The 2003 Green Hope High alumna finished the 54-hole tournament at Bosque Real Country Club 10-over par and tied for 67th place, which allowed her to take home her first professional paycheck.

“It was really exciting,” Brady said. “I couldn’t have even predicted how exciting it was going to be. The first two days were pretty calm, but I was soaking up everything and learning and doing my own thing.”

Through 36 holes, Brady was on the top half of the leaderboard. She was two-over-par after the second round and tied for 27th place. But she slipped toward the bottom after shooting an eight-over 80 in the final round.

Despite the high number, she said the final round was “the most fun I had shooting 80 in my whole life.”

That’s because she was in a third-round group with Mexico’s Lorena Ochoa, the No. 1 ranked golfer in the world. Galleries 10,000 strong followed their group the entire round. Brady said it took 10 minutes just to get to the first tee because the crowd was so big.

“It’s unbelievable how supportive they are of her,” she said. “It’s hard to forget that they’re there and you have to play golf. It’s not like in the U.S. They’re loud and they don’t necessarily know you need to be quiet or you can’t snap cameras before a shot. … No matter how hard you focus on the game, you’re hearing cheering. What was really great was they kind of adopted me and started cheering for me as well. I’ve got to get used to that.”

Brady basked in the opportunity to play with the top golfer in the game. She said there was a lot of give-and-take between them throughout the round. After Ochoa birdied the sixth hole, Brady gave herself a chance for birdie on the next hole.

“She walked by, ‘OK, now it’s your turn,’” Brady said. “It just continued the whole way around.”

Unfortunately, Brady’s game didn’t match her excitement.

She was five-over-par at the turn and couldn’t establish a rhythm on the back nine. She had three birdies, four bogeys and one double bogey to come in at eight-over for the day.

Brady had planned to play in that weekend’s Futures Tour event, but the field at the MasterCard Classic wasn’t full. So she knew she had a chance to get into it without having to go through qualifying.

In the opening round on March 14, Brady shot a four-over-par 76 and was tied for 77th place.

“I played pretty solid,” she said. “I just didn’t make any birdies.”

After a ho-hum opening nine in the second round — she was one-over after starting the round on No. 10 — she made the turn and caught fire. She birdied four of the next six holes. After a bogey on the par 3 seventh, she finished the round with a two-under 70, allowing her to climb into a tie for 27th place.

“The golf course is really difficult,” Brady said. “The back nine, you can easily have a double or triple because you have to be so accurate on your drive. I drove it really well on the back nine that second day and gave myself a lot of opportunities to fire at pins.”

At two-over for the tournament, she was three strokes above the cut. She knew Ochoa had finished the day with the same score, but because their finishing times were so far apart, Brady didn’t count on being paired with her for the final round.

“But somehow, that night, I’m in her pairing,” Brady said. “I was just like, ‘Holy crap. I’m just thrown in with the No. 1 player in the world.’ I got really excited. And then my dad said, ‘She puts her pants on the same way you do.’ I thought about that and was like, ‘You’re right.’”

Brady plans to return to Mexico at the end of April for her next LPGA tournament, the Corona Championship in Morelia.

Brady has a conditional exemption for the LPGA Tour in 2008. After graduating from Vanderbilt University last May, with degrees in economics and civil engineering, she moved to Sarasota, Fla., to focus solely on golf. After making it to the final stage of Q School, she earned conditional status for the year after finishing the 90-hole tournament tied with seven others for the final exemption.

Brady said she next plans to play in the Futures Tour stop in Daytona Beach, Fla., the American Systems Invitational, April 4-6. That tournament will be held on the same course, LPGA International, as was the final stage of Q School.