It’s been over a month since Elizabeth Szokol has played on the LPGA Tour, but she played like she never left on day one of the CP Women’s Open. The American put herself near the top of the leaderboard with a bogey-free 5-under 66, a round that featured five birdies in her last 10 holes.
“I feel like I stayed really patient today,” Szokol said after the round. “I didn't make a birdie until my ninth hole and that was a two-putt birdie. So, I stayed really patient, and the putts ended up falling on the back nine.”
Szokol’s last event on Tour was the Dow Great Lakes Bay Invitational, where she earned a season-best finish of T4 alongside partner Cheyenne Knight. Since then, she has been at home in Florida tuning up her game and working on some new strategies for success.
“I’ve been working on some new stuff,” the 28-year-old explained. “Kind of trying to make some progress on my driver and keep it in the fairway a bit more and be more consistent and just get more birdie opportunities from that.”
It seems that practice paid off for Szokol, who hit 12 of 13 fairways and 15 of 18 greens on day one. Although it took eight holes to make her first birdies, those opportunities were plentiful on Thursday.
“It's the best (to see results),” she said. “We always work hard and sometimes you don't really see those results, so it's great to have that good feedback today. I’m looking forward to the next three days. I'm just going to do the same thing.”
It helped, Szokol said, to be playing alongside Emma Talley, who was the clubhouse leader after the morning wave at -6. A particular exciting moment for the two came on the par-3 13th, when Szokol’s tee shot lipped out and Talley’s went in for an ace.
“We kind of both were like feeding off each other it felt like,” Szokol said. “She made a putt for birdie on 12 and then I made the birdie putt after. Then the next hole I think my ball may have lipped out off the tee and she made it for a hole-in-one. From then on it was just so much fun. We had a great day together.”
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