Former Duke golfer Quinn Riley, of Raleigh, set to make pro golf debut in Rex Open
Quinn Riley was taking part in a First Tee clinic Tuesday when he was asked how long he had been a professional golfer.
“Less than a day?” he said with a slight shrug and smile.
That was good for a laugh from the gaggle of First Tee kids gathered before him at TriGolf, but Riley wasn’t joking. The former Duke golfer, a senior for the Blue Devils this past year, is making his pro golf debut this week in the Rex Hospital Open that begins Thursday.
Riley, 22, has a sponsor’s exemption into the Korn Ferry Tour event at the Country Club at Wakefield Plantation. Such exemptions are precious, given the demand and number of requests. Riley is grateful to have earned one for the Rex as the No. 1 player in the collegiate rankings of the Advocates Professional Golf Association (APGA), which partners with the PGA Tour to provide more opportunities for minority golfers and bring more diversity to the sport.
Riley played nine practice holes Tuesday at Wakefield, then headed to the TriGolf facility for the kids clinic. He joined Korn Ferry pros Brent Grant, Anders Albertson and John VanDerLaan in fielding questions from the First Tee of the Triangle participants, then showing off their swings.
Riley worked a “Happy Gilmore” imitation into his routine, teeing up a ball, then taking a speedy walk-up start while hitting his drive. The kids loved it.
The outing had a special meaning for Riley. He got into golf, he said, when he was 6 because of Tiger Woods and grew up in the First Tee program.
“I learned a lot of things in the First Tee,” Riley said in an interview with the News & Observer. “I wouldn’t say I just learned golf but it played a huge part in developing my love for the sport and what it teaches about life.”
It was at a First Tee clinic before a Rex Hospital Open, Riley said, that one of the pros showed a special interest in him.
“I was a 12-, 13-year-old and one of the pros took me under his wing and helped me with some drivers,” Riley said. “Kind of looking back at it and knowing how much I appreciate it now, and knowing he didn’t have to, it’s kind of nice to give back and do the same things for the kids.”
Grant and Albertson, who played at Georgia Tech, are more pros who have won events this year and VanDerLaan has been in contention. It will all be new for Riley this week, although he said he won’t temper his expectations.
“I know what I’m kind of comfortable shooting on that course and I think it’s going to do me just fine in competing,” he said. “My expectation is that I can combine this sponsor’s invite into another week (on tour) by finishing in the top 25. Just trying to build off this is my goal.”
A top-25 finish would get Riley into the BMW Charity Pro-Am next week in South Carolina. That would be a stepping stone and something of a dream start, making his pro start in his hometown, close to where he played his high school golf — at Ravenscroft — and he said with some of his former Duke teammates also in the field.
It will be the last Rex played at Wakefield, with the event shifting to Raleigh Country Club next year.
Riley won the Carolina Golf Association’s Junior Championship in 2017 and was ranked 42nd nationally among the juniors. He said he initially hoped to play college golf at North Carolina before joining the Duke program, competing in 23 tournaments for the Blue Devils and bouncing back from a struggling junior year to finish strong as a senior.
One thing holding him back, he said, has been taking “ownership” of his swing. He has the length, he said, but needed to return to a golf instructor he had worked with consistently and comfortably in the past: Chase Duncan, a teaching pro based at N.C. State’s Lonnie Poole Golf Course.
Riley won the 2022 Stitch Intercollegiate at Lonnie Poole — his only college win — and had three top-10 finishes this past year. He also advanced through U.S. Open local qualifying at Duke Golf Club with a 67 and will tee it up in the U.S. Golf Association sectional qualifier on Monday, hoping to make it to 2022 Open at The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts.
“I think my senior year was just a glimpse of what I had planned for in for college,” Riley said. “I hadn’t played like myself since I was 17. For me, I had trouble figuring out who to listen to. But I think I took ownership for what I was doing in my senior year. The work I’ve been doing with Chase has been good.”
Enough to have him show off his swing to the kids Tuesday.
Rex Hospital Open
What: Korn Ferry Tour event
When: Thursday through Sunday
Where: The Country Club at Wakefield Plantation, Raleigh
Information: www.rexhospitalopen.com
This story was originally published June 1, 2022 at 10:38 AM.
