Just a shot off the lead, Gerina Piller taking aim at No. 1
— -- SAMMAMISH, Wash. -- Warm and engaging, Gerina Piller knows all about the cold, hard reality of numbers. She is one of the few professional golfers who majored in math at college. Piller's husband, Martin, plays on the PGA Tour. Their business success is determined by how four scores add up on Sunday afternoon, the later the better, and all the tour-pro perks in the world don't soften that calculus. They make what they shoot.
This will be an important Sunday for Piller. The 31-year-old will start the final round of the KPMG Women's PGA Championship at Sahalee Country Club tied for second place with Brittany Lincicome at 1-under 212, one stroke behind Lydia Ko.
Lincicome is a proven winner with two major titles. Ko, only 19, already has won 12 LPGA events in her brief but brilliant career, including the past two major championships -- the 2015 Evian Championship and this year's ANA Inspiration.
There are 16 players within four strokes of the lead after 54 holes. Sahalee is as demanding as it is scenic. This will be a win that someone never forgets.
Piller hasn't won an LPGA tournament, yet, and people who know golf usually pronounce the qualifier as if it was capitalized, boldfaced and in large type. Because Piller is abundantly talented, they believe it is going to happen. Now, more than ever, Piller believes so, too, but she also knows the arithmetic of attaining a victory is complicated.
"I do feel like winning is definitely close," she said Saturday afternoon after shooting an even-par 71. "But in golf there's no recipe. It's not like you tell somebody, 'You go out and hit every fairway and hit every green, and you're going to win.' I definitely feel that my game is good enough, and it's just a matter of time when the pieces fit together."
On the LPGA Tour since 2010, Piller is making her 128th LPGA start. Carolyn Hill has the LPGA record for most tournaments before winning for the first time, 359. On the PGA Tour, Brad Bryant played 475 before getting a trophy. Bobby Wadkins competed in 715 tournaments and never won.
Piller has a consistent record -- making the cut in 105 of 128 events -- and has been a runner-up four times, most recently in this year's Volunteers of America Texas Shootout. Currently No. 16 on the Rolex Rankings, one spot out of an Olympic berth for the United States, she came into 2016 with renewed confidence after playing a key role in the dramatic, final-day comeback victory by the U.S. over Europe in the Solheim Cup. Piller sank a 10-foot par putt on the 18th hole of her singles match to keep America's rally from being extinguished.
"She's a wonderful player, and I think she'll win many, many times on tour," said Lincicome. "It's getting through that hurdle and not putting too much pressure on herself, kind of a relaxed game plan that I've been using. I think she just puts a little too much pressure on herself."
At a time when women golfers turning pro as teenagers after a decade or more of extensive instruction and competition is common, Piller is a throwback. Like Hall of Famer Juli Inkster, Piller didn't start playing golf until she was 15, the age Ko was when she won her first LPGA title.
Growing up in Roswell, New Mexico, the hometown of LPGA legend Nancy Lopez, Piller played almost every sport other than golf as a child.
"I loved baseball with the guys," Piller said. "I was a pitcher and a catcher. On the mound, warming up, I could see the little boys over there going, 'Oh, home run,' and I'd kind of egg it on. I'd just kind of lob it in there. And when they'd get to the plate, I'd fire it in there and send them back to the dugout, tail between their legs. I loved it. It was just so awesome. I played from when I was 5 to when I was 12, and I think there was only one year when there was another girl. I was the first girl to make the all-star team."
For the past three years, Piller has worked on her game with Mike Wright, director of golf at Shady Oaks Country Club in Fort Worth, Texas, where she and her husband are members and where Ben Hogan hung out until his death in 1997 at age 84.
"I get a lot of Mr. Hogan stories from my coach," Piller said of Wright, who was friends with the legend and watched him strike the last three shots he hit. More important than the lore, Piller has gotten sound teaching that has cleared her mind.
"I don't see him a whole lot. He's taught me why the ball goes where it goes," Piller said. "He simplified a lot of things."
Piller has been struggling to hit the draw that Wright prefers this week. She sent her coach a video of her swing. "He said it looks a little rushed," Piller said. "It's never anything technical. It's definitely all feel."
She has improvised adroitly, relying on her athletic instincts and hitting a fade that has her within a whisker of the lead through three days.
"Now she's looking for the stage instead of wondering if she belongs on it," Wright told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram earlier this year of his pupil's greater confidence.
She has found that at Sahalee. Maybe, come Sunday dusk, Piller will have found something else as well.