World No.73 Céline Boutier, France’s leading player on the Rolex Women’s World Golf Rankings, is making her fourth start in the Evian Championship this week.
The 25-year-old from Montrouge, a suburb of Paris, is a two-time winner on the Ladies European Tour, at the 2017 Sanya Ladies Open and 2018 Australian Ladies Classic – Bonville, who claimed her first LPGA event in the Vic Open earlier this year. She is growing in confidence after her recent successes, including a top five in the US Women’s Open.
“I feel like it’s definitely made me more confident in my abilities. I feel like last year I played pretty okay all year-round but I struggled to kind of have some top 10 finishes; and especially in majors, I really wasn’t playing very well,” she said. “I felt like performing in majors was also another step for me, because I hadn’t really had that good results before. So I feel like overall my game is kind of going upwards.”
She also believes that the Evian Championship’s change in date from September to July could be an advantage. “I think it’s a little bit more helpful for me because I’m not one of the longest players. The course is pretty long, so I feel like when the course is not as soft as I was playing the years before I can get more roll out of my drivers. It’s just playing a little bit shorter, so definitely helpful for me.”
Boutier is in sixth place on the LET Solheim Cup points list and on the radar of Team Europe captain Catriona Matthew. She would love to make her debut in the event in Scotland in September and added: “I feel like I obviously want to be on the team pretty bad. I know that if I focus too much on the ranking and on how many points or whatever place I need to be I will not probably make it. It’s not the way I like to play golf. I try to focus more on just the present and trying to do the best I can every round. Hopefully that’ll be enough to be in the team after the British.”
Next week’s AIG Women’s British Open takes place at Woburn in England and she added: “I don’t feel like I’ve been really putting too much physical or mental pressure, so I feel like I’m pretty in shape and I can go two weeks in a row.”
