IVINS, Utah — Lindy Duncan finally had a minute to put her Chevron Championship experience into words on Tuesday morning after play wrapped up in The Woodlands, Texas.

Her thoughts on what her performance in last week’s major championship meant to both her life and golf journeys came in the form of an Instagram post on April 29 that Duncan’s sister, McKenzie, helped her craft, the caption of which garnered plenty of positive and encouraging responses from her fellow LPGA and Epson Tour professionals.

It was a lengthy caption, but Duncan’s words were chock full of introspective realness, an opening of a vein that we often don’t see from athletes after a performance like the one Duncan had at The Club at Carlton Woods, a rare peek behind the curtain at just how difficult it is to succeed at the highest level of any sport.

Duncan’s post read, “Struggle less. Fight harder. Never quit. My sister gave me this mantra in 2017, and I didn’t understand it at all. Back then, struggle felt like failure, not something to embrace. For a long time, my core beliefs sounded like this: Struggling means you’re weak. Work until you drop. Punish every mistake so it never happens again. Hide behind practice and gadgets. You should be having better results. Don’t feel, just push.

“But the harder I worked on the wrong things, the more I fought myself. I thought I was protecting my dream, but I was suffocating it. Eventually, I lost my way completely. When I finally accepted the truth, that I was the one creating this pain, I was heartbroken. The disappointment cut deep. I felt like a complete failure, not just as a golfer, but as a person. I wanted to disappear.

“It took me years to understand that even a strong spirit doesn’t protect you from self-doubt. But every step forward, no matter how heavy, was proof: Doubt is a choice. And just like doubt, belief is a choice. That mantra my sister gave me, “struggle less,” finally makes sense. It doesn’t say you should not struggle. It means believing in yourself so completely that struggle no longer owns you. It means replacing self-punishment with self-trust. It means fighting for something, not just against everything. Also, it means striving towards purpose, not hiding from the world.

“Last week, I finished T1 in a major championship. I was nervous. Uncertain. Unsure how I’d handle it. But I stayed in it, even when it hurt. Because somewhere along the way, I stopped fearing the struggle. I stopped believing that doubt had the final say. I chose to trust the quiet resilience that had always been there, not loud or perfect, but steady and real, waiting for me to stop chasing perfection long enough to finally hear it.

“Change doesn’t arrive all at once. It sneaks in quietly, one brave moment at a time. Until one day, you realize you didn’t just survive. You became. Thank you to the Chevron Championship, Carlton Woods, the volunteers, LPGA staff & officials, and all the fans that came to watch. Thank you to my sister McKenzie for helping me write this.”

The post provided a brief look inside the mind of a deep-thinking player who nearly reached the pinnacle of women’s golf on Sunday at The Chevron Championship, an athlete whose dreams were dashed after a five-person playoff ensued at The Club at Carlton Woods but one who kept smiling through it all, knowing that she gained everything from the experience.

Duncan gave it all she had on Sunday at The Chevron Championship, making a late birdie on the par-5 18th hole at The Club at Carlton Woods to finish at 7-under and earn a spot in the five-way playoff that ensued after regulation. She was forced to lay up after a slightly wayward tee shot on the first extra hole and left her third shot short of the green right on the edge of the water. Duncan then pitched up and missed her par putt, ultimately bogeying her final hole of what was an already incredibly special week, T2 finish aside.

And even though she wasn’t the one who took the jump into the lake left of the 18th green as the Tour’s first 2025 major champion, Duncan couldn’t have been more pleased with her performance in The Woodlands, Texas, knowing just how significant it will be long-term to both the rest of her season and her professional golf career going forward.

“I was talking about it with my caddie, Stephen,” Duncan said after finishing the playoff last week. “We came off the playoff, and we were just like, ‘Over the course of four rounds, you mess up so many times. We still made it into a playoff to win.’ That shows if you just keep going and keep your head in it, you never know what can happen.

“I think I'll take so many great memories but also like an internal strength to keep pushing no matter what, no matter how it feels. You just got to keep going.”

Duncan is competing this week at the Black Desert Championship and will have another crack at finding the LPGA Tour winner’s circle for the first time in Ivins, Utah. Outside of her T2 showing at The Chevron Championship, the 34-year-old has had two other solid finishes on Tour this season, a tie for 12th that came at the Blue Bay LPGA in the People’s Republic of China and a solo fifth that she recorded at the Ford Championship presented by Wild Horse Pass.

While there are massive differences between desert golf in Arizona and Utah, her top five at Whirlwind Golf Club and her play last week in Texas should indicate more success to come for Duncan in 2025. She said in her pre-tournament press conference on Tuesday that she found something with her driving last week that she hopes to copy and paste into her sixth start of the year as she plays what’s going to be a challenging Black Desert Resort.

However, as the 19th-longest player off the tee on the LPGA Tour who averages 274.25 yards in driving distance, it’s not likely that Duncan will be pulling out her driver on very many holes this week in Utah and will instead need to be strategic on where she places the ball as she makes her way around this golf course.

“I'm trying to find the widest part of the fairway and the middle of the green and just see what happens from there,” Duncan said. “The par 5s didn't really seem reachable on the front nine, so it's where is the best angle? What are the bunkers? What is the sand like? How is the rough? Is it consistent? Those types of things I tried to get a grip on.

“I have a local caddie this week, and he works here six days a week, so he knows the course really well, so I'll be asking him a lot of questions.”

But her local looper, Quinn Detrick, will probably also have a lot of questions to ask Duncan as well, as he might wonder what it’s like to contend for a major championship victory on the LPGA Tour or want to know what was going through her mind coming down the stretch at The Club at Carlton Woods.

And while her focus has now fully shifted to the Black Desert Championship, Duncan will happily relive one of the most satisfying moments of her career with the proudest of smiles on her face, ready to try and better it with a win this week in Utah.

Lindy Duncan Gains Everything from Playoff Experience at The Chevron Championship

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