Cheyenne Woods following uncle’s footsteps

There’s plenty more to Cheyenne Woods’ game than just her famous last name.

With uncle Tiger Woods playing this week in Charlotte, his niece is looking to wrap up her record-setting Wake Forest career with a strong showing at next week’s collegiate regionals.

She hopes to qualify for the championship finals later in May before turning pro with the hope of building a career on the LPGA Tour.

“It is a little bit of pressure knowing it is my last collegiate event,” Woods said on Friday.

“But I want to look at it as something to take advantage of, and end on a high note, and enjoy every moment with my team and enjoy just being on the college team and this time of my life.”

College golf has been very good to Woods, who will graduate as perhaps the best women’s player in school history.

The 2011 Atlantic Coast Conference champion and two-time All-American enters her final regional with a chance to break both the school’s career scoring record and her own two-year-old single-season mark.

After school, she hopes to eventually play her way onto the LPGA Tour. Once her college career ends, she’ll declare her professional status and begin looking for sponsors and sponsor exemptions into tournaments.

The Phoenix native said she could join the Arizona-based Cactus Tour until she goes to Q-school at the end of the summer to try to earn her tour card and become the latest member of her family to play at the highest level of pro golf.

Her father, Earl Jr., is Tiger’s half brother, and she says Earl Sr., her paternal grandfather, introduced her to the game and “got me started when I was young.”

Cheyenne says the first club she swung as a girl was in her grandfather’s garage, and he guided her through her junior career. Earl Sr. died in 2006 at 74.

“I only got a chance to go out on the golf course with him a couple of times,” she said.

“But I think a few putting tips he’s given me, I always keep those in mind.”

She developed a style she describes as “aggressively, steady, calm” by watching pro golf as a girl. Instead of patterning her game after any one particular player, she chose attributes from a variety of players into “kind of a mix of a lot of stuff.”

That includes Tiger, though their facial features look a lot more alike than their swings do. Cheyenne says her driver more closely resembles that of smooth-swinging Ernie Els than that of her heavy-hitting uncle.

Cheyenne says Tiger has been nothing but supportive of her through the years.

“He’s rooting me on, excited for my professional career also,” Cheyenne said.

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