Neither Pauline Roussin nor Dewi Weber planned to be in Midland, Mich., when they laid out their 2022 competitive schedules. Weber thought she would tee it up at home in the Netherlands at this week’s LET event, the Big Green Egg Open. Roussin was going to take a week off in her native France ahead of next week’s Amundi Evian Championship in her home country.
Instead, the duo of LPGA Tour rookies – who admit that they don’t know each other very well – find themselves tied atop the leaderboard after 18 holes at the Dow Great Lakes Bay Invitational.
“We both last minute happened to be looking for a partner,” said Weber, a three-year player at the University of Miami. “I knew her game a little bit. I knew she was quite fun to be around, so I just texted her and said, hey, I heard you're looking for a partner, and that was kind of the end of it, to be honest.”
“We're just trying to keep it as very normal, like it was just a regular tournament, regular shots and almost imagine that you've hit the previous one basically,” added Roussin, who spent two years at the University of South Carolina. “The only question I might have asked her is like something like is there anything that you don't like to talk about on the course, because obviously you don't want to really mess that up.”
Clearly, their lack of personal knowledge was more than outbalanced by a quick mesh of their golfing prowess. Roussin and Weber carded a 5-under 65 in Wednesday’s alternate-shot format, one of three bogey-free rounds on the day. The duo started with a birdie on No. 10, their first hole of the day, and reeled off three consecutive birdies at 12, 13 and 14, before rounding out the round with a final birdie at No. 6.
And while Roussin and Weber love seeing their names with a big 1 next to them, they’ve been around long enough to know that the top of the leaderboard is not a spot to take for granted.
“It's the first round. We have three more to go,” said Weber, with a quick nod of agreement from Roussin. “I think we're just going to keep doing what we've been doing. I don't feel any type of way about it, to be honest. It's fun to see your name up there, but that's where my feeling ends.”
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