She’s been described as a “virtuoso,” and at age 12, Lucy Lin is also the youngest player ever to qualify for the CP Women’s Open.
Lin, who earned one of four qualifying spots in the 2022 golf tournament, played her first round of 18 holes when she was nine. Three years later, she’s preparing for the LPGA Tour event in Ottawa.
“I’m really excited to meet all these great players from around the world and try to enjoy the experience,” Lin said in an interview with CTV News in the capital Tuesday, after she’d qualified.
Lin’s was among the four best qualifying scores out of 22 on Monday, meaning she’ll be joining event headliner Brooke Henderson on the course when the tournament opens Thursday. The defending champion headed into the event is 13-time LPGA Tour winner Jin Young Ko.
Lin, a Vancouver resident, earned her spot shooting two over par, just two shots behind Michelle Liu – who was previously the youngest qualifier – and Gianna Clemente, and one shot ahead of Vanessa Zhang.
In 2019, Liu earned her spot in the tournament at 12 years, nine months and six days old. Lin was 12 years, seven months and 12 days old on Monday, meaning she broke Liu’s record by less than two months.
Qualifiers Liu, Lin and Zhang, all from Vancouver, are among 18 Canadians who will be playing in the CP Women’s Open.
Ahead of teeing off at the Ottawa Hunt and Golf Club, Lin said she’s trying to stay focused.
“Sometimes I get nervous but I try to stay patient,” she said.
Her strategy is to think only about her own game and how she can improve her swing. She tries not to get distracted.
Lin’s mother, Amanda, is her caddy, and joked that she’s the secret weapon, but she said her goal for her daughter is just to have fun and take in the experience.
They don’t play a lot of tournaments, she said, but described her daughter as a “very natural player.”
“She’s a very sporty girl … she’s good at everything. And when she played the first time, 18 holes, with me three years ago I could see she’s a good player,” Lin’s mother said.
Describing themselves as a good team and good friends, she said they practice every day, but Lin balances that with school, which she does online.
With a laugh, Lin said she learned from watching her mother play and trying to “copy her.”
She said she was surprised she made the cutoff, but also that she’d tried not to think about it until it was over, focusing only on her game.
What she loves most about the sport, Lin said, is “hitting every shot. The sound of hitting the ball, making contact.”
She said she dreams of becoming a professional golfer, something those who’ve seen her play believe possible.
“I’m in awe of her. She’s a virtuoso – not in the music field but certainly in the golf field,” said Michael Hurdzan, a U.S. golf course architect who remodeled the decades-old Ottawa Hunt and Golf Club course where Lin will play in the Open.
“The wonderful thing about it is it’s going to inspire other young girls like her to give it a shot, so that’s the reason I’m following her and that’s why I have great hope that she will make the cut.”
Coach Tristan Mullally said thinks she may have what it takes as well.
“She’s a very grounded young lady. When you speak to her, you don’t imagine she’s 12, then when you watch her play, she’s got skills and speed that’s above her years,” Mullally told CTV News Tuesday. He’s the head of national talent identification for Golf Canada, and also a part of Lin’s coaching team.
“She’s in kind of a unique place to be as good as she is for her age,” he said.
“She’s a very smart kid, takes information on very well, and is very diligent in what she does on a daily basis, so you can see that in how fast she’s improved.”
Mullally said he knows there can be challenges balancing school and sports at this level, but that Lin’s mother treats Lin as “a kid first and an athlete second,” and dedicates a lot of time to them.
He said he’d hoped Lin would qualify, after being second at a Canadian Junior Golf Association event a couple weeks ago on the same course, but he knew that it would come down to how she played Monday.
“She did that to get in, she’s earned her spot, and it should be fun to watch,” Mullally said.
As for what’s next, he knows about her aspirations to be a professional, and said he’ll do what he can to help her get there as quickly and safely as possible.
“I think when you qualify as the youngest person ever to play in the Canadian Open, that probably says a lot about you and your game. I was fortunate enough to work with Brooke (Henderson) and her family for a long time, and she’s got a lot of the same traits, so hopefully the same kind of success in the future,” he said.
PARIS (AP) — French judicial authorities are investigating the disappearance of two Paralympic athletes from Congo who recently competed in the Paris Games, the prosecutor’s office in the Paris suburb of Bobigny confirmed on Thursday.
Prosecutors opened the investigation on Sept. 7, after members of the athletes’ delegation warned authorities of their disappearance two days before.
