After dealing with rain delays, an airline losing her clubs, surviving a marathon Saturday, overcoming a lost lead (and no ordinary lost lead, but a seven-stroke lost lead at that) and emerging the U.S. Women’s Open champion after a four-hole playoff, you might be surprised with what Ariya Jutanugarn said she is most proud of herself for doing on Sunday.

Try hitting it in the rough on the first hole.

Before explaining what that has to do with the 22-year-old from Thailand becoming a player capable of winning the most prestigious event in women’s golf, we have to look at her professional golf career from the beginning. In 2016, Jutanugarn’s second year on the LPGA Tour, she won three straight tournaments, becoming the first player to win their first three events in back-to-back-to-back fashion. Jutanugarn is strong and powerful, powerful enough to rarely hit driver, but has a delicate touch around the greens. Early then in her pro career, it looked like she had all the tools to become a dominant player.

But as often as she won—eight times on the LPGA prior to this week at Shoal Creek—she’s faced disappointing losses, defeats that undermined the idea that she might become the next Nancy Lopez, Annika Sorenstam or Lorena Ochoa.

The struggles of missed cuts and blown leads brought Jutanugarn’s mental game into question more than a few times. The most notable instance was the 2016 ANA Championship. Jutanugarn hadn’t yet won a major (her first game at the 2016 Women’s British), but played herself into the lead at Mission Hills, only to stumble down the stretch in the final round, finishing bogey-bogey-bogey to go from two up with three holes to play to finishing fourth.

In part, the memory of that day is what made a tense few hours on Sunday at Shoal Creek so cringeworthy.

Jutanugarn’s past includes another stumble in a major, one that didn’t help her stay focused Sunday at Shoal Creek. (Christian Petersen)

Through 54 holes in hot and humid Alabama, Jutanugarn appeared to be in complete control of her game and the championship. Posting scores of 67-70-67, she held a four-shot lead over a fading Sarah Jane Smith. Sunday appeared as if it was going to be pretty straightforward, if not boring. Jutanugarn was going to shoot a few under again, and no one would be able to catch her. An easy day for everyone.

RELATED: Ariya Jutanugarn overcomes a squandered lead to win the U.S. Women’s Open

What happened, of course, turned out very differently. Initially, everything was going according to plan. Jutanugarn had extended her lead to seven shots after playing the front side in four under par. No one looked like they could catch her. South Korea’s Hyo Jo Kim was lurking, for lack of a better term, as the next person down the leaderboard after shooting an opening 33 of her own.

But then things changed, slowly at first, only to pick up steam along the way. It started when Jutanugarn found a hazard off the tee on the par-4 10th and wound up making a triple-bogey 7. Then Kim dropped a 50-foot putt for birdie on 12. Then Jutanugarn made bogey at 12. Then Kim made birdie at 15.

All of a sudden, an almost certain blow-out was a one-shot golf tournament.

After 18 holes, it was a tie, Kim finishing the day with a 67 to match Jutanugarn (closing 73) at 11-under, 277 total.

“I’m really proud of myself for the front nine. I did everything I wanted to do,” Jutanugarn said. “I have really good commitment. I never think about the outcome of the front nine, but that back got me a lot.”

With her older sister, Moriya (who finished T-41) and her mother nervously watching, Jutanugarn tried to approach the playoff with new life. Yet she admitted memories of the ANA began to slip into her mind. She said she was able to push them away, however, telling herself that this wasn’t that situation. This was different.

RELATED: The clubs Ariya Jutanugarn used to win the U.S. Women’s Open

Instead of carrying the frustration of the botched lead and the memories of past tournaments where she’d come up short, Jutanugarn focused on detaching herself from what she wanted the outcome to be and freed herself up to play well.

“After you have like a seven-shot lead and end up with you have to go to a playoff, I have no expectations,” Jutanugarn said.

