2021 Gumbo final - Book - Page 49
49
S
ophomore golfer Ingrid Lindblad calls Halmstad,
Sweden, home, but she has found a new home
5,000 miles away in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Among many differences between the two homes of the
world’s second-ranked amateur golfer, one stands out.
“I feel like you eat a lot of chicken here,” Lindblad said. “At
the dining hall every day it’s chicken, chicken, chicken.”
Halmstad is just north of Copenhagen on the western
coast of Sweden. It’s a beach town that embraces a contrast
in weather extremes. In the summer, Halmstad residents
flock to the beach to enjoy the warm weather before the
cold and snow of winter comes. The winter season is a time
when Lindblad hits the slopes and enjoys her time off from
golfing. The climate does not allow for outdoor golf facilities
to remain open year-round like it does in Louisiana.
Lindblad, or Iggy, as the team calls her, chose to come
to LSU to take advantage of the year-round opportunity
to fine-tune her game. Her coaches and peers in Sweden,
like former LSU player and current LPGA player Madelene
Sagstorm, influenced her choice by telling her she would be
taken care of at LSU. Lindblad, now in her second year, feels
even more at home.
Her freshman season was recognized with a plethora of
awards. Lindblad was an ANNIKA Award Finalist, invited to
play in the Palmer Cup for the international team and to the
Augusta National Women’s Amateur. She was named a FirstTeam All-American by the WGCA and Golfweek, SEC Player of
the Year, first-team All-SEC, SEC Freshman of the Year and an
WGCA All-American Scholar.
“She’s our Joe Burrow,” Head Coach Garrett Runion said on
a broadcast of the team’s first tournament.
Before the fall season began, the sophomore revealed
that her goals for this year are simple. She wants to win a
tournament and be ranked the No. 1 golfer in the world.
Through the first tournament of the fall season, she has
made a case that she can fulfill those goals.
At the Blessings Invitational, she stuck with what she
knows and was rewarded with the second-lowest score at
5-under. Before the tournament, she said she had been
working to understand and manipulate the way she reads
greens, particularly on uphill putts.
Learning to better read putts and improve her game are
obstacles she can work on herself, but the larger obstacles
the sport faces like gender equality and inclusion will require
more of a collaborative effort.
As a young star, Lindblad has set her eyes on playing
professionally but has been discouraged recently, due to
golf’s growing gender gap. Lindblad shared that most of
the female golfers in Sweden tend to be better than the
men, but male players still receive more attention and
compensation.
Lindblad does not know how to fix this problem but
acknowledging that it exists should provide a foundation
for reform. In her second year playing for LSU and being a
top-ranked player, she has never been on the Golf Channel
except for the coverage of the recent Blessings Invitational.
Although this may cause frustration and a lack of ambition,
Lindblad has chosen to use it for motivation.
In her time learning the game, she noted that the best
advice she has received was to only play with the shots
you have in the bag. In layman’s terms, do not try to create
something that you do not already have perfected.
Today, her award list would have maxed out the character
limit on Twitter three times if the pandemic wouldn’t have
cut her freshman year short.
For Iggy, she is confident in her swing and that her game
is in a position where she can excel. Louisiana is lucky to
have Lindblad, and in time football players will be told that
they are the team’s “Ingrid Lindblad.”
LSU Golf’s Ingrid Lindblad is
destined for greatness.
golf’s joe burrow