BELLEAIR, Fla. | Sometimes it’s just seeing yourself win, getting over the mental hump and holing a putt or two when it counts. It could be a mini-tour event, or an off-schedule fourball or, in the case of Lauren Coughlin, a three-club challenge with her husband, followed by a handicap tournament with 80 amateurs and a handful of pros from the Korn Ferry, PGA TOUR Latinoamérica and LPGA Tours.
“This win was No Laying Up's N.I.T., which they call the Nest Invitational Tournament. It's their tournament for all their members,” said Coughlin, who currently sits in a tie for 13th after rounds of 65-68 in the Pelican Women’s Championship presented by Konica Minolta and Raymond James. “So [as a No Laying Up brand ambassador], they invited me to play in it. My husband was there. It was like 90 of us playing in a tournament. They handicapped it and flighted it and stuff. It was me, Justin Huber, who is another person who they sponsor on the Korn Ferry Tour, and Andrew Alligood, who's a PGA TOUR Latinoamérica guy they sponsor, and then like 80-something amateurs. I was playing the same tees as Huber and Alligood, and Huber hits it like 350. They wanted it to be hard but still like I could win.
“But, yeah, [the wind] was blowing 30 miles per hour and raining in Jacksonville and we were supposed to play 36 on Friday, then 18 in the morning on Saturday, and then 18 for a final Saturday afternoon. But we ended up only playing 18 on Friday. Then we played nine holes Saturday and then a three-hole shootout.
“It was a blast. Didn't sleep a ton. But I really, really enjoy hanging out with the No Laying Up guys and all the people that I've met through them.”
Winning didn’t hurt either.
“It was just a nice recharge and fun golf, which I don't get to do very often,” Coughlin said. “I mean, there wasn't a real tournament per se, but it did count. It was more that it helped. I saw the ball go in a lot and so it reinforced that what I had been doing the past couple weeks was working. You can do stuff at home and it can be working at home. But for it to translate into tournaments is the hard part. Seeing the ball go in the hole and knowing what I was doing was working definitely helped a lot.”
This came on the heels of a couple of rounds that didn’t seem like much at the time, but had a substantial impact on her confidence.
Coughlin lives in Charlottesville, Virginia. Her husband, a former college football player for the University of Virginia, works in fundraising at UVA. This is important because Dr. Bob Rotella, the famous sports psychologist, practices and lives in Charlottesville. Coughlin played a round with Rotella about three weeks ago where the good doctor gave her some advice about being a reactive athlete. Then, last week, she played in a three-club match with her husband, which reinforced a lot of the things Rotella said.
“[My husband] could use a full set and I only had three clubs,” she said. “I was putting with a 7-iron and I putted unbelievable. That, on top of talking with Bob about some stuff, just really finally clicked, I think.”
Her husband also gave her some advice that freed up her mind coming into the penultimate event of the season sitting at No. 106 in the Race to the CME Globe. The top 100 are exempt onto the LPGA Tour next year.
“He said it the best. I had nothing to lose,” Coughlin said. “No matter what happened, if I didn't play well, cool, I'm going to Q-Series. Worst case, I'm going back to Q-Series. There wasn't really anything to lose. I'm just really happy to be playing and just trying to take advantage of it as much as I can.”
So, she came to the west coast of Florida with a free mind and a new-found confidence on the greens. What she didn’t have was a guaranteed spot in the field. Coughlin had to play in the Monday qualifier at TPC Tampa Bay with 47 other players, vying for the two final spots. She won despite not playing a practice round.
“I think I'm an extremely good ball-striker, which you have to be out here,” she said. “There is not really any course where I don't think that I can play well, because no matter what, I can hit it really, really well. The big thing is just trying to get used to the greens.”
She didn’t see the back nine at Pelican Golf Club either, relying instead on her caddie to walk the property and tell her where to hit it. “It was more that I was really trying to get dialed in on the [green] speeds,” she said.
So, she won on Monday on ball-striking and played herself into contention in the first two rounds of the championship on instinct. A free mind. A reactive athlete. Nothing to lose. It could all lead to a finish that will put Coughlin over the hump and into 2022 with a full LPGA Tour status.
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