by Herman's Hermits. All Prange knows is that one of her middle school teachers used to sing it in relation to a math problem. Now, for reasons unknown even to her, it's indelibly linked to moving her ball mark.
Weird habits aside, Prange stepped immediately into UNC's starting lineup as a freshman after her phenomenal senior campaign. In her first year as a Tar Heel she carded three top-10 finishes and led the team in stroke average. She even posted her career-best round of 66 at the 2000 Lady Paladin Invitational.
Prange's success has carried over into her sophomore year, and now she thinks she is playing some of her best golf ever. She's happy with her play right now feels she is closing in on a win. Prange is also pleased with her two-stroke improvement from the fall to the spring, which she attributes to working on her short game. And while she keeps finding room to get better, Prange doesn't really doubt her talent.
"I don't want to come across as egotistical about it, but I know I have a game that I can play number one," she says. "I can play with the best of them now. Last year I was not expecting that, it just sort of happened. This year I do expect it."
Prange's next chance to play with the best of them comes this weekend at the ACC Tournament in Clemmons. There she will face off against Duke's Candy Hannemann and Virada Nirapathpongporn, both of whom she considers some of the top players in the country. She will also compete against Blue Devil Leigh Anne Hardin, who she played against growing up in Indiana. And even though she admits Hardin beat her at everything in high school, Prange is not intimidated in the least.
"I'm looking for a win at ACCs," she says. "I'm playing well enough I can go out there, I can beat the girls that I need to beat."
Players Mentioned
