BATON ROUGE — In 2001, LSU women’s golfer Meredith Duncan was enjoying the summer of a lifetime, winning three major amateur titles, including the nationally-televised U.S. Women’s Amateur Championship.
In the summer of 2008, the Shreveport native is having her best year on the LPGA circuit and thanks to a little help, she will tee off Thursday in her first appearance in the Ricoh Women’s British Open. Duncan this season has made $93,450, her best professional season, highlighted by a fifth-place finish in the LPGA Corning Classic.
Her money total left her as the first alternate for the Women’s Open and when Meg Mallon withdrew, Meredith was on her way to Berkshire, England and Sunningdale Golf Club. The first two rounds are televised by TNT on Thursday and Friday (9-11 a.m. CST) while ABC will have the final two rounds on the weekend (12:30-2 p.m. Saturday, 12-2 p.m. Sunday CST).
Duncan jokingly is very happy that the multiple-major winner Mallon withdrew. “I texted her and said ?thanks for letting the little people play.’ She texted back and gave me some advice. She told me to work on my chipping. She’s had a pretty decent career, so I listened.”
Duncan will have quite a gallery watching her as she has many relatives in England. Her uncle lives there and her mom, Debbie, made the trip with her where they will meet up with twenty-plus cousins.
“I’ve heard Sunningdale is not as ?linksy’ as some of the courses over there,” Duncan said before leaving for England. “The last few days I’ve been working on my knockdown shots and done lots of chipping to be ready for that style of play. I have big expectations for myself. I feel good about the way I am playing. I am hitting the ball well. I think I have prepared as well as I can for it.”
Duncan feels she knows the reasons her season has gone so well. “I have been a lot more consistent this year. I have always hit lots of fairways and greens, but this year I have hit even more. That is making it easier to score. I have also cut out the bad holes. I will still have one or two, but not as many as I used to have in a round.”
Duncan is 87th on the LPGA money list, needing probably another 10 to 15 thousand dollars to guarantee a spot in the top 80 on the money list, assuring her of keeping her card for another year without going back to qualifying school. But Duncan also has a plan to keep that card with her tournament schedule for the rest of the year.
“After the British, I am taking a week off, then I will go to the Canadian Open and the tour stop in Portland. After two weeks off, there will be two events in Alabama, then California and Maui to conclude the season. I’m hoping to get in some limited field events in Asia after that and if I do well coming in I have a good chance of getting in those.”
Duncan will have played in all four majors on the LPGA tour currently with her appearance in the British Open. She has played three of those in her pro career and she appeared in the LPGA Kraft Nabisco Championship as an amateur in her senior season at LSU in 2002. She will be the third player from LSU to play in the Women’s Open, joining Jenny Lidback, who played in the event in the first year it was an LPGA major in 2001 (finishing in a tie for 56) and Jackie-Gallagher Smith who made the field five times with a best finish of tied for 26th in 2006.
Lidback is the only former LSU women’s golfer to own a major pro title, having won the tournament that was a major on the LPGA schedule prior to the British Open, the duMaurier Canadian Open, in 1995.