GAINESVILLE, Va. – Not long after Lauren Coughlin put up her third point for Team USA at the 19th Solheim Cup, she walked over to the rope line and signed for a group of girls from the Virginia Blue Ridge First Tee program, where Coughlin got her start.
Moments later, she posed with the women’s golf team from Randolph Macon College. Head coach Bryan Hearn has known Coughlin since she was 11 years old, back when he was an assistant pro at Greenbrier Country Club in Chesapeake.
“Just a full-of-life kid, loved the game of golf,” said Hearn of a young Coughlin. “A lot of time sitting in the pro shop eating hot dogs with me while I was working.”
Coughlin’s 3-0 start at the Solheim Cup is a celebration of a long, stubborn road. The 31-year-old played alongside Lexi Thompson – her third partner of the week – in morning foursomes on Saturday. While 29-year-old Thompson tees it up in her seventh and final Solheim Cup, Coughlin is just getting started. Their wildly different routes to the Robert Trent Jones Golf Club serve as a reminder that there’s no one path to excellence.
Yet it’s a fairly straight one this week.
“You go to that light and turn left and go about 65 miles, and there’s my house,” said Coughlin of representing her country for the first time – in any event – at a home Solheim Cup. “So that’s pretty awesome.”
While Nelly Korda owned the first half of the LPGA season, Coughlin emerged as the best American player heading into the Solheim Cup. A two-time winner on tour since July, it wasn’t all that long ago that Coughlin was fighting for her job. Not long before that, she was thinking about quitting the game. Her college coach at Virginia, Kim Lewellen, convinced her otherwise.
Lewellen, now head coach at Wake Forest, first watched Coughlin compete at a state junior championship and was impressed with her athleticism. She then watched her shoot 66 at her high school championship and took note of the way she engaged the people around her. Coughlin grew up playing in regional events on the Peggy Kirk Bell Tour. Her mom, Yvette, didn’t find out about the AJGA until she was well into high school.
Couglin walked on at Virginia where she met her husband John Pond, who played football for the Cavaliers. She never competed in any USGA events as an amateur because she took classes in the summer to keep her spring schedule light.
“She was all about the team,” said Yvette.
Coughlin was 6 years old the first time she picked up the a set of cut-down ladies clubs her father, Michael, bought. Coughlin had a natural swing from the start, though dad notes she was so small at the time, that it looked like the club was swinging her.
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Coughlin also played tee ball, basketball and taekwondo as a youth. She’s ambidextrous, playing lefty tennis and righty golf. Michael credits some of that to taekwondo.
“When she shoots the basketball, she can drive the hoop the same from both sides,” he noted.
A feel player from the get-go, Michael said his daughter got better every year, but she never tried to change too much at once.
After Coughlin graduated from Virginia, Lewellen’s husband John took over as coach. John Lewellen, a self-described swing geek, put himself through seminary by giving golf lessons. The Episcopal minister actually married Couglin and Pond 4½ years ago, the same year she started playing full time on the LPGA.
That first season on the LPGA was rough, with Coughlin earning only $12,625 in 18 starts on tour. She spent the next two years on the Epson Tour before making her way back out to the LPGA in 2021.
Over the past three years, Coughlin has morphed from a player fighting to keep her tour card to a top-10 player in the world. With five top-10 finishes in her last six starts, including two victories, one could argue that she’s the hottest player on the LPGA right now, outside of perhaps Lydia Ko.
Several factors have gone into this transition. She stumbled across a dream putter in a pile while husband John was getting fitted at Ping’s headquarters earlier this spring. That unlocked something special for a player who has long been a premiere ball-striker.
Pond and Coughlin also made a big family decision earlier this year when John quit his job in fundraising at the University of Virginia to travel full-time with Lauren. While he has caddied some for Coughlin throughout the season, his presence even when not on the bag has meant a great deal.
“She’s not missing home,” said Yvette. “She’s more comfortable; she’s happy.”
Coughlin made another bold move this year, reaching out to Annika Sorenstam’s longtime caddie, Terry McNamara, to see if he’d come back on tour to work for her.
McNamara got emotional after Coughlin won her match on Saturday.
“She’s had to work so hard,” he said of what makes Coughlin special. “She appreciates it.”
In the run-up to the Solheim, Coughlin came out to Robert Trent Jones Golf Club on four separate occasions to get used to the property. The first time McNamara walked the course with her in July, he said something simple that made a world of difference: “What you do is good enough.”
“I don’t need to be doing anything special,” said Coughlin. “I don’t need to be trying too hard. I don’t need to want it too much. All I need to do is just go be myself and see what happens.”
That extra dose of self-belief has pushed Coughlin into rare air.
The first American rookie to start 3-0-0 since Pat Hurst in 1998, Coughlin could become the first American rookie to win four points in Solheim Cup history on Sunday. Paula Creamer was the last American rookie to win 3½ points in 2005.
“It’s the best to watch somebody raise their level in the biggest environment in their sport, it’s special,” said Pond of his wife’s play this week. “It’s what dawgs do. That’s what she’s been all week. She’s a dawg.”
After Coughlin won the Scottish Open in August, she headed over to St. Andrews on Sunday night and walked into the famed Dunvegan to celebrate.
“I got a standing ovation and they played ‘We are the Champions,’ ” she gushed while standing in front of the Royal and Ancient Clubhouse. “It was incredible, bucket-list type stuff.”
Coughlin’s parents can’t get over how many people know their daughter’s name. Here at the Solheim Cup, Yvette can’t help but turn around and look to see if it’s someone they know.
“If they find out that I’m her dad and that’s her mom,” said Michael, “it’s like we turn into rockstars.”
Of course, Coughlin had a built-in fanbase long before she became Solheim famous. When No Laying Up announced several years ago that they’d be sponsoring up-and-coming players as part of their Young Hitters program, Coughlin sent a direct message to Todd “Tron Carter” Schuster and, six months later, received a green-light reply. One coffee shop meeting later, Coughlin suddenly had a nationwide network of support.
After Coughlin’s summer victory at the CPKC Women’s Open, she talked on an NLU podcast about telling husband John that she’d get him a nice boat after her share of third at the Chevron Championship rather than a percentage of her check. But then after Pond caddied for her again at the Evian Championship, where she finished fourth, she told him the boat just got bigger.
As Coughlin signed autographs on Saturday, John was given a sign that said “LC, how big is the boat now?
“I want one with a crew now,” he cracked.
