The youngest Olympic golf competitor, Aditi Ashok, 18, from India, reflects on a week where she hit the global headlines and excited the fans with rounds of 68, 68, 79 and 76 for a total of seven over par and 41st place.
I’m incredibly proud to have had the opportunity to represent my country. I had a great week playing Rio2016 Olympic Golf and I am leaving with huge learnings and invaluable experience. Thank you to all the volunteers and Brazil’s National Force.
Obviously I didn’t play as well as I hoped, especially the last two days. But I’m sure there has been a lot of attention on me, so women’s golf has become a bit popular. I’m hoping to see it grow in the next few weeks.
I tried my best. If I had done better, I’m sure I would have helped with creating greater visibility for golf. I’m sure I would have done that if I played better. But I think going from here, the better I play, the more I’m still going to do that, even if I’m not going to be playing in the Olympics every other week.
My Facebook page and Twitter has been going off quite a lot. I’m happy that a lot of people who didn’t really watch golf are watching golf now. It’s only going to get better from here.
I guess we need a lot more players in India, especially, and that will happen when juniors start to pick up the sport more. As long as we keep getting more girls every year playing good golf, I think that’s going to help, especially with the local tour, and to get more beginners in India.
The experience has been great staying at the Olympic Village and playing with the best in the world and I really enjoyed playing this golf course, too. It played different every day because of the wind and the conditions, but yeah, I enjoyed it. With my performance, you know, I could have done better, but you know, I’m going to build on this, and the next time I play bigger events, I’m sure this experience is going to help.
