SAMMAMISH – How difficult is this golf course?
If there’s an extra twinge of intensity in that question from Paige Mackenzie this week at Sahalee Country Club, it comes from experience.
The former University of Washington standout is now an analyst for the Golf Channel and a traveling announcer for this weekend’s KPMG Women’s PGA Championship. She’s played Sahalee before, countless times, when the Huskies hosted home events in Sammamish.
“He never seemed to play well here, which makes me appreciate him even more,” Mackenzie said. “There are very few golf courses that make me as nervous off the tee as Sahalee.”
While playing for the Huskies, Yakima’s Mackenzie noted that it would be a great location for a professional tournament. He will simply stretch the tees back and it will be a potentially perfect test for the best in the world.
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Further
After 139 college rounds and 22 top-10 finishes, the most in UW history, Mackenzie graduated in 2006 with a business administration degree intended to help her find work “in some financial planning office.” “. But the year before, she had finished 13th at the US Women’s Open in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She fell in love with competing in front of a crowd and strayed, deciding she wanted to make a living playing.
“There’s something that’s just intoxicating (about it),” he said.
She was named the 2005 Pacific Northwest Golf Association Player of the Year and won the 2005 National Trans Championship match play and stroke play competitions.
Seven years into her professional career, Mackenzie made her Golf Channel debut in 2012 as a contributing analyst during the CME Group Tour Championship, the final event of the season. It was difficult at first, but her work with a transmission coach helped. She soon began watching television differently, looking for things to incorporate into her own analysis and ways to connect with the audience.
The following year, she was a regular analyst for “Morning Drive” and a studio analyst for “Golf Central” during off weeks while continuing to play a full LPGA Tour schedule. On screen, he was back on a team for the first time since he left the Huskies. That suited him.
Retirement came sooner than Mackenzie had anticipated, but another door opened. While she was recovering from 2014 back surgery, the opportunity arose to work for Golf Channel full-time. Some feelings of bitterness would be understandable, but they never came.
“I didn’t miss it,” he said. “I thought I was going to hate talking about my teammates, that I really wasn’t going to like feeling like I was missing a tournament.
“But it was the opposite. “I could turn it off and find the joy of doing something new.”
While recovering from that back surgery, he watched the 2014 Olympics in Sochi to pass the time. Seven years later, in Tokyo, she was there to work – a career highlight for her.
Last week, he logged a 15-hour workday at Pinehurst No. 2 during the men’s US Open. She likes to arrive at least two hours before her group begins prep work. She then comes to walk with them for five hours, watch the next four and prepare for the post-game show.
“It was great to be a part of that,” Mackenzie said. “Being on the big desk of our network’s flagship studio show was a compliment to be asked to do it and I loved every minute of it.”
He now lives in Arizona, but keeps connections to his home state intact. Mary Lou Mulflur, who has coached the Huskies women’s golf team since 1983, stopped by for a visit Wednesday. Last October, Mackenzie joined her brother Brock, a prolific golfer at the University of Washington, a few years before Paige, in the Husky Hall of Fame.
“It far exceeded any expectations of what I thought it would be like,” he said, “to share that night with some of the best to ever wear the purple and gold.”
Kate Shefte: 206-464-8245 or kshefte@seattletimes.com; Kate Shefte covers the Kraken and other Seattle-area teams for The Seattle Times.
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