Journal du Golf: You told us on the podcast but a 14th place at the US Open gives you confidence, doesn’t it?
Céline Herbin: It’s clear, I arrived at this tournament week with great sensations, I felt it well. In fact, it confirms my feelings before the tournament. It’s great and I made the most of it all week. I climbed crescendo in my performances with in particular a beautiful weekend illustrated by a score under the par and another in the par. It’s great to do that at the US Open!
What has changed between the first two laps and the weekend?
C.H. : I felt more comfortable especially on my swing by releasing my shots more at the weekend. He also had more success on the greens with two tucked-in chips including one out of the bunker. The putting on the other hand was pretty good all week. In the end, it was details that made the difference on Saturday and Sunday. The +2, +3 were the worst scores I could do the first two days so I felt it was going to be better on the weekend.
Can you tell us about this legendary Olympic Club course?
C.H. : A course where frankly from the first days of rest, all the girls around did not find the balls in the rough while being 1 or 2 meters from the fairways so we made predictions on winners at +2, +3 or +4 but they finally cut the 3 yards inside the rough. This immediately made it more playable. It was still the most difficult course I had ever played in terms of the demands of the rough, and the speed of the greens. Every day the greens got faster. It was amazing Sunday! We are also never flat. An extremely complicated course.
We know you like these difficult courses, would you like to play them more often?
C.H. : Of course ! Besides, I have a better ratio of past cut on the Majors than on the classic tournaments of the regular season. The more difficult the course, the better I manage to concentrate and take to heart the challenge of the course taken up. It is true that my strength has always been the ability to adapt and my long game on difficult courses with wind in particular. It makes it better on TV to win by -20 or -25 anyway but that’s another debate!
What does this 14th place change for you?
C.H. : It is first of all the confirmation that I am doing a good job. Everything I have put together in the last few months is paying off with a new team and I hope this is just the start!
In terms of qualifying for the US Open next year, your result does not change anything?
C.H. : No unfortunately because we had to do top 10 to get accreditation for next year. However do not panic, if it is necessary to qualify, I will qualify!
The Evian Championship is not yet on the program?
C.H. : It’s too early to know. Via the LPGA, the closing is done in early July so there is still a month. I still climbed a lot in the CME ranking – the LPGA ranking – if there was the closing of registrations now, I am in it via the LPGA. Now there’s the Major in 2 weeks, the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, plus at least one tournament afterwards so it’s still too early to know.
You will no longer play on the LPGA before Evian?
C.H. : Yes, I will be playing KPMG in two weeks in Georgia already. This week I made a choice that was a little difficult to make, I refused to play the Mediheal on the LPGA in San Francisco to play in Sweden. There are several reasons for this choice. The main one is the opportunity this tournament offers to score points for the Solheim Cup (the equivalent of the Ryder Cup for women), so I will try to play this card as hard as I can. I also think it was very important to support this initiative of a mixed tournament. It’s great for women’s golf, this tournament will give a lot of media coverage and I really hope that a girl will compete until the end of the tournament and have a chance to win, that would be great!
How do you go from a very fast American course like the Olympic Course to a links like you’re playing this week?
C.H. : It is very difficult to adapt, especially with the nine hours of jet lag, very little sleep and not too much training, just 9 holes of pro-am yesterday and 9 holes of training on Tuesday where I struggled a lot. The greens are very slow and difficult to understand. It is a type of grass typical of the links, that explains my sluggish -1 today (Thursday) because I struggled on the greens whereas last week I was the best at putting. I still have 3 laps left and I will get used to it.
How do you get over a nine-hour time difference, it’s still the other end of the United States?
C.H. : Well we do our best (laughs), it is true that the first two / three hour night here was complicated, after today I had no bar, I slept well last night. There is not much to do. It is thanks to the physical preparation we have been doing throughout this winter which allows us to cope well with this kind of trip and jet lag. If I wasn’t physically well it would be a lot worse. It is mainly on the work done during the winter that we count.
Last week you said in the podcast that you had changed teams a bit. Are you starting to feel like it’s paying off after your best Major result?
C.H. : Yes, I am convinced that everything I have put in place over the past few months is paying off. I am working on different directions with a new technical coach, a new physical trainer, an osteopath. I also work with neuromotor deprogramming with the Allyane program. The use of ultrasound makes it possible to act as a kind of small hypnosis which accelerates the technical changes that one wants to make. There are two of us in France using it, there is Manon Gidali and me. It is also used a lot in medicine, it is very recognized to manage all the motor problems in people who have stroke – disease affecting the nervous system – or that kind of thing. There is an implication at the level of sport. This method is used in particular by the French football team. In Spain some players also use it. It’s a method that helps me enormously to anchor the technical changes I wanted to make this winter.
How did you find out about this method?
C.H. : She is represented by Paul Dorochenko who was present at the Evian Championship when I played there the last time in 2019. He had started to tell me a little about it, it was done like that. He’s based in Valencia, an hour away where I live in Spain and we started working together. We did the first sessions in October. I clearly felt an improvement.
What technical changes have you made?
C.H. : I changed coaches and we really put the emphasis on the trajectory of the bland. We worked a lot on the rotation of the lower part of the body and the fact of limiting the movements at the level of the climb. We also changed the grip quite a bit with my coach José Manuel Carriles. He was a European Tour player who is now on the Senior Tour and who won on the Senior Tour in 2019 I believe. He also played the senior PGA in the United States not long ago. He is based where I live today (Valencia, Spain).
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