Le Parisien newspaper reported that shot putter Mireille Nganga and Emmanuel Grace Mouambako, a visually impaired sprinter who was accompanied by a guide, went missing on Sept. 5, along with a third person.
The athletes’ suitcases were also gone but their passports remained with the Congolese delegation, according to an official with knowledge of the investigation, who asked to remain anonymous as they were not allowed to speak publicly about the case.
The Paralympic Committee of the Democratic Republic of Congo did not respond to requests for information from The Associated Press.
Nganga — who recorded no mark in the seated javelin and shot put competitions — and Mouambako were Congo’s flag bearers at the opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games, organizers said.
An investigator gave the World Anti-Doping Agency a pass on its handling of the inflammatory case involving Chinese swimmers, but not without hammering away at the “curious” nature of WADA’s “silence” after examining Chinese actions that did not follow rules designed to safeguard global sports.
WADA on Thursday released the full decision from Eric Cottier, the Swiss investigator it appointed to analyze its handling of the case involving the 23 Chinese swimmers who remained eligible despite testing positive for performance enhancers in 2021.
In echoing wording from an interim report issued earlier this summer, Cottier said it was “reasonable” that WADA chose not to appeal the Chinese anti-doping agency’s explanation that the positives came from contamination.
“Taking into consideration the particularities of the case, (WADA) appears … to have acted in accordance with the rules it has itself laid out for anti-doping organizations,” Cottier wrote.
But peppered throughout his granular, 56-page analysis of the case was evidence and reminders of how WADA disregarded some of China’s violations of anti-doping protocols. Cottier concluded this happened more for the sake of expediency than to show favoritism toward the Chinese.
“In retrospect at least, the Agency’s silence is curious, in the face of a procedure that does not respect the fundamental rules, and its lack of reaction is surprising,” Cottier wrote of WADA’s lack of fealty to the world anti-doping code.
Travis Tygart, the CEO of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency and one of WADA’s fiercest critics, latched onto this dynamic, saying Cottier’s information “clearly shows that China did not follow the rules, and that WADA management did nothing about it.”
One of the chief complaints over the handling of this case was that neither WADA nor the Chinese gave any public notice upon learning of the positive tests for the banned heart medication Temozolomide, known as TMZ.
The athletes also were largely kept in the dark and the burden to prove their innocence was taken up by Chinese authorities, not the athletes themselves, which runs counter to what the rulebook demands.
Despite the criticisms, WADA generally welcomed the report.
“Above all, (Cottier) reiterated that WADA showed no bias towards China and that its decision not to appeal the cases was reasonable based on the evidence,” WADA director general Olivier Niggli said. “There are however certainly lessons to be learned by WADA and others from this situation.”
Tygart said “this report validates our concerns and only raises new questions that must be answered.”
Cottier expanded on doubts WADA’s own chief scientist, Olivier Rabin, had expressed over the Chinese contamination theory — snippets of which were introduced in the interim report. Rabin was wary of the idea that “a few micrograms” of TMZ found in the kitchen at the hotel where the swimmers stayed could be enough to cause the group contamination.
“Since he was not in a position to exclude the scenario of contamination with solid evidence, he saw no other solution than to accept it, even if he continued to have doubts about the reality of contamination as described by the Chinese authorities,” Cottier wrote.
Though recommendations for changes had been expected in the report, Cottier made none, instead referring to several comments he’d made earlier in the report.
Key among them were his misgivings that a case this big was largely handled in private — a breach of custom, if not the rules themselves — both while China was investigating and after the file had been forwarded to WADA. Not until the New York Times and German broadcaster ARD reported on the positives were any details revealed.
“At the very least, the extraordinary nature of the case (23 swimmers, including top-class athletes, 28 positive tests out of 60 for a banned substance of therapeutic origin, etc.), could have led to coordinated and concerted reflection within the Agency, culminating in a formal and clearly expressed decision to take no action,” the report said.
WADA’s executive committee established a working group to address two more of Cottier’s criticisms — the first involving what he said was essentially WADA’s sloppy recordkeeping and lack of formal protocol, especially in cases this complex; and the second a need to better flesh out rules for complex cases involving group contamination.
The French league’s legal commission has ordered Paris Saint-Germain to pay Kylian Mbappé the 55 million euros ($61 million) in unpaid wages that he claims he’s entitled to, the league said Thursday.
The league confirmed the decision to The Associated Press without more details, a day after the France superstar rejected a mediation offer by the commission in his dispute with his former club.
