{"id":307041,"date":"2025-07-31T16:42:14","date_gmt":"2025-07-31T16:42:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/307041\/"},"modified":"2025-07-31T16:42:14","modified_gmt":"2025-07-31T16:42:14","slug":"lottie-woad-golfs-emerging-superstar-who-used-to-practice-in-the-snow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/307041\/","title":{"rendered":"Lottie Woad: Golf\u2019s emerging superstar who used to practice in the snow"},"content":{"rendered":"

Farnham Golf Club is a 6,613-yard course in the English countryside \u2014 yet they are running out of room.<\/p>\n

Last year, during a refurbishment of the clubhouse of the 18-hole venue founded in 1896, they created a place for meetings and called it the \u201cChampions Room\u201d. Along with an Honours Board, there are two walls dedicated to Lottie Woad, a club member since 2012 and someone who, in the past month, has become the talk of golf.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to need a bigger room with more walls,\u201d Ben Beagley, Farnham\u2019s general manager, tells The Athletic. \u201cWe\u2019re already wondering if we should rename the room after Lottie in honour of her growing number of wins.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the weekend, 21-year-old Woad won the Scottish Open at Dundonald Links by three shots \u2014 in what was her professional debut on the LPGA Tour. It was the first time since 2018 a women\u2019s golfer had won their inaugural LPGA event after turning pro and only the third time it has happened.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you don\u2019t know who Lottie is, you don\u2019t follow golf,\u201d Amy Bond, who coached Woad on the golf team at Florida State University in the U.S. after she enrolled in 2022, tells The Athletic.<\/p>\n

Woad\u2019s win in Scotland followed an Irish Open victory at the start of this month and a third-place finish a week later at the Evian Championship, one of the women\u2019s game\u2019s five majors. Across the two events, she had to forego winnings of around half a million pounds ($660,000) as she was still an amateur. Those finishes did however help her qualify for an LPGA tour card \u2014 which everyone back in her hometown of Farnham, a short drive southwest of London, always knew was coming.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnyone who has known Lottie in recent years has known she is destined to do great things,\u201d Beagley adds. \u201cThe only thing that may have surprised people is the speed at which she has gone about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

This week, at the\u00a0Women\u2019s Open in Royal Porthcawl, Wales, the former amateur world No 1 will try to replicate her golden form of recent weeks as she tees off alongside stars such as reigning champion Lydia Ko and 2023 winner Lilia Vu.<\/p>\n

It will be Woad\u2019s first major since turning pro. Winning would mean taking home $1,425,000 (just over a million pounds) and becoming the 42nd golfer to win the championship in its 49-year history.<\/p>\n

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A \u201cmajestic\u201d approach shot on the 17th by Lottie Woad \ud83d\ude4c pic.twitter.com\/iKMv64Iv62<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Sky Sports Golf (@SkySportsGolf) July 27, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

One of the people who knows what it takes to win is Woad\u2019s compatriot Karen Stupples, who won The Open in 2004.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery time Lottie tees up, she wants to win,\u201d says Stupples, who also attended Florida State. \u201cShe\u2019s not going out there thinking that she\u2019s not going to win. And sure, there\u2019s a lot of money on offer, but she\u2019s never a player to think about that. She sets goals for herself and she\u2019s very matter-of-fact about how she wants to achieve them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stupples was an assistant captain of Great Britain and Ireland\u2019s Curtis Cup-winning team last year as Woad starred in their first defeat of the United States in that biannual Ryder Cup-style team event for eight years.<\/p>\n

The biggest takeaway from that weekend for Stupples, who met Woad there for the first time and has stayed in touch since, was how \u201cincredibly unselfish\u201d she is. \u201cShe was the amateur world No 1 but she didn\u2019t act like it,\u201d Stupples says. \u201cThere was a shyness to her and her abilities, but she was fully aware of what being a world No 1 entailed and the responsibility she had within the team.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked by the Florida State sports media department to name the most famous person whose number she had saved in her phone, Woad answered that it\u2019s Stupples, who is one of her mentors.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Woad\u2019s Q&A at Florida State (Florida State Athletics department)<\/p>\n

\u201cMy name will be very quickly supplanted,\u201d Stupples laughs. \u201cShe\u2019s insanely well-rounded. She knows exactly what she has to do. She has a plan for everything. There\u2019s no real advice that I could possibly give her that would help. I mean, she knows that I support her 100 per cent and I\u2019m always going to be there if she needs somebody. But she\u2019s got a great team around her of people that have supported her throughout her career.\u201d<\/p>\n

