Sailors’ Draganza swings a sweet song

Chris Yemma

Newport Harbor High junior golfer Natalie Draganza was 10 years old

when one of her best golf shots occurred.

She was about 100 yards from the pin, in the trees, on hole No. 3

with her grandpa at the Costa Mesa Golf & Country Club. She took a

swing with her 7-iron and hoped for the best.

“We walked around the green looking for it, but we couldn’t find

it,” Draganza recalled. “And then we looked in the hole and it was

there.”

Six years later, Draganza is the No. 1 golfer for the Newport

Harbor girls golf team. She has won three straight Sea View League

girls individual titles, and led the Newport golf team to a

seventh-place finish at the CIF Southern Divisional team

championships Nov. 5.

She was the medalist in seven out of 10 league matches this

season, averaging about a 39 in league matches.

And Thursday, she shot a 5-over-par 77 at the CIF Southern

California girls golf championships at Mission Lakes Country Club to

qualify for the Women’s Southern California Golf Association

tournament Monday.

The top six girls at the SCGA Members’ Club in Murrieta at 8 a.m.

Monday will advance to the state tournament at the Red Hill Country

Club in Rancho Cucamonga Tuesday.

“She has great self-confidence,” Newport Coach Marianne Towersey

said. “She never seems to get her feathers ruffled. If she has a bad

shot, it won’t bother her and she’ll come back and hit a good one.

She’s pretty consistent.”

Senior Kayleigh Horn was the captain for the Newport golf team

this season, shooting the lowest score in three league matches. But

Draganza is poised to come back next season as the captain.

Until then, she will be practicing and improving for a senior

season where she could see her fourth individual league title in four

years. To make that goal more plausible, she said she would like to

improve her long irons and gain some distance on her drives.

Right now, she averages about 230 yards on her drives, but would

like to consistently hit 250. And she plans to spend around four days

a week during the off-season to improve herself, as well as her team.

“I will try and keep everybody working on their game,” Draganza

said. “Not a lot of [my teammates] go out during the summer or on

weekends to practice. I’m going to get them working on it.”

Draganza said her grandpa got her into golf when she was five,

when she would hit around golf balls in his backyard with wooden

clubs. She started taking lessons at Costa Mesa Golf & Country Club

when she was 9 and then started playing even more frequently when she

hit high school. She currently still takes lessons at Costa Mesa.

“She’s very supportive and the girls really look up to her,”

Towersey said. “She never expresses disappointment in anyone and I’ve

never heard her badmouth other players.”

Draganza plans to play golf after high school. Right now she

thinks she is good enough for a scholarship to a smaller college, but

she wants to improve and gain attention from a school on the par of a

UCLA or Stanford.

Before that day comes, though, she needs to keep hitting her pars

and lower.

Towersey said she knew Draganza was good enough to play at the

next level. But she added Draganza needs to play numerous tournaments

this summer to up her game and maintain her skills for next season

and later.

“She has great optimism about the outlook for next year, even

though five seniors are graduating,” Towersey said.