DORNOCH, SCOTLAND | Ingrid Lindblad, the No. 1-ranked amateur in the world since Rose Zhang departed the scene recently, could not take her eye off the Typhoon aircraft circling Royal Dornoch Golf Club during her first official practice round for last week’s Vagliano Trophy, which matches teams representing Great Britain & Ireland against Europe.
The 23-year-old Swede took a hurried look at her phone and advised that it was a Eurofighter Typhoon FGR.Mk.4, which I came to find out later was part of the Royal Air Force and based at nearby Lossiemouth, and such were the erratic lines across the screen that she was wondering whether its speed was affecting the radar.
A couple of minutes later, she was taking another look at her phone. “Aha,” she said. “That’s the plane from Amsterdam due to touch down at Inverness Airport in a couple of minutes. Hopefully it’s got my golf clubs on board.”
After everyone had agreed that this was the best of news, Lindblad was asked by Global Golf Post how on earth she was so quick to access all of this information. “My interest in planes is something I’ve developed over the years,” she said. “I wouldn’t be looking things up if I were in the middle of a tournament round, but there are days like today when I can’t resist it.”
The hobby started when her first set of clubs went missing on a tournament sortie. Thereafter, this award-winning academic at Louisiana State University had the good sense to take down the facts and figures relating to her every plane trip, all with a view to retrieving whatever might go missing as quickly as possible. A tag on her bag never was going to be enough. (She can, incidentally, give you chapter and verse on why so many bags of clubs went missing – and remain missing – on the way to last year’s Open at St Andrews.)
Her own golf clubs duly turned up last week and, even had they not, it hardly would have been the worst thing in the world. She was still 2-under par using a set of borrowed clubs that had little in common with her own. Such is her Swedish calm that she was not even mildly irritated. Instead, she was revelling in hitting from Dornoch’s grassy fairways at a time when so many links were sun-baked.
When Zhang turned professional at the end of May and promptly won the LPGA’s Mizuho Americas Open, the media, and many another besides, wanted to know whether Lindblad had been tempted to follow a similar path. After all, she was the player who set the 18-hole scoring record at last year’s U.S. Women’s Open when she opened with a 6-under par 65 on her way to claiming low-amateur with a tie for 11th. Last week, she expanded somewhat.
“I like LSU far too much to leave it behind at this point. I’ve got a golf scholarship, which has extended to five years (because of the COVID-19 pandemic), and I want to carry on making the most of it. After all, the LPGA Tour is still going to be around a year from now.”
After four years of studying sports administration, she is looking for another bachelor’s degree, this one in the realm of marketing and sociology. “There’s never anything wrong with adding to your education, whatever the subjects,” she said.
“If I hadn’t played golf, none of this would be happening. I love my life.”
Ingrid Lindblad
That the other students in the Continental team at Dornoch have been following her lead in putting their academic qualifications ahead of the LPGA tells its own story of how the various European countries speak with one voice. To quote Ane Urchegui García, the captain of last week’s Continental side: “The players are so much better equipped to play as professionals by the time they’ve got their degrees. For a start, they’re going to be more rounded individuals.”
Said Lindblad, who went 1-1-2 in the Continentals’ 13½-10½ Vagliano Trophy victory: “Strange though this might sound, the golf I’ve been playing ’round the world has made me a better student. My English was pretty good when I first went to LSU, but every year I go back, they tell me it’s better.”
On the golf side of things, GGP’s ’22 Amateur of the Year has no desire to stop working with LSU women’s head coach Garrett Runion and assistant Alexis Rather. “They’re not just outstanding coaches; they keep an eye open for their players all the time,” she said.
From there, Lindblad moved on to her friends and teammates, saying: “And that’s not just my teammates at LSU but those in the other sides that I’ve been lucky enough to represent. There’s the 2018 Junior Ryder Cup team, the Swedish team, the European team (she was a member of the gold medal-winning side in the ’22 World Amateur Team Championship) and, finally, there’s the European Golf Association side I’m representing here at Dornoch.”
At which stage, she started to list the countries she has visited with the Swedish team alone. “There’s England, Scotland, France, Spain, Italy, Germany and Japan.” She paused for thought and then she remembered she was off to Finland on July 8.
Another flight to look forward to, and another pointer to how she is cut out for the professional lifestyle when the time comes.
Far from thinking about the money she might accrue on the LPGA Tour, Lindblad likes to think of the friends she is making now, and how she could hang on to them for the rest of her days.
“If I hadn’t played golf, none of this would be happening,” she said. “I love my life.”
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Top: Ingrid Lindblad (left), the world No. 1 amateur, celebrates her friends and experiences in amateur golf.
Ross Parker, R&A/R&A via Getty Images