At the U.S. Women’s Open this year, Celine Boutier held the 54-hole lead. After the third round, Boutier told LPGA.com “I feel like winning a major is the next step.”
In Boutier’s career, she’s had to take incremental and sometimes painful steps to accomplish her goals. Although her final round didn’t go as planned, the lessons learned provide an opportunity for Boutier to spring forward at the Evian Championship.
“It took me awhile to look at it objectively. It was pretty disappointing at first because I didn’t get it done. Then, when you look further, I want to obviously learn from what I did wrong.”
Her First Lesson Taught by Fire
Boutier first picked up a golf club at the age of seven, at the behest of her father at Paris Country Club. Initially, she didn’t like the sport, but kept at it as her Dad liked doing it. It was part of a diverse set of after school activities she participated in. She played piano, participated in ballet, and played field hockey.
In his pursuit to get Boutier more interested with golf, her father enrolled her at a junior academy.
Boutier, with all of her activities on top of school, would only practice one to two times a week. She’d hit a few balls when she practiced, but preferred enjoying her time with friends.
She remembers the tournament which put her on track to take golf seriously vividly, at the French National Championship at the age of 11.
“It was my first big tournament. I finished second to last. That was a big wakeup call, I was like ok, I need to get better at this. I didn’t want to quit, but I just remember crying because I was playing so bad. After that, I started working really hard at it, and just kept improving from year to year.”
It was the step backward Boutier needed to launch herself forward.
Boutier realized at the age of 15, she’d like to play golf professionally. She took her next step towards that goal the following year by joining the French National team, along with a victory at the 2009 U-16 French National Championships in 2009. Boutier helped lead the team to the 2010 and 2011 European Team Championships.
She was the fifth ranked amateur in the Polo Golf Rankings before the summer of her Freshman year of college. Her performance led her to be recruited in the United States, and Duke became the step she took. Boutier was recruited by fellow Frenchwoman Jeanne Cho Stoke, who was the assistant coach of the program.
Her second year, Boutier helped deliver the Blue Devils their second national title with a runner up finish at the NCAAs. She had her strongest year in the Duke program, bringing a laundry list of accolades to her resume. She graduated in 2016 with a degree in Social Psychology, taking away one key lesson that she has applied to her golf game throughout her career.
“How you have your emotions and, how you process them.”
The Transition to a Professional Career
As she knew about herself, her game did unlock. After making her first cut at the LOTTE Championship, Boutier settled into a groove, rattling off three straight top 25 finishes from the end of April to mid-May.
Her final event of her rookie season culminated in the growth of her game over her first year on the LPGA Tour. She finished in 3rd place at the Blue Bay LPGA Classic in November of 2018. It was her best finish of her opening campaign, she carded a final round 66, the lowest round of the field in the fourth round.
“It was very nice for my confidence because I felt like all year I kind of was playing well, didn’t have any top 10s or anything like that. Last tournament, the course was especially tough I thought it was very narrow, greens were very hard, very windy. It was huge for my confidence, I kind of proved I knew I could do it. I just had to prove it to myself.”
It was a foreshadowing that would arrive a mere two events later, when she would secure her first LPGA career victory at the ISPS Handa Vic Women’s Open by two strokes. Boutier viewed the victory as a life changing moment for her.
“It happened for me so fast, it’s a huge confidence booster,” Boutier reflected. “I think I have a lot to prove, I hope it’s just the beginning for me.”
The U.S. Women’s Open Painful Lesson
That confidence propelled her to the final pairing in Charleston this year, sitting with a share of the lead at (-7). While she wasn’t out of it until the final hole, Boutier’s degree from Duke gave her an opportunity to learn from the moment.
“Most of it was pretty good, I think I handled myself pretty well. I just think at the beginning and the end, I just was a little bit overwhelmed. I didn’t really feel like I did a good job of staying in the present and hitting it shot by shot.”
Boutier doubled her first and last holes in her (+4) final round at the Country Club of Charleston to finish T5. Her destiny was in her control through the last hole, with a bunker shot that would have forced her into a playoff. Instead, she was left with agony.
She returns now to the Evian Championship off her third top 10 finish of the season at the Thornberry Creek LPGA Classic, she approaches the major that’s always been at the top of her mind.
“If I had only one major that I want to win, I would pick Evian. It’s a tournament I’ve grown up watching it every year, so it’s that special. A major at home, there’s only two majors outside of the U.S. Having one in France is pretty amazing. That would be great, I would be over the moon,” Boutier explained with a wide grin.
It wouldn’t be a surprise if her emotions at the end of an Evian Championship were similar to her results at the end of her first French National tournament. Crying, but from happiness of hoisting up the Evian Championship Trophy.
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