NAPLES, Fla – A group of two-dozen children sat patiently on the driving range at Tiburón Golf Club during Saturday evening’s junior clinic. The questions they asked the Tour pros were as endearing as the children themselves.
“Have you ever played with Bobby Jones?”
“What’s your favorite part of golf?”
Hall of Famer Greg Norman, the master of ceremonies for the clinic, fielded the first question with a hearty laugh.
“I’m not that old!” Norman replied as parents and spectators chuckled.
For an hour, families who were on site for the weekend’s QBE Shootout asked questions of the LPGA’s Lexi Thompson along with the PGA Tour’s Harold Varner III and Charles Howell III, who joined Norman for the clinic.
Thompson, who is usually reserved, appeared comfortable and confident in her role at the clinic. She hit soaring wedges into the setting sun while her PGA Tour counterparts answered questions directed their way. As a player who took a hiatus to focus on emotional struggles in 2018, she was the first to tell the young crowd that the game is 80 percent mental.
“You have to be so confident with the game of golf, even when you hit a bad shot,” Thompson said, admitting she’s learned from the mistake of getting too down on her own self during golf tournaments.
Given Norman’s physical prowess, the clinic naturally took a turn towards fitness – an aspect of the game that has become integral to Thompson’s success on Tour. Her distance off the tee no doubt played a role in earning her an invitation to the otherwise exclusively male field.
“Grip it and rip it, that’s what I learned,” Thompson said laughing. She often played from the tips alongside her older brothers, who she challenged herself to keep up with. And keeping pace with her siblings meant getting into peak physical condition.
“Make sure you’re working out in the right ways,” Thompson advised the young crowd, and then outlined her warm up routine.
The 10-time LPGA Tour winner begins by stretching for 15 minutes and spends another 15 minutes on the range before heading out to the course. She implored the juniors to save their driver for the end of their warm up rather than hitting it first. It’s a mistake she often sees in younger players.
For Thompson, her warm up on the range is precisely that - a warm up and nothing more. She told the youngsters that following some of her worst range sessions she went on to play some of her best golf.
“Once you’re at the course you’re in the zone,” Thompson said.
As the clinic wound to a close, the pros answered a simple yet insightful question posed by one of the juniors.
“What’s your favorite part of golf?”
Thompson, who spends more than 20 weeks a year on the road away from her friends and family in order to play the Tour, said the sacrifice makes it all worthwhile.
“The challenge,” is what Thompson loves. “It’s what we live for.”
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