After 14 years on Tour Liz Young had a dream week at last year’s VP Bank Swiss Ladies Open as she clinched her long-awaited maiden Ladies European Tour (LET) title.
Playing what she describes as the best golf of her career, the Englishwoman sensationally held off Sweden’s Linn Grant at Golfpark Holzhäusern to hoist the famous wooden cow and finally join the LET winners’ circle.
Now back in Switzerland to defend her crown, Young couldn’t be more excited to get going as she returns to a setting which will forever hold so many special memories.
“It’s a bit surreal,” the 40-year-old says on the eve of her title defence. “But it’s definitely a good feeling. It’s nice to come back to the home of your first LET win which was obviously a great experience. I’m really excited to get going.
“It was massive for my confidence. I knew at the end of last year, in august, my golf was really the best it’s ever been. Honestly it’s kept getting better, but I just haven’t had the results this year.”
Having come so close on so many occasions throughout her career, the Englishwoman fired a final round 69 (-3) at Golfpark Holzhäusern to finish the job in confident fashion after holding the 36-hole lead.
“It was one those weeks where everything just clicked,” Young continues. “I never felt that I was going to win it, even when I was leading going into the last round. When Linn Grant is in the field you’ve always got to be worried about her!
“I just played my own golf and I remember that putt on the last, I left it a bit short and then had a four- or five-footer for the win. When it went in everyone came rushing on to the green and I was ‘oh my god I’ve won!’”
Joining the winners’ circle in her 14th year on Tour, a tenure which saw her sit on the LET Player’s Council and help kickstart the Rose Ladies Series, mother-of-one Young was rewarded with the unmistakable VP Bank Swiss Ladies Open trophy – the wooden cow which remains proudly in her living room.
“It’s still on the mantlepiece,” Young says. “My daughter gave it a horse for company, a little statue horse so it had a friend. She named it daisy the cow and it currently has a beautiful painted dinosaur by her for company. My husband has said the dinosaur has to stay until it gets a friend like another cow, so the pressure is on this week.”
Defending this week for the first time in her career, Young arrives back at Golfpark Holzhäusern ranked 60th in the Race to Costa del Sol and off the back of a T25 finish at last week’s Big Green Egg Open.
But with Young insisting she is swinging the club as well as she ever has, the Englishwoman remains confident heading into this week at a course she knows all too well.
“My swing technically is better than it was last year, it’s just a case of putting it all together,” she explains. “It’s been a mixed bag this year. One week the putter is good and I’m shooting those five and six unders, and the next day it’s like I’ve got a frying pan at the end of my hand and I’ve got no control. I know it’s in there and I know my swing is good enough.
Young gets her title defence underway on Friday at 12:25pm local time alongside fellow LET winners Patricia Isabel Schmidt and Nuria Iturrioz.
“It feels good to be back and I can’t wait to tee it up on Friday,” she said. “That will be a nice experience being defending champion. First time for that. I definitely feel like I’ve got a chance and I know that it’s there, it’s just doing it for three rounds, that’s what’s needed.
“I like these greens and I love this golf course so I’m really excited to get going. You have to be accurate here which is fine by me. These courses where you have to think off the tee are the ones I like.”
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