In the midst of difficult season, Lindblad finds comfort in return to El Cab

By Amy Rogers

Ingrid Lindblad’s victory a year ago at the JM Eagle LA Championship presented by Plastpro was like something out of a golf fairytale as the then rookie won in just her third start since joining the LPGA Tour. A third round, 9-under par, 63 set up the young Swede for a run at the trophy as she cruised to the 54-hole lead and then hung on for a one-stroke victory when a late charging Akie Iwai missed a putt on the 72nd hole to force a playoff with Lindblad.

“I mean, you should never not expect it, right?” Lindblad said following her quick rise to the top of the women’s game. “But obviously got it done in a couple starts. Just kind of crazy.”

Since Lindblad’s breakout victory she has struggled to recapture the magic she found last year at El Caballero Country Club, as an unwieldy driver made the 25-year feel like she hit rock bottom in March.

That’s when Lindblad took to Instagram to express her frustrations after finishing last in the field at the HSBC Women’s World Championship where she failed to break 70 for the week and carded a third round of 82 for her highest round since joining the LPGA Tour. Lindblad pointed to her driver as the culprit for her problems. Through the first three months of the season, Lindblad has hit less than 50 percent of the fairways.

“The golf this week makes me feel empty. I have been struggling off the tee for a little while but this was on a new level,” Lindblad posted to her social media account after her difficult finish in Singapore. “Doubting myself on every tee shot is exhausting and not knowing where the ball will fly makes me fill up with panic. After Saturday’s round, I didn’t want to play on Sunday, because why would I? There’s been a lot of tears but I’m proud of myself showing up to the course for the last round.”

Tuesday while meeting with the media ahead of her title defense at the JM Eagle LA Championship presented by Plastpro, Lindblad wiped away tears as she became emotional while recounting hitting the lowest point of her career at the HSBC Women’s World Championship.

"It was so hard to be on the golf course," Lindbald said through tears, recalling her struggles in Singapore. "Like I don't know what I'm doing here. I was like, I'm in last place. I was like, what's the point in me playing tomorrow?

The Swede was once the top-ranked amateur in the world, who won 15 times during her time at Louisiana State University, and finished low amateur at the 2022 U.S. Women’s Open. Lindblad said life on the golf course had always come easy for her, perhaps making her ill-prepared to handle the overwhelming challenges she’s dealt with in recent months.

"I think I was just tryint to like play through it," Lindblad said. "Just be like, oh, it will solve itself next week. Obviously that didn't happen."

Lindblad says she first lost trust in her driver during the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship in June, where she says the windy conditions on the wide open layout at PGA Frisco caused her to develop some bad habits off the tee by trying to steer the ball.

“I don't know if it scarred me a little bit and I just didn't trust the wind,” Lindblad said about her experience in Frisco. “If it was blowing a lot like right to left, I kind of blocked it to -- for it to not like blow too far left. Same thing going the opposite way. I kind of just like try to snap hook it into the wind when it's blowing left to right.”

Lindblad said she doesn’t normally like to share difficult times of her life on social media and in doing so she became so overwhelmed by the number of comments she received to her post in Singapore that she had to turn off the alerts. She said many people offered their help, but many wanted her to get a new swing coach or to offer their instructional insight. Lindblad said she’s content with using the team she has in place and they’re working together to help her regain trust in her driver.

“It's been kind of like a lot of steering off the tee box. If I see something right I definitely can't hit it right. I just hit it left instead,” Lindblad said. “There is no way of playing golf like that. You can't steer away from everything. It's not going to work. So a lot of just like swings with full speed, just trying to see like the target and just accepting that there is water right or OB left, and just like if it misses, it misses. That's part of it. You're going to miss a couple. You're not going to hit everything perfect.”

After leaving Singapore, Lindblad went home to Sweden for two weeks to work on her game and was so confident in the work that she put in that when she left for the Fortinet Founders Cup she believed she was hitting the ball so well that she thought she would win. Lindblad missed the cut at the Founders Cup and the next week in Phoenix at the Ford Championship, where she said she hit her driver better but struggled with her putter.

“I feel like we definitely are working on the right things,” Lindblad said about the work she’s put in. “So that was actually nice to see that I drove it a lot better in Phoenix than lately. I think a lot of it is just like trusting the line off the tee and making a good swing at it. I definitely think we're moving in the right direction.”

Since missing the weekend at the Ford Championship in March, Lindblad has been making other changes, too. Rather than spending time analyzing her stats back in her hotel room after her round, she’s decided to do her homework at the golf course, so that when she leaves the course she’s able to separate her life from her golf.

“I've judged myself a lot based on my score, so lately I've been trying to do things that make me feel good on and off the golf course,” Lindblad said about the adjustment to her routine. “On the golf course, just not look so much about the score, more kind of trusting, like especially driver. Like trusting the driver and like if we miss one, we miss one. It's kind of part of the process.”

Last week Lindblad said she sought the help of fellow Swede, Linnea Strom, who shared some advice that worked for her during a time that she was having issues with her own game and advised Lindblad to find areas where she can miss the golf ball, and not just go for the pins.

“I really wanted someone to talk to but I didn't really know anyone who had gone through something like this,” Lindblad said about reaching out to Strom, who was happy to talk about her own challenges. “After Phoenix I think Madelene [Sagstrom] sent me a really long text message which was really nice. So, it's been like they -- I feel like we look after each other, the Swedes. A little team.”

Lindblad will be putting Strom’s advice into practice this week at El Cab, where the defending champion says she has nothing but happy memories and has been soaking in the experience. Being back in Los Angeles, Lindblad says she feels the most comfortable she has all season.

But that comfort will certainly be tested this week around El Cab where she says she played aggressive last year, hitting a driver on nearly every hole, which is the same strategy she plans to follow again this year despite her recent struggles.

“We're just taking one tournament at a time,” Lindblad said about her approach to the week ahead. “I think it may be hard to recreate last year, but I think we are just going to take one week at a time, one shot at a time, and like that's where we are at.”