<p>INDIANAPOLIS</p>
<p>The weekend didn’t go quite how Erica Shepherd had hoped at the LPGA Indy Women in Tech Championship, but the youngest player in the field was still able to gain some valuable experience from it all.</p>
<p>Though she closed with a 4-over-par 76 that included three double-bogeys, Shepherd could take solace in the fact that she made the cut at the event for a second straight year while some of the tour’s biggest names, including the likes of Minjee Lee and Paula Creamer, were gone after Friday.</p>[sc:text-divider text-divider-title="Story continues below gallery" ]Click here to purchase photos from this gallery
<p>“That was obviously my first goal,” she said, “so to have that, to make another cut at this event was a really good feeling. Hopefully next year or whenever I play in this again, I can make it further up the leaderboard after the cut, but it is what it is, I guess.”</p>
<p>Shepherd got her Saturday off to a good start, finishing off a second-round 67 to comfortably make the cut and briefly moving up into the top 25 on the leaderboard when she opened her third round with a birdie on the first hole.</p>
<p>But a double-bogey 7 on the fifth, followed by consecutive bogeys on 7 and 8, dropped her back down to 3 under overall. Shepherd got back on track with a birdies on the 10th and 11th holes, but gave those shots right back when she was hit with a two-stroke penalty for slow play on the par-3 12th. She parred in to finish Saturday with a 3-over-par 75.</p>
<p>Despite the disappointing score, Shepherd said she was able to pick up quite a bit by playing her third round with two-time major champion and 2015 LPGA Player of the Year Lydia Ko.</p>
<p>“Lydia was the person I learned the most from,” Shepherd said. “She’s probably the nicest person, hands down, I’ve ever played golf with. So to see how she handles herself even she makes a double or whatever, and how she treats people, no matter if they’re amateurs or pros, I learned a lot from that.”</p>
<p>Sunday proved to be just as much of a mentally exhausting up-and-down grind as Saturday afternoon was. Shepherd bookended a fifth-hole bogey with a pair of birdies to get to -4 overall, but she wound up taking her first double-bogey of the day on the par-4 eighth hole. She got back to 3 under when she knocked in a 3-foot birdie put on the par-3 12th, but two more doubles on 14 and 16 bumped her down into the black for the tournament.</p>
<p>She lipped out a long birdie attempt on 15 and gave herself two more opportunities on the 17th and 18th, but it wasn’t in the cards this time out for Shepherd, the lone amateur in the 144-player field this week.</p>
<p>It wasn’t for a lack of trying.</p>
<p>“When you make three doubles, you’re kind of like, ‘Whatever,’ but I don’t think I gave up,” Shepherd said. “I had two good looks at birdies the last two holes, just nothing was really going for me today.”</p>
<p>There should be plenty of good days ahead for the 17-year-old, who will jet off to Paris next month to play in the Junior Ryder Cup.</p>
