Christina Carroll will compete in the John Shippen Women’s Invitational June 4 and June 5.
Although she doesn’t watch golf at all and can’t name a favorite player, the passion of playing the sport and the skills she’s developed over the past decade has opened the doors to a professional career for one recent University of Delaware graduate.
Christina Carroll, a graduate of the William Penn High School in Colonial School District and who just earned her degree from UD in electrical engineering will compete this for a bid into two Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) events.
The LPGA is the primary professional golf league for women golfers in America.
“I just graduated this spring, and my goal is to play golf full time now,” Carroll said. “Engineering is kind of like a backup plan, but it’s something that I love doing, especially doing undergraduate research since I was a sophomore.”
She said her passion for the green and for engineering made it hard to pick which to pursue.
“But my love of golf of course took over, and this is why I’ve wanted since I was like 13, to play pro,” she said.
Tuesday and Wednesday, Carroll will face off against 11 other golfers from across the country in the John Shippen Women’s Invitational, an event in its fourth year that welcomes top professional and amateur Black female golfers to compete.
The 36-hole event will take place at Blythefield Country Club in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Whoever wins the two-day competition earns exemptions into the Meijer LPGA Classic by Simply Give June 13–16 at the Blythefield Country Club in Belmont, Michigan, as well as the Dow Championship, scheduled for June 27– 30 at the Midland Country Club in Midland, Michigan.
“The only way that I’ll be able to get into these events is if I do a qualifier like the one this week,” Carroll said.
Some of Carroll’s golfing accolades include:
- Ranks fifth in University of Delaware’s golf program history
- 2023 and 2024 All-CAA women’s golf second team
- Played in 2021 and 2023 U.S. Women’s Amateur Championship
- 2020 William Penn High School (New Castle, DE) Female Athlete of the Year
- Four-year member of the golf and indoor track teams at William Penn
The Shippen event winner takes home $13,200 from a $22,000 purse, while the runner-up will pocket $6,600 and third place will earn $2,200.
“I would use the money for future tournaments because golf is expensive,” she said.
Carroll’s father introduced her to the game when she was nine, and she started taking it seriously by the time she was 13.
“That’s when I really started playing in tournaments and other events and started to fall in love with it,” she said.
Raised in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, Jarek earned a B.A. in journalism and a B.A. in political science from Temple University in 2021. After running CNN’s Michael Smerconish’s YouTube channel, Jarek became a reporter for the Bucks County Herald before joining Delaware LIVE News.
Jarek can be reached by email at [email protected] or by phone at (215) 450-9982. Follow him on Twitter @jarekrutz
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