A big part of that team is Luke Bone, who began as Woad\u2019s swing coach at Farnham\u2019s junior academy when she was seven. He will be with her again this weekend, just as he was when she became the first European to win the Augusta National Women\u2019s Amateur title in 2024. There was no green jacket like the male pros receive when they win The Masters at that U.S. course but the world was made aware of her talent.<\/p>\n

A year ago, as an amateur, she finished tied for 10th in The Open at St Andrews in Scotland. But it might have been different had Woad, who has the same management team as her golfing idol, fellow Brit Justin Rose, not walked away from football as a teenager. A Leeds United fan, she was at Southampton\u2019s centre of excellence but shifted her focus to golf.<\/p>\n

By winning in Scotland, she collected a prize of $300,000 on the same day England\u2019s women beat Spain to retain the European Championship.<\/p>\n

\"LOTTIE-WOAD-SCOTTISH-OPEN\"<\/p>\n

Woad with the Scottish Open trophy (Steve Welsh\/PA Images via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Woad listened to Sunday evening\u2019s match on the radio as she made the seven-hour road journey from Dundonald, near Glasgow, to south Wales with parents Rachel and Nick, keen to get a Royal Porthcawl practice round in on the Monday morning. Once she passes her driving test, Woad intends to buy herself a car using golf winnings which after this week will surely grow.<\/p>\n

She plans to borrow coach Bond\u2019s car to take her test when she is back in Florida in a couple of weeks, where she will remain for the next year, combining tournaments with her sports management degree studies.<\/p>\n

It is not just the car Woad will return for.<\/p>\n

\u201cI made the mistake of saying, \u2018The ice cream is on me if you win\u2019,\u201d Bond laughs, with Woad now having triumphed at two tournaments in less than a month.<\/p>\n

She was recruited to Florida State during the pandemic, so the first time Bond watched her play live was at the British Girls Amateur Championship in 2022 \u2014 a week before Woad moved to the campus in the city of Tallahassee.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first hole I watched her play, she made birdie, and I thought to myself: \u2018Wow, this is gonna be a very good relationship\u2019. And then she won that week,\u201d Bond says. \u201cWhat sticks out most to me with Lottie is her work ethic and love of the game. She loves the process and to practice. That to me is something you don\u2019t see very often these days, somebody that truly loves every bit of the process of playing golf.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beagley recalls a time when the course at Farnham was closed because of snow but Woad turned up anyway to hit balls on the driving range and record every shot in a notebook, as she has done since her early teens. It is not uncommon for Farnham members to see her spend eight or more hours there, fine-tuning her game.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s always been dedicated and has this ability to practice for hours,\u201d Beagley says. \u201cShe\u2019s extremely committed and has been for a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bond recalls Woad looking \u201ceerily comfortable\u201d when battling it out at the Evian, where she missed out on a play-off for the title by one shot. Woad\u2019s unfazed calmness stems not just from her golfing ability but also the meticulous nature Stupples mentions.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe always has a plan,\u201d Bond says. \u201cShe would call or text me every Sunday night and ask about the plan for the week, so she could set her schedule around our schedule and what we were doing. As much as we want all of our players to do that and come up with their own practice plan, she\u2019s the only one that\u2019s ever truly followed through with it by having a plan of what she wanted to accomplish every single week.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"LOTTIE-WOAD-\"<\/p>\n

Woad with Augusta National chairman Fred Ridley after winning the Augusta National Women\u2019s Amateur in April last year (David Cannon\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Woad, who was given her first set of clubs aged three, is described by those who know her as shy and humble but almost everyone will tell you she has a great sense of humour once you get to know her.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s still a little embarrassed by how well she\u2019s playing and that people appreciate her,\u201d Bond says. \u201cI\u2019ve sat at dinners with her where little girls have come up and recognised her and asked for a photo. Her first instinct is to put her head down and for her face to turn red, but then she gets up and does it. I love that she\u2019s still humble enough to be embarrassed by people recognising her.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bond\u2019s advice when she turned pro was to \u201cstay Lottie Woad\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s pretty special and pretty phenomenal,\u201d adds Bond, who will be watching every shot at The Open on television from her home in Florida. \u201cIf you don\u2019t follow her, you need to, because she\u2019s going to do some special things.\u201d<\/p>\n

By all accounts, she already has.<\/p>\n

(Design: Eamonn Dalton for The Athletic; Florida State Athletics, Getty Images)<\/p>\n