Pat Salome looked on as the little girl with the pony tail hit tee shots on the driving range at the Isleta Eagle golf course.

Every shot mimicked the previous one. The balls sailed high and straight, each one landing 80 to 100 yards away. 

The author of all that accuracy and consistency was Pat and Melissa Salome’s only child, Rylee.

She was 8 years old.

“She teed up her little driver and bang, she hit 14 in a row,” recalls Pat of that day nine years ago.

The pony tail is still there — longer of course — but Rylee Salome is now a 5-foot-10 polished athlete with more than enough game. 

She routinely wins high school tournaments in New Mexico by double-digit margins 

and is good enough and mentally tough enough to contend in national junior tournaments around the country.

Competitive spirit

She is the No. 1-ranked girls junior golf player in New Mexico and is on the cusp of becoming only the third girl golfer in state history to win four straight state high school individual titles. January Romero (Albuquerque Academy) won four straight from 1997-2001 and Edie Murdoch (Grants High School) did it in 1994 to 1997.

According to the National Junior Golf Scoreboard, an organization that ranks all junior golfers, Rylee is 245th in the world out of more than 4,000 girls. In the Southwest section that includes girls from Arizona, Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico, she ranks 13th.

Other high points from her evolving career:

She has won 29 of 32 high school tournaments in New Mexico over her first three years in high school, including all 10 she competed in this past school year. She won her last two state tournaments titles by 10 and 9 strokes, with final rounds of 69 and 68 on the Santa Ana course.

She has been the Albuquerque Journal’s Metro Girls Player of the Year three years in a row.

She won the New Mexico-West Texas Women’s Amateur Championship two years ago and finished second last year. She’s back in this year for the tournament July 19-21.

Rylee won the Albuquerque City Women’s championship two years ago when she was 15. She won the New Mexico Women’s Amateur Match Play tournament when she was 11.

For the second year in a row she’ll be playing July 9-11 in the IMG Junior World Championship at Torrey Pines. She finished 87th out of 169 players last year with rounds of 75, 80 and 75 on the famous course.

She’s qualified for a second straight year to the National Girls Junior PGA Championship. This year’s tournament is at the Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Maryland, July 30 through Aug. 1-2. She finished 39th out of 156 players in last year’s event in Hot Springs, Arkansas.

She scored the first of her two holes-in-one when she was 14 at the prestigious Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Kentucky, site of this year’s PGA Championship.

At first blush, it’s tough to read the competitive fire that burns within Rylee. She’s shy, polite, speaks softly and chooses her words carefully. Religion and family are a huge part of her DNA. This is a girl who names the chickens, goats and horses that roam around the family’s rural home in the village of Tome, south of Albuquerque.

“She’ll quote the Bible, pray before we eat,” says her uncle Anton Salome. “She teaches her goats to jump through hoops and her dog tricks.”

Anton said that persona disappears once Rylee gets to the first tee.

“In tournaments, she’s vicious,” says Anton. “She wants to win deep down in her soul and with every cell in her body. My daughter (Mia) says Rylee’s always looking for defeat to wash over her opponent’s face.”

Her competitive juices extend beyond the course. She recently took up trap shooting. In her first experience shooting a shotgun she hit 14 of the 25 targets. The next time she went to the trap club she hit 24 of 25.

“Very rarely do you see a child that is that competitive,” said Anton, who coached high school golf at Socorro High School for 12 years.

Family ties

Rylee’s journey to where she is now began not long after that early session on the Isleta range. It was that day that helped seal Pat’s decision to leave his job as Socorro city manager, a job he loved but one which couldn’t compete with his desire to help mold Rylee’s future in golf.

“I could see her desire,” Pat said. “You can still see it in her face when she swings. She wants to hit it. I could tell from an early age that she liked it and she had the strength and speed to swing the club. It was something that I wanted to witness.”

The man who helped run Socorro’s city government for 28 years would now be Rylee’s full-time coach. To this day that’s still the case and the combo title of dad/coach has worked out just fine. Neither is ready right now to change that dynamic by hiring a professional coach.

“I like it being just us,” Rylee said.

Us also includes mom. Melissa helps Pat keep track of Rylee’s tournament schedule, makes hotel and plane reservations and is there at most tournaments. When Pat told her of his retirement plans, she bought in wholeheartedly.

“At that point, I could see the connection that golf had created for them,” Melissa said. “Golf bonded our family. The trips and everything else that goes with it, we’re able to spend a lot more time together.”

Every win is celebrated by a gallery of fans comprised of other family members and friends. Among them is her 94-year-old grandfather, Pete Sisneros. He’s there anytime she tees it up at tournaments in the Albuquerque area and often walks most, if not all, 18 holes.

