ORLANDO, Fla. (UCFKnights.com) – Golf and Ashley Holder have been synonymous since she was 3-1/2 years old.
But if you ask Holder and her father Joey what led to her original golf outing, the reasoning varies.
"I don't know if it was wanting to be with her dad more, or just that she liked golf, but on the weekends, I couldn't go to the driving range without taking her," the elder Holder said. "She always wanted to go."
Ashley remembers it a little differently.
"It was more of him trying to get me out of the house so my mom could clean and stuff," she laughed. "Once he saw that I had some potential, we went out more."
Early on, Joey Holder recognized his daughter's ability for the game.
"My favorite memory of Ashley is when I caddied for her – and I don't caddy for her very often – in the Regional Championships for Kids USA Golf at Jekyll Island," he said. "Ashley came in second place. These were world competitors. You had kids from China, Italy, France. That's my first memory where I thought 'we have something here with her.'"
That recognition led to a relocation for the Holder family.
"We moved onto a golf course specifically for Ashley," Joey said. "We knew Ashley would be good, so that's why we did what we did. We moved into an area just because we have faith in what she's going to do in the future with golf."
Holder, who dabbled in basketball in middle school, turned her focus solely to golf as she got older. Nearing the end of her career at Lake Nona High School, she began to look at continuing her craft at the collegiate level.
Her dad grew up in Titusville; her mom is a native of The City Beautiful and a UCF alumna. They suggested she look at UCF before they traveled out of state.
"The facility, everything, just felt like home," Ashley remembers. "I fell in love with it. I didn't even look at any other schools, because that's where I knew I wanted to go."
A four-time all-conference selection who garnered three American Athletic Conference Golfer of the Year honors during her tenure as a Knight, Holder continued to grow her game at UCF. In each of her four years, she had the lowest scoring average on the team. She amassed 17 top 10 and 30 top 20 finishes while representing the Black and Gold.
In May, Holder graduated with her degree in human communications and officially began to pursue a career as a professional golfer. In August, she'll begin her quest to play on the LPGA Tour at qualifying school.
Split into three stages with three rounds of golf each, Holder will begin in California. The second stage will be held in October in Venice, Fla., and the top 80 finishers will advance to the third stage. The top finishers at the third stage in December in Daytona Beach, Fla., will receive LPGA membership.
These next few months could lead a young lady, who fell into golf as a toddler, to her lifelong goal.
"We asked Ashley when she was younger what she wanted to do when she graduated college," Joey said. "She said 'I want to play on the LPGA Tour.' She'd never hesitate to answer that question that way when she was young. That was strictly her goal. As you can see, she's on her way."