The Woad to perfection: obsessive, relentless... and she’s loving it

From the tee or the fairway, her practice swings are indistinguishable from the real thing in preparation or commitment. If you’re going to practise, practise properly, intentionally. If you’re going to swing, swing properly. She watches her imaginary ball fly into the wind for four or five seconds, visualising, calculating, recalibrating. Before every putt outside a foot, she adjusts her cap, places then rearranges her ball, before holding on to it while she surveys the green, mildly terrified it could move a millimetre. No part of this ritual ever wavers.

“You need to have a consistent routine, especially under pressure,” Woad said on Thursday. “I just try and make sure that I’m doing that and I’ve got all the numbers I need to commit to the shot.” Trust begets confidence, confidence begets trust.

Having turned professional three weeks ago aged 21, Woad is already playing her second Women’s Open, having finished in the top 10 as low amateur at St Andrews a year earlier. Before Porthcawl, she had won two of her past three tournaments – the Irish and Scottish Opens – and finished third at the Evian Championship, another major. The world No 1 amateur last year, she shot a combined 55under throughout July and turned professional before the Scottish Open, so of her £722,000 prize money she could claim only £220,000. She was still registered as an amateur in the Open programme and will return for the final year of her sports management degree at Florida State University later this month, where she has scooped up multiple college wins.

The bookies’ favourite going into her first major as a professional, paired with the last two Open champions, on Thursday Woad proceeded to bomb her first drive past both of them up the fairway. She wandered to the green with a hand in her pocket, then rolled in an effortless birdie.

On Friday, I spent an hour on the Porthcawl course among the Woadies, 35 or so fans from her Surrey home-town club Farnham, alongside dad Nick, mum Rachel, younger sister Milly and her swing coach, Luke Bone. There remains a charming novelty to Woad’s nascent stardom, and she remains one of them, as they all speak of her with a parental affection.

The main topic of the day was wind – when and where it was coming, and how Woad could benefit from its impending arrival. There were even heady rumours a gale was en route. In Masters socks and one of Lottie’s sponsored caps, Nick, a single-figure golfer who gave Lottie her first clubs at three, was constantly plugged into the radio, tracking the competition while dashing from hole to hole. As Woad hit six birdies in nine holes through the mid-section, there was the prevailing sense anything was possible. “Where’s the cut line?” someone asked. “We’re only looking up,” Nick replied. Unfortunately the wind arrived too early and she hit a triple bogey on the 16th, but was still 10th at the halfway point.

Understated down to her outfits – unbranded in block colours, navy always the preference – it is easy to assume Woad is practical to a fault. When she won the Scottish Open, she raised her ball to the sky and forced the sort of smile you might give a passerby to indicate you are not about to stab them. On winning the August National Women’s Amateur in April 2024 with a 12-foot birdie, she gave into the moment as far as an almost imperceptible fist pump. The most you see at Porthcawl is the occasional grin. She is not yet comfortable with the media – her press conferences still have the feel of an out-of-body experience – but that is neither a surprise nor a prerequisite to success. Those close to her talk about a shy, kind and funny obsessive.

Farnham’s head pro, Bone has coached Woad since she was seven, and caddied for her through most of the past year. Yet he has worked with more than 200 juniors, and at 10 or 11 there was little about Woad’s swing to indicate any outstanding future. Woad has said her sister was “probably more naturally gifted”.

Sport is a refuge for those who never stopped believing in magic, but we should talk about where genius comes from. This might seem thoroughly unromantic, like attempting to deconstruct love, but brilliance is so often the product of banality, inspiration not the product of one unrepeatable moment but of a million repeatable ones.

Farnham members talk about watching Woad practise for eight or nine hours most days. During the pandemic, the family installed a professional green in the garden. Even the American college schedule requires four rounds in three days most weekends.

“What you’re seeing is not luck, it’s the tip of an iceberg that’s been freezing since she was seven years old,” Bone says. “That ability to just do it is because she’s done it so many times, and she’s also done everything she can by putting herself in situations where the pressure increases. It’s not suddenly come out of the blue. It would be unbelievable if it wasn’t so believable.”

Endless stories betray a ruthless competitiveness. Woad won a tournament at Blackmore Golf Club when she was 13, shooting level par, and Bone says “something just flipped”. In 2023, Woad and Bone played a pairs match alongside Farnham’s men’s and ladies’ captains respectively. Level going into the final hole, Bone’s drive disappeared into the rough. It was eventually found, but just exceeded the three-minute search time. Everyone else was happy to allow him to play on, except an apoplectic Woad. She still won’t let it go now.

“I have seen very few players work as hard,” England Golf coach Steve Robinson said last year. “She has that little compulsive, excessive streak in her.”

Woad’s genius, if it is genius, comes from her singularity of purpose, her understanding of what is required and her ability to execute it. Robinson and Bone both talk about her ability to practise for hours without wasting a second, scribbling down every shot in endless notebooks, creative yet efficient, often meticulously planned days and weeks in advance. Yet she seemingly enjoys the benefits of her obsession without ever really reaching a point where it consumes her beyond her control or limits.

Perhaps part of this is the invincibility of inexperience, of not quite yet understanding that losing hurts more than winning bolsters, but there is an astonishing faith in her game and herself. There are no obvious technical or mental weaknesses. She talks about setting goals based on her process and stats, rather than achievements. It is all aggressively, relentlessly sensible and pragmatic, but she manages to avoid slipping into the pitfalls of grindset preaching. She does it because she loves it.

Woad might be an unwilling potential superstar, but she is emerging as one that women’s golf in England and beyond is desperate for. “She basically beats the course up,” Bone surmises. “In the end it is going to give way to her, because she’s going to hit a lot of greens. She wants to win majors, she wants to be the best player in the world. She seems to do everything she says she’s going to do, so why should we bet against her?”

Photograph by David Cannon/Getty