If you want to feel old, then just tune into the US Women’s Open at Pebble Beach today. Michelle Wie, who made her LPGA Tour debut as a 12-year-old and played her first US Open at 13, is retiring from competitive golf at the end of the week at the age of just 33.
Lexi Thompson, meanwhile, is playing in her 17th US Women’s Open and she is still only 28. I don’t know about you, but merely reading those sentences back out loud has been accompanied by the rustle of another wrinkle forming on my increasingly decrepit brow.
“It’s mental when you think about it,” said Louise Duncan with a gasp as she mulled over the careers of these child prodigies who developed into global stars. “I’m 23 and a rookie. That almost seems old these days. I don’t know what they feed them over in America. They blossom very early. If I was playing in US Opens at 13, maybe I’d be retiring now.”
Duncan, of course, is only getting started. This time last year, the West Kilbride golfer was making her debut in the US Women’s Open as another reward for winning the Women’s Amateur Championship the previous year. Here in 2023, she is on a fortnight’s break from her first full season as a member of the Ladies European Tour (LET). She’s been glad of the holiday.
“Tour life does get a bit repetitive,” she said. “You get up, you play, you go out for food and on and on it goes. I played for three weeks in a row and that does it for me. In that third week, I was on the range and I felt horrendous when I was swinging. It almost felt sore to swing a club. I was thinking, ‘Am I 23 or 43?’ There are lots of folk who can play week after week. I don’t know how they can do that, both physically and mentally. I’m shot after three.”
Finding out what works, what doesn’t work, what can be done better and what shouldn’t be done at all is part and parcel of being a new recruit to the front line of the pro game. At the halfway stage of her first full campaign, Duncan, who shot to prominence in 2021 by finishing 10th as an amateur at the AIG Women’s Open, can take stock.
“The big question for me is how do I get more consistency?,” she said of a valued quality in this fickle old pursuit. “How are the players at the top playing well every week even though they may not have their best stuff all the time? How do I get that? I need to make my bad days okay and make the most of the good days.”
Duncan will get cracking again on English soil next week in the latest Aramco Series event which is presented by the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia. The Saudis, of course, have their cash-sodden fingers in so many sporting pies these days, they will probably start backing The Herald sports desk’s autumn Texas scramble.
The money over morals debate has raged in men’s golf with the rise of the Saudi-backed LIV rebellion. On the Ladies European Tour, meanwhile, the discussion centres more around need than greed. The LET simply could not afford to turn down the significant financial fillip that has been provided by the Aramco Series.
“We are out here trying to make a living,” said Duncan of the vast monetary disparities between the men’s and the women’s scene. “It’s business in the end.”
Duncan will be getting back to business next week. Her best finish of the season – a share of seventh – came in the last Aramco event in Florida in May and it provided the former Curtis Cup player with confidence and contentment.
“That result really settled me down,” she said of a week which saw her finish well ahead of the aforementioned Thompson and just behind another super-star, Lydia Ko. “The first part of the season was about seeing if I was good enough to be out here and if I could compete. And I think I can. That result gave me confidence and made me feel comfortable. Anyone can win on this tour at any point. You just never know what a week will bring.”
