| Always on the Go: Busy Donna Andrews Enjoying New Careers The Pilot March 2008 |
BY HOWARD WARD: GOLF WRITER
Donna Andrews isn't playing golf for a living now. But she hasn't officially retired from the LPGA Tour.
She isn't doing any television work for ESPN now. But she isn't ruling out doing more golf analyst work.
What Andrews is doing is enjoying other phases of her many-faceted career. She's been the head instructor at Pine Needles
Lodge and Golf Club since June 2007. She's the mother of a son, Connor, who will be 2 years old in June. And she's involved in
a real estate business with her husband, Jamie Tepatti.
Busy? Yeah, kind of.
"I'm working in the Pine Needles Learning Center's schools and Golfaris," Andrews said during a rare free moment. "The role
I'm playing is trying to follow in Peggy Kirk Bell's footsteps. I can't fill them, of course, but I'll do my best to try."
Trying for Andrews usually spells success. The Lynchburg, Va., native earned a business administration degree from the
University of North Carolina in 1989 and qualified for the LPGA Tour that fall by finishing 36th in the qualifying school.
As an amateur, she won the Virginia State Junior Championship twice and was five-time champion in the Virginia Women's
State Amateur. She owns two North and South Women's Amateur titles -- 1984 and 1988 -- and was the runner-up in 1989
before going to the LPGA Q-School.
She was second in the LPGA Rookie of the Year race in 1990 and enjoyed several top 10 finishes, including a couple of second
place spots, before breaking through for her first win in the 1993 Ping-Cellular One Championship.
She had her finest year in 1994 with three wins, including her first major, the Nabisco-Dinah Shore.
The last of her six LPGA wins came in the 1998 Long Drugs Challenge. She came in second in four consecutive events that
year, including another major, the McDonald's LPGA Championship.
Andrews' career winnings total $3,613, 684, enabling her to invest in a lifelong ambition of owning a horse farm in Southern
Pines. But she gives the impression that her life has never been richer than it is now as a wife and mother.
"I'm not going to say that I won't ever play the Tour again," Andrews said, "and I'm not officially retired. But if I did decide to go
back, I'd have to get in shape.
"I'm playing golf in the afternoons with our students, but I'm certainly not in the shape I was in when I was playing full time. To be
able to play a full week at a time would require me to get in a gym."
So she's content to help other people get their games in shape.
"I keep everything very simple," Andrews said of her teaching technique. It's back to the basics. I teach the way Mrs. Bell taught."
Still, she does incorporate a lot of modern technology.
"I've done a lot of study on the bio-mechanics of the body and how it relates to the golf swing," she said. "What I find is that a
person's posture in the golf swing, as well as their strength and flexibility, dictates what they're able to do with the swing.
"If I can get the posture correct, most times the swing improves. One of the biggest things, especially with junior golfers, is
being able to take them on the course and work on strategy and course management. I take what I've learned over the years
and help them apply it on the course.
"What I enjoy most about teaching is seeing the reaction of people when they hit a good shot and their faces just light up."
Andrews looks forward to teaching her son the complexities of the game.
"Connor's quite the athlete," she said proudly. "He loves to do anything that involves a ball -- baseball, basketball, kicking a ball.
And he's got a beautiful left-handed swing. I don't know how that happened; he's right-handed, but he swings left-handed."
Tepatti is involved with both real estate and development. He developed The Meadows, a very successful equestrian
community on U.S. 15-501 South and his latest development which has just started selling, Forest Ridge, on Union Church
Road beside the schools.
Andrews says that starting the real estate company was a natural evolvement.
"I found that so many of our students were asking about property in the area," she said, "that it just seemed logical to have
access to that. I already had a real estate license in Virginia, so I just completed the course here.
"It really works well because I can meet the needs of the golfers and have a feel for the different communities we have to offer."
As for her television career, it's more or less on hold.
"I was doing six to eight events with ESPN," she said. "But when ABC quit doing golf telecasts, a lot of guys working with them
came back to ESPN. My feedback was that I was doing a good job, but I was the new kid on the block.
"If anything opens up and I got the opportunity, I'd do it again. But you just take what life gives you and make it work."
Meanwhile, Andrews is looking to the future at Pine Needles and hoping to one day tee it up with her son.
"One thing I'd like to do is start a golf school for breast cancer survivors," she said, "people who have battled the disease or had
their lives touched by it. I'd like to find a way to bring that group here to Pine Needles. This is such a women-friendly place."
As for playing with her son, she is on record as saying, "My dream foursome would be Sam Snead, Nancy Lopez and Connor."
