Generally speaking most conversations with tour golfers will take place because they’re playing well. Things are on the up, they’ve got a good story to tell and you can look to the future with a degree of optimism. The best chats, through, are when an absolutely outstanding talent opens up on the real nuts and bolts of professional golf and explains their inner-most feelings and thoughts when their game has gone south.
Everyone has doubts, it’s basic human nature, but in a sport of positive self-talk where you’re taking money off one another, you very rarely show them.
Amy Boulden won on the Ladies European Tour as recently as two years ago. Previously she was part of a golden generation of British and Irish amateurs who came together to win the 2012 Curtis Cup – Charley Hull, Leona Maguire and Bronte Law have all gone on to represent Europe in the Solheim Cup while Georgia Hall, who was the second reserve, is now a major winner.
Boulden, who is now 29, became the Rookie of the Year in 2014 and captured her first win in Switzerland in September 2020 after playing the last two rounds in 15-under. It was her 87th start on tour and, from the outside, it seemed that this would be the catalyst for her to kick on. But golf isn’t played like that, one win doesn’t necessarily mean multiple wins, and things can go south as quickly as they seem to have come good.
In 15 starts in 2021 Boulden collected a little over €5k, this year has been a similar tale. This is when you expect a load of cliches to come gushing out, if anything at all comes back at you, but the Welsh star, over the next hour, laid it all out there.
“I can’t pinpoint why 2021 wasn’t the same but it wasn’t and you start to see bad scores and it’s so hard to get out of it, it’s like a hole that’s getting deeper. Over the past 18 months there have been so many people reaching out, and it’s quite overwhelming as everyone wants to help, and they all want to give you some advice on your swing. The smallest things get in your head and I then have 50 swing thoughts over a 9-iron into a green. For the past six months that green has just got smaller and smaller.”
Boulden would then go on that elusive search for a perfect swing but, with the money involved in the ladies’ game and all those missed cuts, it’s not possible to have your coach out there – Boulden is taught by Wales national coach Paul Williams. And so you fall back into old habits, there’s more and more advice…
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