Ryann O’Toole hasn’t played an LPGA event since the FM Championship in August, but she just earned the biggest check in her career.
The 39-year-old O’Toole won the Aon Risk Reward Challenge although it’s been all but official since she took maternity leave after the Boston event. O’Toole has been first in the standings since the summer, and she was able to sit on her lead to win $1 million. That’s almost 20 percent of her $4.7 million career earnings over 16 years on tour. That’ll buy a lot of diapers.
She won with an average score of -0.917, a season-long score, relative to par, on the designated challenge holes.
“To play this year and have better finishes and through all the distractions outside of golf, I was proud of my year,” O’Toole told Golf Digest recently. “I’m one of the oldest out there playing and competing. Some things I need to give myself a break on and other things I need to be better at and strive and grow. I feel the Aon Risk Reward [plays] to a lot of the longer hitters. If you look at the past winners, they’re all long balls. That’s something that I can say, ‘look, I’m 39 and I can still contend with the younger girls and still have distance. This year, I worked my butt off in the offseason and I feel like I gained distance off the tee and with my fairway woods and I feel that played a huge role with a lot of these holes.”
The Aon Risk Reward Challenge recognizes the player who has best evaluated risk and reward on holes like drivable par 4s and reachable pars 5s.
O’Toole played in 14 events, made nine cuts and had two top-10s, including at the Chevron Championship. O’Toole is due to give birth to her first child in January. She isn’t sure what the future holds and if she’ll return to the tour.
“I just want to be able to have the opportunity, I don’t know what’s going to come,” O’Toole said. “Once the baby is born, I don’t know how I’m going to feel. How will I bounce back? What will my body do? What’s that journey going to be?
“I wanted to leave it open-ended to have the ability that I could step back into it and I could have my status back and go out and compete and play. It’s still open-ended. I feel like I’d have a hard time walking away from competition and playing, but at the same time I don’t know how I’ll feel about traveling with a newborn or a 1-year-old.”
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