Kim (left) proved a worthy charger, shooting a closing 67 but failing to finish things off in the playoff. (Christian Petersen)

To get herself to a place where she can let go in the high-stress, an extremely emotional moment of a U.S. Women’s Open playoff, Jutanugarn leaned on the work she’s been doing with sport-psychology gurus Pia Nilsson and Linn Marriot at Vision54.

Jutanugarn talks about it a lot. The overarching theme of their work is how to release the hold that focusing on results has on her game. It’s the easiest mentality to slip into. You want to do well, and the most obvious measure of that is by results, your score. But thinking like that can be seriously detrimental. If the only thing you value is results, you’re suddenly a complete failure when the results don’t happen. That’s a tough way to live if you’re a professional golfer, where winning is a rare occurrence, even if you’re playing very well.

Instead, Jutanugarn says that all of her work boils down to two main things: committing to the shot and being proud of herself.

“I just try to be proud of myself every day,” Jutanugarn said.

It’s a simple statement, but a sign of a big shift in thinking. Instead of defining herself by how many tournaments she wins, Jutanugarn has been working to appreciate herself for the work she is doing. Regardless of winning or not, she wants to feel a sense of pride in who she is and what she is doing.

“She has learned that the most important thing is to feel proud, by fighting on every shot no matter what,” Nilsson said. “She wants good scores, but she has learned to make it happen, she needs to trust and feel her decisions be focused and committed during the swing or stroke and have a productive reaction after shots.”

That’s why Jutanugarn said the word “commitment” more than any other word U.S. Women’s Open week. She’s constantly telling herself to think about the shot she’s making, not where that shot is going to go. Of course, she’s not perfect at it. There were moments on that back nine Sunday where she admitted she lost her commitment. That’s where some of those squirrely shots came in, that’s where the lead was lost. But working on your mental game and getting good at it won’t keep you from getting into difficult situations. Instead, it gives you the tools to get yourself out of them.

Jutanugarn’s entire team has been working together to help elevate her game. Her caddie, Leslier Luark, is on-board, constantly giving her positive reinforcement that’s in line with what Nilsson and Marriott have taught her.

Jutanugarn is a more controlled player than even just two years ago. (Christian Petersen)

“My caddie helps me because first few holes, of course, I tried to like make some birdies, or play good, but he’s just like just, Go, do your best. That’s all you can do,” Jutanugarn said after the third round.

Her swing coach, Gary Gilchrist, is impressed with the work she has put in to get herself into this position.

“She’s been totally open to learn and grow, to face her fears face on,” said Gilchrist, who says when they work on her swing, they just focus on making sure she’s in a position where she doesn’t have to overthink anything. “It’s been amazing to watch her.”

It’s hard to change the way someone thinks. It takes guidance and time, and a lot of effort. But Jutanugarn has put in the work. Having gone the majority of her career thinking about results, she’s finding pride in the moments that happen before you even get to see what the result is.

That’s why even though she recovered in the playoff and got to raise the U.S. Women’s Open trophy, the first female from Thailand to do so, Jutanugarn pointed back to that first hole when asked which moment she was most proud of over that long, hard day.

“My tee shot on the first hole because I’m so nervous and excited. And I look at my caddie, I’m like no 3-wood today so I hit 2-iron, in the rough,” Jutanugarn recalled.

Of all the moments that day, why was that the one she’s most proud of?

She committed.

The post Ariya Jutanugarn changed how her mind works, and it’s made her a U.S. Women’s Open champ appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Ryan Herrington
Lydia Ko is starting the LPGA season with a new caddie and new instructor. And no, this isn’t an old story mistakenly republished.

Like she did to kick off 2017, the 20-year-old 14-time LPGA winner and former World No. 1 beings 2018 with new players as part of her team. On the eve of this week’s ISPS Handa Women’s Australian Open, Ko says she’s now taking instruction from Ted Oh, a former PGA Tour pro with his own background as a teen prodigy. The change was first reported by Golfweek and subsequently confirmed by LPGA.com.

Oh grew up in Southern California and competed as as junior against Tiger Woods. He made his own headlines when he qualified for the 1993 U.S. Open at age 16. Oh continues to live in Los Angeles, but spent several days in Phoenix last month with Ko, according to Golfweek.

