THE WOODLANDS, Texas — There’s a term that doesn’t sit quite right with Swedish golfer Ingrid Lindblad. It’s a word given to people who are new at something. They often are inexperienced and need training. And, generally, there’s a different tone about it. In sports, it refers to someone in their first season.
Rookie.
“I haven't thought much about it, but obviously rookie sounds like a little, bit like ‘oh, you're new here.’ Kind of like ‘oh, this is your year to like get your feet wet,’ ” Lindblad said. “But I feel like what we've done as rookies this year, we've played really well to get here. Now we play well here. So I don't know if I like the name, the term rookie or not.”
You have to like her game. Lindblad walks confidently and talks the talk, too, even now that she’s about to make her debut at the Chevron Championship, the LPGA's first major of the year.
In winning the JM Eagle LA Championship last week in only her third start as a rookie, Lindblad hit driver at every opportunity in every round, even when her caddie suggested laying up on a hole on the back nine on Sunday. She stayed aggressive. The approach is working.
“It's exciting coming out for a major after a win, so obviously you want to keep riding that wave of playing well,” Lindblad said.
Two of the first eight winners on the LPGA Tour this season are rookies, with Japan’s Rio Takeda taking the Blue Bay LPGA in early March and Lindblad following her with a one-shot win last week over a fellow rookie, Akie Iwai.
The last time two rookies won this early in the season was 2015. That year, Sei Young Kim won the Pure Silk-Bahamas LPGA Classic in February, followed by Hyo Joo Kim in March at the JTBC Founders Cup. Sei Young Kim won again in April at the LPGA Lotte Championship. The rookies’ victory tour continued that season with Minjee Lee winning the Kingsmill Championship in May, making it four wins by rookies before the tour even hit the summer.
Being a rookie is an awesome title on the LPGA Tour this season among the 21 first-time members. Takeda, 22, already had a win before technically carrying the "rookie" label because she took the 2024 Toto Japan Classic when she was not yet an LPGA Tour memebr. She already has three top-10s this season, while countrywoman Akie Iwai—who reached the LPGA with twin sister Chisato—has finished second twice after capturing six titles on the LPGA of Japan Tour. The Iwais, who are 22, each finished in the top five of the final qualifying in the LPGA Q-Series to earn their LPGA Tour cards. Last year, Akie played and made the cut in all five majors.
World No. 1 Nelly Korda didn’t win in her rookie year in 2017, but she had five top-10s. Her first win came the next season at the Swinging Skirts LPGA Taiwan Championship. She likes the mindset you can have as a rookie.
“I think in a sense whether or not you're a rookie you have nothing to lose. You have no scar tissue,” Korda said. “You just go out and enjoy the moment. You're so grateful to be out here. It's your rookie year. Every golf course is new. You're enjoying every moment. Not saying that a couple years down the road you're not doing the same thing. I feel like you maybe don't have as much scar tissue in a sense.
“It's great for them. Like I didn't win my rookie year. It's so hard to even just win out here. For them to come out and ball out like that, props to them. But I would say there is a different mindset being your rookie year versus being a little bit of a veteran out here.”
Lindblad believes she can win a major this week and why not? She moved up 182 places in the Rolex Rankings to No. 42 after her victory in L.A. and isn’t shy about lofty goals. She already figured she could win on tour this season. As she looked at her new shiny trophy in California, she joked she needed to update her goals.
Lindblad is an "older" rookie at 25 after playing at LSU for five years due to the COVID-19 extensions offered to athletes. During that time, she had a loaded amateur résumé. Over her first four seasons in Baton Rouge, she won a school-record 12 individual titles and added three more in an extra fifth year. Lindblad followed Stanford star Rose Zhang to the top of the World Amateur Golf Rankings and remained there until she turned pro.
Lindblad is still based out of Louisiana when she’s in the U.S. and not playing in a tournament. She needed only seven starts on the Epson Tour last year to secure enough points for her LPGA card.
“I loved LSU. I didn't want to leave,” Lindblad said. “It's great in college. Everything is paid for. You go to tournaments, they tell you where to be, what to bring.
Rio Takeda of Japan celebrates winning the 2024 Toto Japan Classic.
Yoshimasa Nakano
“Then we were talking a lot with the Swedish team how usually when you turn pro you don't have as much time to practice. So it's like your development kind of stops because you don't have the same amount of time in between tournaments to get better. So I was just trying to be as good as I could when I left LSU. I was happy I stayed five years. I think a lot of the people were surprised I did.”
Not everyone makes their professional debut via the same path, and there’s no right or wrong way to do it. Jeeno Thitikul, of Thailand, was a 19-year-old rookie in 2022. Now, at 22, she has won four events and has 46 career top-10 finishes. She’s also the last player to win multiple times as a rookie, taking two titles in 2022. Rose Zhang, who left Stanford early to turn pro in 2023 at the age of 20, won in her first pro start, becoming the first rookie to do so in 72 years.
As Elle Woods famously said, ‘What, like it’s hard?”
Well, for many rookies it is a struggle. Lilia Vu, one of the most accomplished players in UCLA history with eight career wins, made one cut in nine events her rookie season in 2019. It took her a while to get going.
“I think I came into my rookie year with the wrong lens,” Vu, 27, said. “I definitely put so much pressure on myself. Every shot was life or death. I just mulled over that shot, if it was bad or good or whatever. If it was bad I'd discredit myself—‘I shouldn't be here.’ If it was good—‘Oh, it's just one shot that was good out of all the bad shots.’
“I think my rookie year was so hard on me. I was so beat down. I came from college and amateur golf pretty good. I had a good career there. Then to not perform at the professional level I think was really hard.”
But Vu had her breakout year in 2023, when she won four events, including two majors—the Chevron Championship and AIG Women’s Open. She was named LPGA player of the year and became No. 1 in the world.
While her rookie season didn’t go like that of many rookies this year, she’s looking with interest at all the immediate success of the newcomers.
“To see them coming out here guns blazing, Rose [Zhang] did that, too; won her first LPGA event,” Vu said. “I thought that was amazing and she's had a great career so far. It's been cool to see rookies just come out here and kind of just ready to go. I definitely didn't have that in me, so it's really cool to see.”
There are 21 rookies on tour this year and 16 of them are international players.
Miranda Wang of China has made the cut in all three of her starts, with one top-10 and no finish worse than 32nd. Japan’s Miyu Yamashita is ranked 14th in the world and finished tied for fourth at the Founders Cup.
Georgia alum Jenny Bae—who fell to Zhang in a playoff at the 2023 Augusta National Women’s Amateur—has done plenty of winning. After a successful career at Georgia, she won in back-to-back weeks on the Epson Tour in 2023 and captured another Epson Tour event in 2024. Bae missed two cuts in her first two events this season, but bounced back with a T-11 in the LA Championship last week.
Lindblad celebrated her birthday and first tournament win last week. Now, she’ll tee it up in her first major as a professional after an impressive eight starts as an amateur.
As Lindblad said recently of the rookie class, “We’re not here to mess around.”
They’re here to win.