Laura Davies made the decision not to compete at St. Andrews next month shortly after hitting a tee shot in Utah, of all places. The result of the tee shot wasn’t that bad, but the feeling of dread and uncertainty that preceded the strike was more than she could take.
After that first round at the LPGA Senior Championship at Copper Rock in St. George, Davies rang up her caddie and said that she wouldn’t be playing the AIG Women’s British Open. She’s competed in the past 43 consecutive British Opens and was set to make the Old Course her final LPGA tournament appearance.
It’s the only way a sporting legend like Davies should go out – on historic ground. Instead, golf fans have likely seen the last of Davies teeing it up on the LPGA.
“I just don’t think I’m good enough anymore,” she explained. “It would’ve been lovely, don’t get me wrong. … I wish I could’ve just stood up and said I’ll give it a go, I don’t care how bad I am. But I do care. That’s the trouble.”
Davies, 60, said that she immediately felt lighter after the decision was made and that it’s actually helped her golf on the senior circuit. She’s excited to head to Fox Chapel Golf Club in Pittsburgh next week for the U.S. Senior Women’s Open.
She’ll still be in St. Andrews in a month’s time to commentate for Sky Sports. The Old Course is her favorite course in the world. Amazingly, her first time there was in 2007 for the first women’s major ever contested at the Home of Golf.
Davies hit her first tee shot off No. 1 on Tuesday that week and promptly hit it left and out of bounds. She only played up the first and down the 18th that day.
“I did a Baker-Finch,” she said at the time. “I had people heckling me on the first tee as well, so it was a hard shot.”
Her first full round over the Old Course came during Wednesday’s pro-am.
On Thursday, Davies teed off just as eventual champion Lorena Ochoa was putting the finishing touches on a bogey-free 67. The Englishwoman found the fairway when it counted.
Davies played her first British Open as a 16-year-old amateur in 1980, long before the event became a major. She won the event in 1986 and, with the exception of 1983 when the event was not contested, has never missed an appearance. Past champions who are 60 and under are exempt into the championship. St. Andrews would’ve been her final exemption.
In 2020, Davies hit the first tee shot at Royal Troon to mark her 40th appearance but there were no fans in the gallery due to the global pandemic. Georgia Hall sent her a text message that jokingly said, “Don’t hold us up.”
If only everyone on tour carried on as quickly as Davies.
England’s Hall has called her a great friend and an idol.
“I kind of pulled up to the car park and you have your 2018 champion, so I have my space, and I look down and it’s Laura, 1986, and I had a joke with her that I was born 10 years later than that,” Hall once remarked, “and she found that funny.”
Last year at Walton Heath, Davies withdrew midway through the first round after suffering a wrist injury trying to escape a bramble bush.
That she won’t get a proper sendoff feels inadequate for a woman who who won 20 times on the LPGA and more than 80 times worldwide.
She’s the only player to have never missed an appearance in the event since it became a major in 2001. She was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame at St. Andrews in 2015 and took part in the R&A Celebration of Champions there two years ago for the 150th British Open.
Davies never imagined there would come a time when she didn’t want to play competitive golf. But everyone always told her that she’d know when she’d had enough.
“If someone’s never played top-level sport, it’s hard to explain where you go from a position of pure control and comfort and looking forward to your day’s golf to absolute terror,” she said, “and I’ve reached that point.”
