THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2018
Austin Ernst is an LPGA Tour winner and a member of the 2017 Solheim Cup team. Her career and faith are highlighted in the 2018 Links Players magazine. Here, we feature an outtake from the interview we did with Ernst for the magazine article.
Was there ever a point where you said to yourself, “Nope, golf is not for me”?
“No, I’ve never had a day like that. I love the game. I mean I’ve had bad days and golf will drive you crazy some days. But at the end of the day, you keep coming back and I just love it. There’s nothing else I’d rather do. Right now, this is kind of where I want to be and where I should be.”
How do you tell young players to get past those bad days? How do you encourage them?
“Your first couple years on tour when you’re a rookie, you know you’ve played enough golf where you know you’re not going to have good days all the time or good weeks all the time. So mainly, for rookies, I tell them you’re going to have bad weeks, but everybody thinks sometimes that when they are on the tour they need to change everything that they do. But in reality that’s what got you out here and you should stick with what you do well.
“I think you just need to stay positive. You can have a great week and even win one week then miss the cut next week. Golf is a funny game and you never knew when it’s going to turn. But I always tell people you have to stay positive and keep doing what you’re doing. Don’t kill yourself, overwork yourself when it’s going bad.
“That’s the biggest thing on tour, the biggest transition for a rookie, is you’re not used to playing so many weeks in a row, so you don’t necessarily know how to prepare. When you play in college, you’re playing one week on and have two weeks off. Now, you’re going to play for four weeks in a row. When you do that the first time, you don’t really know how to pace yourself. Especially rookies who have never seen the courses we have played on. They’re behind the eight-ball when it comes to preparation. Everyone has played golf before, so it’s not rocket-science. We all know how to prepare for golf tournaments. So I think when you’re coming out to play against the best golf players in the world, everybody works a little too hard sometimes and wears themselves out early.”