Brooke Henderson, who has gained 20 occasions since turning skilled in 2014, rolled in a putt on the ultimate gap of final 12 months’s Amundi Evian Championship to win the ladies’s main by one shot over the rookie Sophia Schubert.
It was Henderson’s seventh time taking part in the championship, which begins on Thursday and is the one main performed in continental Europe. It’s also the one girls’s main performed on the identical course yearly, the Evian Resort Golf Membership in France, which has hosted the match for practically 30 years.
That presents a chance and a problem for gamers attempting to organize to play on a course that was considerably redesigned a decade in the past. It could appear to make it simpler to prepare 12 months after 12 months. However the course itself just isn’t universally appreciated. It’s been referred to as quirky and unfair, and one participant, Stacy Lewis, who’s a significant champion, skipped it for 2 years.
It additionally stands in distinction to programs for the opposite majors, which have moved to be hosted on the identical venues the place the boys have gained.
The US Girls’s Open was held at Pebble Seashore Golf Hyperlinks for the primary time this 12 months. And it’s set to be performed at Oakmont, Pinehurst, Merion, and the Los Angeles Nation Membership, which hosted this 12 months’s males’s United States Open.
It’s the identical with the KPMG Girls’s P.G.A. Championship, which was performed this 12 months at Baltusrol, and the A.I.G. Girls’s Open that was performed final 12 months at Muirfield, some of the historic golf programs in Scotland.
But few gamers are going to skip a significant. So, does their preparation for the Evian differ from making ready for the opposite majors? And with a schedule that calls on gamers to journey farther and extra broadly within the season than the boys do on the PGA Tour, is their preparation for the Evian completely different from their coaching for majors on programs they’ve seen earlier than? (Add to that the truth that many gamers had been in the US final week, taking part in the Dow Nice Lakes Bay Invitational in Michigan.)
Henderson, who’s two-time main champion, was circumspect in her response about making ready.
“My group and I concentrate on peaking on the majors and work significantly arduous to organize for these weeks each mentally and bodily,” she mentioned. “The venue on the Amundi Evian Championship, like all main programs, is exclusive and actually exams all elements of your recreation in several methods. Provided that it’s a course we come again to every 12 months, we modify our technique barely based mostly on prior expertise and course situations.”
Different gamers, significantly those that aren’t main champions, take into consideration these weeks in a different way.
“We all the time circle the majors to attempt to peak throughout these sure tournaments,” mentioned Ally Ewing, a three-time winner on the L.P.G.A. Tour. “I’m a course of particular person. I wish to be prepared within the spring to play stable golf on the Evian. There are numerous issues that go into competing in a golf match there. I circle these dates.”
Ewing, who tied for thirtieth on the Evian her rookie season in 2016, mentioned her focus this week had all the time been on controlling what she may put into making ready.
“It goes again to the hours I put in at age 14 to ensure the ball place was all the time the identical place and that my placing stroke was repetitive,” she mentioned. “It’s a few stable base. My prep must be targeted on my tempo and understanding my approach across the course. I must dial within the pace on the greens and be taught the place to put on our method pictures.”
In that sense, the reminiscence of returning to the Evian every year helps with a number of the variables.
“All three of my wins have been brand-new golf programs for me,” she mentioned. “Attending to a golf course the place I’ve no previous recollection of — I really feel like rookies get to an occasion they usually have this cram mind-set.”
“Once I get to the Evian and there are a ton of side-hill lies, I’m engaged on creating consolation the place I’m. Each golf course goes to play in a different way, however I’m the identical.”
For Ewing, it comes all the way down to technique, whether or not she’s performed a significant course a half dozen occasions, like on the Evian, or if it’s her first time at a venue.
“Typically, it’s merely wanting and asking, do the greens have numerous pitch again to entrance,” she mentioned. “Will we wish to be beneath the outlet to attain? Or on a course with numerous runoff areas, we have to take note of the spots the place we are able to miss. Let’s go away ourselves an opportunity to make birdie or, worst case, a par.”
She added: “As knowledgeable, we miss pictures. I miss some pictures left and a few pictures proper.”
Lizette Salas, who’s in her thirteenth season on tour, hasn’t all the time appreciated taking part in on the Evian.
“I’ve but to determine that course out,” she mentioned. “It’s positively a difficult golf course, so far as the format. You’re infrequently going to get a flat lie on the Evian Championship. Additionally, the climate is a really large issue to find out how low we are able to go for that week. I really feel there’s solely a lot you are able to do to that golf course, apart from tear it utterly down.”
She admits that some programs simply don’t swimsuit a participant’s eye, or they’re locations that they’ve not all the time performed effectively at. “However because the purses proceed to rise, that simply encourages us to not suck it up, however to take it as a brand new problem and attempt to make it work.”
In eight appearances on the Evian, her finest end was her first time, tied for eleventh in 2013.
For Salas, taking part in effectively in a significant is concerning the prep work.
“I positively put together in a different way at present,” she mentioned. “In my earlier years, my purpose was to play the course as many occasions as potential. However I noticed it’s not a dash; it’s a marathon. Right now I wish to play the course not more than twice forward of time and concentrate on the principle tendencies of the course.
“It’s a course we’ve seen again and again, however we don’t have the luxurious of getting there early due to our schedules. In the event you like a course greater than others, it dictates your observe schedule.”
At this month’s U.S. Girls’s Open, she went to Pebble Seashore a month early. “I bought to play a day and a morning spherical to see the wind tendencies,” she mentioned.
Because the defending champion on the Dow Nice Lakes Bay Invitational, Salas performed that match in Michigan after which flew to France to prepare for the Evian.
However one factor that doesn’t change is her emphasis on what she calls “boring golf.” “You’re not attempting to hit a ton of balls” to organize, she mentioned. “You’re simply attempting to grasp the golf course. Is there any perception on easy methods to play this course one of the best ways?”
For others, although, they attempt to block out the magnitude of the occasion and play the week like another match.
“You simply have to enter it considering it’s simply one other occasion,” mentioned Jessica Korda, who has missed the lower 3 times on the Evian, “as a result of that’s precisely what it’s on the finish of the day.”