THE WOODLANDS, TEXAS | Swiss star Albane Valenzuela started the final round of the Chevron Championship one stroke behind the American co-leaders, Angel Yin and Allisen Corpuz. Through three rounds, this was Valenzuela’s best performance in a major. The Stanford standout, in her third year on the LPGA Tour, credits having her dad on the bag and her brother walking alongside her for the excellent results at the Club at Carlton Woods.
“This week I have my dad caddying for me. I wanted to have him by my side because he is my swing coach, mental coach, and my dad,” said Valenzuela, playing her 22nd major this week. “He has helped me a lot during the week with playing very calm. I feel really good on the course because I am not trying to force my shots and I just play my swing.”
“We are trying to play one shot at a time. Albane has a lot of potential. After a great amateur career, she turned pro very fast and her results have not been as good as expected,” said her dad, Alberto Valenzuela, who took a week off from his real job as one of world’s most successful international investment bankers to caddie for his daughter.
Albane's brilliant amateur golf career, with 11 amateur majors, followed in the wake of her father’s, who was a star of the UCLA golf team. After getting her card in 2020, 25-year-old Albane has played her best golf in the last two years with three top-10 finishes. She is currently 109th in the Rolex World Rankings and 103th in the CME Raking.
"It was a little bit of a roller coaster," she said of her two initial years as a pro, a career that began with her first major (2020 KPMG Women’s PGA Championship), an injury, appendicitis and COVID. She is clearly on a flatter and calmer trajectory this week.
“I am very happy with my game. I stayed very patient knowing that the day was going to be very long. Making the last putt for birdie was a lot of fun,” said Valenzuela at the end of her third round and a long day that started with the conclusion of her second round due to weather delays.
Valenzuela, born in New York to a Mexican father and a French mother, educated in Switzerland and an honors graduate from Stanford, is fluent in three languages - Spanish, English, French, and she can use the three of them with her caddie this week.
“She is very intellectual. Sometimes she processes things too much and, in this sport, you have to forget and try to have more fun,” said Alberto. “The only thing I want for her is to be happy. My success as a father and a caddie is to see her smile.”
And smiling she is, as she began the day tied for third, with her brother Alex, a junior on the SMU golf team, walking along the ropes and keeping stats. “Sometimes I have to calm him down and tell him to take it easy, breath, it’s alright,” Albane said with a smile about her dad, who, regardless of his daughter’s accomplishments this week, will go back to the high-pressure world of finance on Monday.
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