CROMVOIRT, Netherlands \u2014 Lindy Duncan dreamed of a week like this, and it\u2019s finally here. The 35-year-old LPGA veteran who almost quit golf a few years back, teed it up for the first time in the Solheim Cup during Friday\u2019s morning foursomes matches.<\/p>\n
Duncan is the oldest player on the U.S. team and the second-oldest player in this year\u2019s matches. But unique to her circumstances is that she\u2019s the oldest rookie playing for the Americans since 2000. Duncan\u2019s career has had its share of struggles, and that\u2019s what makes this dream realized\u2014which was hatched more than a decade ago\u2014even sweeter.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think when I was an early professional, probably 25-26 years old, that felt like the ultimate goal to be one of the best Americans to play in Solheim,\u201d Duncan said. \u201cI don\u2019t know there\u2019s a specific moment. I\u2019ve watched it on TV and felt like \u2018gosh, I\u2019ve got to be there.\u2019 I\u2019ve just got to get a little bit better. There\u2019s so many good things that come with getting better. And that was my mindset.\u201d<\/p>\n
Duncan was paired with Andrea Lee and hung in there until the final hole of their match before falling to Leona Maguire and Esther Henseleit, 2 up. Down 2 with a few holes left in the match, Lee told Duncan that their goal was to take them to 18.<\/p>\n
U.S. captain Angela Stanford made the American pairing for a couple of reasons.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor us to get Lindy out there in her first match, Andrea is very steady,\u201d Stanford said. \u201cAndrea\u2019s one of the best drivers of the golf ball on the tour. To get Lindy out there with her and have some steadiness, that was key. And just their demeanor, they\u2019re both pretty even-keeled. Andrea now, I kind of see her as a veteran. Get Lindy out there and get her feet wet. The way Lindy matches up with Andrea, statistically, was really good. We felt like that would be a really good combination.<\/p>\n
The atmosphere around the first tee was hopping on Friday, with a DJ and vocal fans filling the grandstands at 8 a.m. Duncan\u2019s mom was in there cheering for her daughter as well as other American fans.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was totally surreal. Unlike anything I\u2019ve experienced with all the people and the fans chanting,\u201d said Duncan, the only potentially comparison being when she played on the U.S. Curtis Cup team in 2012. \u201cIt was so cool to play alongside Andrea and Esther and Leona. We had a great time. The bounces just didn\u2019t quite go our way today.\u201d<\/p>\n
Duncan was not out in the afternoon\u2019s four-ball matches, but she has said she\u2019ll fill whatever role she\u2019s asked, including hype woman, and play with anyone. Her career has been defined by grit and determination, which Stanford has said she loves. <\/p>\n
\u201cI sure hope it\u2019s an advantage, because I know what it feels like to struggle with golf, and to not have the results that you want, and at the end of the day, a bad day of golf is just that. It\u2019s just a bad day of golf,\u201d Duncan said on the eve of the Solheim Cup. \u201cWe have the next hole. And it\u2019s just all about how you bounce back and persevere.<\/p>\n
\u201cI also feel if we\u2019re in a good flow to just let it out and play freely, because, and I think I can speak for the other girls on the team, that\u2019s actually what we want. Play freely and have fun with each other. Soak up this amazing experience that doesn\u2019t come around that often.\u201d<\/p>\n
Had Duncan quit the sport, she\u2019d be missing out on a week of fun, games, bonding with her teammates and hair and makeup artists. Duncan loved the gala earlier this week, especially because she didn\u2019t have to worry about hair and makeup. On the eve of the Solheim Cup at Duncan was mic\u2019d up for the tour\u2019s social media content.<\/p>\n
When Stanford made Duncan one of her three captain\u2019s picks, it was because of two main things.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith Lindy, my two big things going to Europe are putting and chemistry,\u201d Stanford said. \u201cLindy has proven to be one of our best putters, if you line her up against the other 11. Putting was important. She edged out the other ones we were looking at. Then, just her awareness. I think when it comes to chemistry, people can miss this about team rooms, but you think that everybody is just going to be loud. You need those people that are aware enough to know their place in the room. Lindy is going to be really good at that. I think she\u2019s going to be a nice addition in the team room.\u201d<\/p>\n
While having held a tour card since 2016, Duncan is still searching for her first career win and has 15 career top-10s. She won last year\u2019s Heather Farr Perseverance Award and gave a heartwarming speech. She made five consecutive cuts coming into the Netherlands after disappointing missed cuts in the KPMG Women\u2019s PGA Championship and the Amundi Evian Championship.<\/p>\n
She surely showed Stanford what she needed in playing well leading up to Stanford making her picks after the FM Championship in Boston.<\/p>\n
The LPGA Tour posted a video of the meeting between the two when Stanford acted like she was about to deliver bad news. It took Duncan a while for everything to sink in and the emotions came out when Duncan called her mom.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe immediate emotion was a little bit shocked. I went into it feeling like it wasn\u2019t maybe going to go my way because the setting felt very serious,\u201d Duncan said. \u201cIt seemed like I was pulled away from everybody in case it was bad and I was going to be pretty upset. If it hadn\u2019t happened, I would\u2019ve been pretty upset.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was very nervous for the weeks leading up to the qualifying period. I felt I was playing really well but I was so, so nervous. It was on my mind a lot. It\u2019s very hard to play golf when you have any kind of weight. I had a really cool moment talking to my mom after the selection and we got a little emotional because she\u2019s seen it all.\u201d<\/p>\n
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CROMVOIRT, Netherlands \u2014 Lindy Duncan dreamed of a week like this, and it\u2019s finally here. The 35-year-old LPGA…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":888379,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[4225,64,63,1379,755,138747,44,85],"class_list":["post-888378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-article","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-features","tag-golf","tag-golf-digest","tag-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/888378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=888378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/888378\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/888379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=888378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=888378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=888378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}