Look up “globetrotter” in the dictionary and you might find a picture of Celine Herbin. The native of Avranches, France, now makes her home on the eastern coast of Spain. She opened her season with Epson Tour events in Arizona, California and Utah, with the LPGA Tour stop in Hawaii sandwiched in there. She followed a Ladies European Tour event in South Africa with the LPGA Tour event in Virginia and the U.S. Women’s Open in California. From there, she headed over to Sweden for the LET’s joint event with the European Tour before heading back to the States for last week’s KPMG Women’s PGA Championship in Georgia.
“The Epson events, I took them as warming up of the season waiting to get into the LPGA events, and I was quite confident then after playing well,” said Herbin. “The U.S. Open result obviously helped a lot. I finish tied for 14th there, so it helped me a lot to have a good result.”
Herbin brought that successful streak into Texas, opening with back-to-back 68s for the best start in her four previous VOA Classic appearances. She tied for 68th in 2019 when the tournament was shortened to 36 holes due to extensive storms and missed the cut three other times. More rain plagued the course this week, with Old American receiving 1.66” of rain overnight and into Friday morning.
“(The course) was obviously a bit longer. I mean, yesterday was already a bit soft, but definitely I play in the afternoon yesterday so the ball was flying a lot,” said Herbin. “Definitely today was looking longer.”
The Frenchwoman used today’s rain delay to watch her adopted countrywoman Garbiñe Muguruza fall in the first round of Wimbledon. She was in for a nice treat after her round, having watched the first part of Spain’s exciting shootout win over Switzerland in UEFA Euro 2020.
“It is quite tough to stay focus when you wake up at 5 a.m. and you play at almost 2 p.m.,” she said with a shrug and laugh. “But I'm lucky because I like tennis a lot so I watched Wimbledon, and after there was Euro Cup game, Switzerland against Spain, so that kind of helped me to deal with the wait and enjoy the morning.”
)
)
)
)
