Toss aside the Red Bull visor, put the golf bag in the corner somewhere, call in makeup and wardrobe and Lexi Thompson would fit in Hollywood quite nicely.
Looks like she could walk into any casting call and turn some heads, immediately.
Stunning starlets are a dime a dozen in L.A. but none of them can deliver the long ball the way Lexi Thompson does.
Thompson doesn’t hit her tee shots, she attacks ’em with bravado and flair, wings iron shots with that funny finish of hers and often makes us wince when she misses short putts.
There weren’t many misses on Thursday at the Wilshire Country Club. This is old-school golf and as new-school as Lexi is, she fit right in on a course that requires strategy and position off the tee.
“I hit a lot of three-woods, which isn’t bad,” Thompson said of her first day out on a course that is new to all these players. Wilshire Country Club came into being in 1919, long before there was an LPGA or PGA Tour. It was designed and brought forth by Norman Macbeth, who brought his knowledge from Scotland and England, where nature taught the early architects proper design theory.
Thompson could probably play a lot of places without taking driver from the bag. “Sometimes my three-wood goes as far as my driver,” Thompson said, matter-of-factly. Power is a beautiful thing.
It’s one facet of her game that make Thompson the player you’d pay to watch. Add a good helping of charisma and a dose of down-to-earth, hometown girl appeal that there’s no reason not to pull for this young lady to succeed, often.
She’s been off for two weeks, doing what she normally does. “I spent time with my family and worked on my game a lot. I practiced and trained for this two-week swing,” she said of this week’s L.A. Open and next week’s event in San Francisco.
She knows she needs work on her game. After a good start early in the season with a tie for sixth in the Bahamas and a tie for second in Thailand, the month of March wasn’t that kind to Thompson and often the putter was the culprit. There were no top 10s in March and her tie for 20th at the ANA Inspiration, the season’s first major, didn’t sit well with her.
She got off to a good start in Thursday’s first round. Her opening 68, three-under Wilshire’s par of 71, put her right in the thick of it, just two back leader Inbee Park.
“It felt pretty good,” she said afterward. “I definitely could have struck it a little better, just a touch off hitting it solid-wise, but I’m definitely never going to complain with three-under par.”
Good news for Lexi is that the putter is feeling more comfortable in her hands this week.
“I changed a little thing that slipped my mind that I was working on earlier this year,” she pointed out. “I’m definitely rolling it a lot better.”
Did she care to let everyone in on what that “little thing” was?
“No,” she said, nearly laughing, “because I don’t want to jinx it.”