“He (grandfather) loves the game of golf and before we got married I don’t know if he had anyone to share it with,” Pat said. “It’s made our family … a community of Rylee fans.”

“Rylee likes the way we’ve been able to do it,” Pat said. “There is a benefit to being the coach and the dad and being there to watch her in tournaments. If she struggles, I can see where she needs help.”

Pat has occasionally reached out for coaching help, but it’s always been close to the family’s Socorro roots. Anton and family friend Miguel (Miggie) Griego have chipped in (no pun intended) with teaching tips.

Anton and Miguel were star players at Socorro High School and both went on to play college golf — Anton at New Mexico State and Miguel at the University of New Mexico.

Pat, 63, is two years older than Anton and tapped into Anton’s expertise long before he started coaching Rylee.

“I learned a lot from him even before Rylee was born,” Pat said. “Then later on he gave me some insight about being a parent and coach. He told me it was hard to be both. He said, ‘when she’s playing, you have to stay emotionally detached.’”

Anton has for decades been one of the best amateur players in the state and recently shot his age with a career best 61 on his home course (New Mexico Tech). He and Rylee often are partners in pro-am or best-ball tournaments and now Anton, too, is a member of Rylee’s gotcha list.

“We tee off from the same tees and she’s beaten me in the last three tournaments we’ve played together,” Anton said.

Anton had a role in Rylee’s comeback win at this year’s state high school tournament in May. Rylee shot 76 in the opening round of the two-day tournament and trailed Albuquerque Academy’s Anya Parasher by a stroke going into the final 18 holes.

After the first round, Rylee, Pat and Anton headed to the driving range at Santa Ana.

“I worked on committing to my shots more,” Rylee said. “The first day I was hoping I would play well. The second day I hit a couple of irons close on the first two holes. I didn’t make the (birdie) putts but I was striking the ball better. It got me rolling and I didn’t have a single bogey that day.”

Rylee shot a final round 68 and won the tournament by nine strokes.

Early on, Pat, who played high school golf, emphasized the basics in his coaching. He taught Rylee that a good grip and a good stance produces a good swing. Next came what Rylee calls “working on the bottom.” Translation: Building momentum and getting aggressive in the final five or six feet before the club hits the ball. That technique helps explain why her drives average right around 250 yards.

“You don’t want to take it (club) back so hard that you don’t have anything left when it matters,” is how Rylee explains it. “The most important part of your swing is at the bottom. Don’t swing hard from the top because you’re just wasting energy.”

“We stayed with that for a long time,” Pat said. “When she was little, I could caddie for her and I’d constantly remind her, do your work on the bottom. She kept moving forward and she’s always been dead straight with the driver.”

Dead straight even when dad thinks a more conservative approach might be more prudent. As any golfer knows, the safest way to avoid missing a green or ending up in a bunker is to hit an approach shot to the most open part of the green.

“I’d tell her, let’s hit the ball to the right side of the pin. There’s more green there. You don’t want to short-side yourself,” Pat said. “Then about four years in, she said, ‘you know, when you tell me that dad, you know what I do?’ What Rylee? ‘I go right at the pin.’”

Next level

In the fall Rylee will be starting her senior season. She has been home-schooled for several years and does her classroom work online through Liberty University Academy in Lynchburg, Virginia. She has a 4.0 grade-point average. When competing in high school tournaments in New Mexico, she’s a member of the Belen High School team.

Predictably, her rèsumè is expanding every year and attracting interest from a growing list of college coaches. Pat says she’s received scholarship offers from three or four Division I colleges, but declined to name them. Rylee says she’s had communication with schools from Conference USA, the Big Ten, Big 12 and WAC.

Academically she wants to earn an undergraduate degree in business, with her ultimate goal to be a veterinarian.

Rylee expects to commit sometime after the start of the school year. It’s a decision the family has intentionally delayed.

“She didn’t want to commit early. She wants to enjoy the (recruiting) process, cherish these moments,” Melissa said. “She wants to go on visits, get to know the college coaches and players.”

So what is Rylee looking for in a college?

“I want a school that’s a close-knit community in a place that supports the college and it’s athletes. A school that’s within driving distance (of New Mexico). Obviously the golf program and a chance to win championships. A school where the professors know you and you’re not just a number. A coach that appreciates me and where you can build relationships with your teammates.”

And one more, a biggie that might be hard to replicate.

“I want to be around the same type of people that I grew up with,” she said.

Rylee, Melissa and Pat know they’re headed for unchartered territory. In a year or so, what has been so good for so long will give way to a new chapter. It’s a bridge Pat has already started to cross.

“I’ve told her, at some time you’re going to go beyond what I can teach you,” Pat said. “I’m sure there’s someone out there who can take who she is and where she’s at and improve on it. As much as it would hurt, that’s what she needs.”

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Source: New York Post