Emma Broze, LPGA goal – French Golf Federation

July 17, three weeks before his 26th birthday, Emma Broze became the fifth French golfer to win on the Symetra Tour. In the heart of the summer, the victory of the Ligérienne went somewhat unnoticed, but it marked a new milestone in the long tradition of success of our players on the other side of the Atlantic, started twenty years ago by Jeanne-Marie Busuttil, and continued more recently by Valentine Derrey (2011), Celine Boutier (twice in 2017) and Perrine Delacour (twice in 2019). However, almost nothing foreshadowed such a success, the native of Feurs not even having started the year on this circuit! “At the start of the year, I didn’t necessarily have the money to play it”, she explains. “Even if my category acquired by the cards of LPGA Tour at the end of 2019 allowed me to enter all the tournaments, I had started 2021 by leaving on the Women’s All Pro Tour (a mini-tour based in the Central and South of the USA, editor’s note), on which I had played the previous year during the Covid. “

Four events contested between April and June, one of which, concluded in second place behind an amateur, allowed her to pocket the check intended for the winner, quickly allowed Emma to have a few pennies in advance to finance the rest of his season. A month later, two laps completed in 67 and 65, combined with the cancellation of the weekend due to torrential rains, therefore offered him, at Danielle Downey Credit Union Classic, a “somewhat unexpected” success, but absolutely not undeserved: “It’s true that two rounds were canceled, but we still had to play the first two well. This victory came naturally. I felt that my game was good, I was comfortable on the courses even if I was discovering them. And I said to myself that if I had won my place on the Symetra, there were reasons, and I just had to play my golf to prove it ”, she continues.

A neighbor named Viktor

With five cuts over the next eight tournaments, Emma finished the year, which ended last weekend in Florida, with an honorable 34th place in the Order of Merit. A balance sheet that she considers satisfactory: “I know there is always room for improvement, but for a first year of discovering the unknown, it was not bad. I wasn’t intimidated, and it proves that all the work I’ve done for years is paying off. “ For years, the former member of the France team, with which she notably won the European Championship in 2014 (alongside, among others, Céline Boutier) has been working on her side, far from the ‘Hexagon, in a Midwestern state called Oklahoma. “Here, it really is the realm of cowboys! “ she blurted out laughing. “After my studies at theOklahoma State University, I stayed in Stillwater, the town where the university is located. I continue to train on the same course; and the coaches at the university, even if they are not the same as in my time, do everything to help me. The fact of playing on a daily basis with current students, or alumni like Viktor Hovland who still lives here, it made the transition much easier for me. “

And if, unlike her compatriots victorious on the Symetra Tour, she has not yet reached the upper echelon, Emma Broze will have one last cartridge to shoot at the beginning of December, during the final cards of the LPGA Tour. With her 34th place in the order of merit, she is in fact exempt from Stage II, which will take place next week in Florida, and therefore has a month and a half ahead of her to prepare for the Q-Series, which will be played in two stages (December 2 to 5, then from 9 to 12) in Alabama. “I’m going to start by resting, enjoying having a few quiet days, then I’m going to get back to training and playing sports to get ready. On the Symetra Tour, we have just completed four weeks in the tournament, including the last two over four rounds, so the Q-Series will look a bit like that. And I have no pressure on that: participating in it from the end of my first season on the Symetra is really a bonus, the icing on the cake ”, she concludes. The only Habs directly qualified for this final of the cards, she will find there, hopefully, Julie Aimé, Pauline Roussin-Bouchard, Agathe Laisne and Elodie Rosary, who will play Stage II from next Thursday.