Player Profile - Allison Hanna-Williams

Allison Hanna-Williams is a 27-year-old player who is in her fifth LPGA season.  She was the Oregon High School State champion in 1999 and 2000.  At Ohio State University she was the 2003 Big Ten champion and in 2004 was the Big Ten Player of the Year and an NCAA All-American first-team selection. 

Allison turned pro in May 2004 and immediately started competing on the Futures Tour.  In Q-School that fall, she earned non-exempt status for 2005 but only gained entry into five events.  At '05 Q-School she earned full exempt status which enabled her to play 22 times in 2006, where she finished with two Top 10s but also 11 missed cuts.  A fourth place finish at Sybase garnered a big enough paycheck to retain her exempt status but she wasn't so fortunate in 2007, finishing 127^th on the money list and sending her back to Q-School.  Hanna-Williams was once again non-exempt in 2008, making 15 events and playing at about the same level as in 2007.  Under the new Priority Status rules, she entered 2009 in position #224 (approx. #170 for all practical purposes) which meant another season of limited opportunities.

Allison has taken a significant step forward given those opportunities.  She's only missed two cuts in nine starts this year (nearly 50% missed for her career) plus she's collected a couple of Top 20 finishes, which she hadn't done since 2006.  She also finished T23 at the LPGA Championship.  Because of her good play she's now at Priority position #153, which should get her into most full-field events the rest of the season.  Even more impressive, she's now ranked #46 on the HD charts.  Where has her game improved?  First glance at the numbers seems to say "putting" - Hanna-Williams ranks ninth this year after never being better than 60^th.  However, she is also up to 46^th in GIR after ranking worse than 100^th every year of her career.  Some of that improvement seems to come from better driving although she still has work to do there.  After ranking 120^th and 150^th in Total Driving the last two years, Allison ranks #83 so far this year and most of that improvement comes from an extra 15-20 yards of distance.

Maybe Hanna-Williams just got a little confidence in herself.  The first three months of the season she only got to play in two LPGA events and did almost nothing - MC at SBS, T64 at Corona.  The week before Corona she played in the Futures Tour event in Lafayette, Louisiana and finished T9.  The week after, she won her first ever professional event, the Futures Tour Texas Hill Country Classic in San Antonio.  The following week she was T15 at the Michelob Ultra and she's been pretty steady ever since.

You can read more about Allison Hanna-Willliams on her bio page at LPGA.com and at her official website.