Jul 24, 2025, 07:12 PM ET<\/p>\n
IRVINE, Scotland — Lottie Woad made her pro debut Thursday and not much changed. The rising English star had a 5-under 67 and was among those one shot behind Charlotte Laffar after the opening round of the Women’s Scottish Open.<\/p>\n
Laffar, who only returned to the Ladies European Tour in May after taking four years off to have two children, opened with a bogey at Dundonald Links and more than made up for that with eight birdies the rest of the way for a 66.<\/p>\n
She led by one over five players. That group included Leona Maguire<\/a>, who had a far different start to her day than Laffar. Maguire holed out from the first fairway for eagle. Nelly Korda<\/a>, still searching for her first victory of the year after a seven-win season in 2024, was among those at 68.<\/p>\n The tournament is co-sanctioned by the LPGA and the LET, an ideal spot ahead of the final major of the year, next week’s Women’s British Open at Royal Porthcawl in Wales.<\/p>\n Woad first got attention when she won the Augusta National Women’s Amateur in 2023 and then rose to No. 1 in the women’s amateur ranking while at Florida State. She won the Women’s Irish Open three weeks ago as an amateur and then finished one shot out of a playoff at a major in the Evian Championship. That secured an LPGA card, and she turned pro.<\/p>\n “I’m just trying to keep as much momentum as possible and keep playing how I was playing. It worked today, so I will just try and do that again the next few days,” Woad said. “It didn’t feel too different today. I think having all the experience I’ve had in majors and contending gave me all I needed, and I didn’t really have to change much.”<\/p>\n Laffar, a 32-year-old from England, ran off four birdies in a five-hole stretch on the back nine and regained the lead with a birdie at the 17th. Her husband, David, was caddying for her and they left their sons with grandparents.<\/p>\n “I’ve got no pressure at all,” Laffar said. “Golf is a lot of people’s lives out here, but my children are my life. So this has become more of a working hobby, I suppose you could say. I’ve just got to enjoy every moment. I don’t know how long I’m going to do it for. I will see how it goes. I’ve got to show the kids how I used to play.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jul 24, 2025, 07:12 PM ET IRVINE, Scotland — Lottie Woad made her pro debut Thursday and not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36101,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,99],"class_list":["post-36100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36100\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}