Prior to the start of last season, while still ranked No. 1, Ko surprisingly decided to part ways with the instructor to begin working with Gary Gilchrist. Despite going winless in 26 starts in 2017, Ko told Golf World at the end of the season that she was pleased with the progress she and Gilchrist were making. Ko spoke of how her confidence has ebbed during the year, but seemed to be returning after posting top-five finishes in four of her last eight starts.

“It’s a season that obviously I learned a lot from,” Ko said. “And I think it wasn’t the ‘game’ aspect that I learned, but the mental aspect of saying, ‘Hey, get over the bads and kind of move on.’ Confidence and patience were probably the two big keys for me this end stretch of the season.”

Gilchrist also sounded positive about the results he and Ko were seeing as 2017 unfolded.

“I knew it was going to be a challenge because I knew she’d struggle,” Gilchrist said. “She won five times and a major [in 2015] and four times [in 2016]—those are unbelievable years. And then she was going to change everything, so I knew, if [Ko and her family] was going to come to me and think everything is going to work out in two or three months, that wasn’t going to happen.”

Asked about the split, Gilchrist told Golfweek. “Like any marriage you hope it lasts more than one year to make it work.”

In addition to a new swing coach, Ko also will have a new caddie on her bag in Australia, using Jonny Scott, who formerly worked with Laura Davies and Karrie Webb. Changing caddies is hardly new for Ko, who has previously used 10 different people on her bag during her LPGA career. The revolving door of loopers seemed to have slowed when she picked Pete Godfrey late last April and stuck with him through the remainder of 2017.

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Appropriately enough, crazy is how Ko tends to look at those who approach her wondering if she’s worried about the long-term impact of the 2017 season. “I feel like it was better than what everybody else thinks,” Ko says. “[Everyone is] like, ‘Lydia is in a slump.’ But I feel like I played solid. I’ve had a bunch of top-10s to kind of prove that theory.

True enough, Ko wrapped up the year with 11 top-10 finishes, and five top-fives. While relinquishing her No. 1 ranking after 85 straight weeks in June—and falling all the way to No. 9—she still earned $1.17 million and finished the year with a 69.864 stroke average. To many on the tour, that looks like the kind of slump they could get used to.

Appreciating, though, that the zero in the win column is something new for the 14-time tour winner with two majors, and that her ranking in greens in regulation was 26th compared to seventh and second in 2014 and 2015, Ko expanded on why the year wasn’t quite the disaster it might have appeared.

“It’s a season that obviously I learned a lot from. And I think it wasn’t the ‘game’ aspect that I learned, but the mental aspect of saying, ‘Hey, get over the bads and kind of move on.’ Confidence and patience were probably the two big keys for me this end stretch of the season.”

Her swing coach, Gary Gilchrist, stands beside Ko in her assessment of 2017. Winning, or the lack there of, is something they never have talked about since Ko replaced her former coach, David Leadbetter, with Gilchrist in December 2016. There’s been no need, insists the new instructor, given the motivation she displayed every time they talked or worked together.

But what explains the drop off? Besides changing coaches, Ko changed her equipment, leaving Callaway for PXG and putting 14 new clubs in the bag. She also changed her caddie—several times actually—eventually landing on Pete Godfrey from late April through the end of the season. About the only think Ko didn’t change was her ball. Or at least not until the season finale at Tiburon Golf Club, when she played a new Callaway offering and finished T-16.

Related: Lydia Ko opens up about all her caddie changes

“I knew it was going to be a challenge because I knew she’d struggle,” Gilchrist said. “She won five times and a major [in 2015] and four times [in 2016]—those are unbelievable years. And then she was going to change everything, so I knew, if [Ko and her family] was going to come to me and think everything is going to work out in two or three months, that wasn’t going to happen.”

When they began working together, Ko hoped to return her swing to the form she had started her pro career so successfully with in 2014 but had departed from when she and Leadbetter made swing changes in 2016. Gilchrist obliged, working with Ko to quiet her lower body during the backswing and have her clubhead fall back in line with her hands rather than allow the clubhead to drift outside. More recently, Ko has gotten away from the crisp turn going back and has a slight slide motion initiating the backswing that they’re working on.

David Cannon Seeking out Gilchrist (right) to help with her swing was among the bigger changes Ko made in 2017.

In re-learning her old swing, the most difficult challenge was the inconsistency from week to week. Where it became most alarming was her performance in major championships. A respectable T-11 at the ANA Inspiration was followed by T-59 at the KPMG Women’s PGA, T-33 at the U.S. Women’s Open and another T-59 at the Ricoh Women’s British Open. She did finish the major season on a high note, finishing third in the rain-shortened Evian Championship.

The way Ko explains it, her on-course performance had less to do with her physical game and more with the mental aspect of trying to absorb the changes while maintaining her status among the LPGA’s top players. “I think to me I wasn’t playing good because I feel like I lost confidence in myself more than everything that I had changed,” Ko said.

While there may have been moments this season where Ko struggled to have confidence in herself, Gilchrist has nothing but confidence in her preparation and work ethic, something that he believes will return Ko to regular contention on the LPGA Tour soon.

“We’ll be out working,” Gilchrist says, “out there for eight hours, and I’ll be getting tired and she’s just still walking around with her head up, still going at every shot with high energy.”

It’s funny, because you don’t really watch Ko and think of her as a high-energy person. She’s not one to throw down huge fist pumps when she makes a putt; she doesn’t show a ton of emotion in general. But if you look beyond those outward, flashy ways that some players show energy and passion, you see Ko demonstrates it in a different way. When she’s done with her round, she stays and signs every autograph—she even took the hat off her head and gave it to a young fan after her final round on Sunday at Tiburon Golf Club. She stays around to speak with the media, taking her time to be thoughtful with her answers. And then she’s off to the putting green or range to work some more.

Ko puts so much energy into the game, Gilchrist said, that the most important thing she could do for herself in the off season would be to take some time off and rest. Ko says she’s going to comply with his latest assignment, taking a full four weeks away from her clubs.

“I think it’s good obviously physically just to not be in that repetitive motion,” Ko says. “I think it’s more the mental side where you just get away from it and have some fun outside of golf.”

Though Ko’s season had uncharacteristic highs and lows, she can hold strong found a bit of her usual form at the Indy Women in Tech Championship in September, where she shot 65-64-72 in the three-round tournament to finish in second behind Lexi Thompson. A week later came her T-3 showing at Evian.

Stuart Franklin/Getty Images
While winless, Ko still had 11 top-10s in 26 starts and earned $1.17 million this past season.

“I realised, ‘Hey, patience is such a big key.’ Week in, week out, the talent doesn’t change that much, but if you feel confident and you’re out there committing to your shots, then you’re able to play the best golf you can,” Ko said. “So, Indy really helped with that. You know, obviously I would’ve loved to be the one that was the champion, but I felt like I learned a big lesson from that even outside all the results.”

With patience comes acceptance as well. Ko isn’t ever going to blow the ball by many of her competitors on tour. She averages 243 yards off the tee, ranking her 137th on tour. Instead she must be a strategist on the course, something the cerebral Ko has and should continue to excel at.

“It’s like she’s playing chess,” Gilchrist says. “She’ll outlast you.”

As Gilchrist watched from outside the ropes during Ko’s Saturday round in Naples, he insists all the pieces are there. Ko was hitting the ball well and getting comfortable. Ultimately, she needs more putts to fall.

“Golf is such a confidence game,” Ko said. “If you start making birdies or putts and playing well, it builds up. That momentum kind of carries on.”

With 187 yards in on the 18th hole of Ko’s final round of the season on Sunday, she hit her hybrid to about 12 feet. Her last putt of the season was a downhill, breaking putt on a fast green that didn’t give up many one-putts throughout the day.

It rolled in.

Ko winning again, it’s a moment waiting to happen.

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