MELBOURNE, Fla. – Putting practice is as habitual as brushing your teeth in Ingrid Lindblad’s world, to borrow a phrase from another uber successful LSU grad.
“She definitely works on it hard, and we kind of call it brushing your teeth, which we got from Madelene Sagstrom,” said LSU head coach Garrett Runion, “where she’s like, every day just because you brush your teeth doesn’t mean you don’t brush them the next day.
“(Ingrid has) kind of done that with her putting, working on it every day, we call it brushing your teeth.”
If there was a weakness in Lindblad’s game, it was putting speed and an inside-out move, but Runion looks at his star Lindblad on the greens now and sees a pure stroke.
In college golf, Lindblad is queen of the East Coast. She’s gained that crown through mindblowing consistency.
In two and a half years of college golf, Lindblad has won six times – most recently at the Moon Golf Invitational on February 22. She has 19 top-10 finishes in 23 starts and the only time she’s ever finished outside the top 25 was at last spring’s NCAA Women’s Championship, where she was 44th.
“She doesn’t give anything away around the greens,” Runion said when asked to explain that track record. “Whether she’s 5 under, 5 over, she never feels like she’s out of it and she’s just real efficient around the greens. She grinds and just seems like she never makes bogeys. She does, but she just grinds. She wills it in, I guess.”
Lindblad didn’t feel a whole lot of that willpower working in the final round of the Moon Golf event at Suntree Country Club on February 22. She hit 15 greens but made only one birdie in a round of 1-over 73 that left her at 10 under for the tournament, three shots better than runners-up Kendall Griffin of Louisville and Beth Lillie of Virginia. Given that statistic, “it didn’t feel like I should have won,” she noted.
The Individual Champ
This is the sixth title @iingridlindblad has won in her time at LSU and ties the school record for most individual wins. pic.twitter.com/kQS2VpJEVw
— LSU Women's Golf (@LSUWomensGolf) February 22, 2022
Part of the reason she did is that her game is so complete. Lindblad has also devoted time to learning to work the ball both ways. Playing in Europe with only a fade in her arsenal just didn’t cut it.
“You can’t just aim our super far left because you’re going to miss it left,” she said.
What makes Lindblad tick? A genuine love for golf. With few other outside hobbies, her mind is constantly churning on the game. If Runion needs to shut it off, a puzzle will do the trick. Last spring before the Ally, a Mississippi State-hosted tournament with an SEC-heavy field, Runion sent assistant coach Alexis Rather to Wal-Mart in search of one so that Lindblad could relax.
“She was kind of stressed about school and just kind of wasn’t happy with where her game was, practice round didn’t hit it very well,” Runion said. “I told Alexis, I said go to Wal-Mart, buy a puzzle and give it to her. She sat there for like three hours straight and did a 1,000, 2,000 piece puzzle and then she texts me afterward and said thanks, I needed that.
“Of course she went and finished top 10, played really well.”
What you see is what you get with Lindblad. The low-key Swede could be well on her way to a budding pro career right about now, having earned a free pass into the second stage of LPGA Q-School courtesy of her top-5 finish in last spring’s final Golfweek/Sagarin College Ranking, but she didn’t even enter.
“I really like it at LSU. I like my coaches, I like my teammates,” she said. “I don’t really have a hard time with school so I feel like I just keep going. I’ve liked school ever since I was a kid.”
Lindblad expects to stay four years, in fact.
If Lindblad weren’t getting better in Baton Rouge, Runion reasons, it might be a different story. Coach and player are close and talk about a lot of things. It’s also his job to push her, and one way to do that is to make Lindblad as uncomfortable as possible.
Before taking over LSU’s women’s team in 2018, Runion spent six seasons as an assistant for the Tigers men’s team. Two-time PGA Tour winner Sam Burns was on that squad, and when asked for a comparable player to Lindblad, Runion is quick to offer up Burns.
“Their work ethic is similar, their games, too. They hit it high, they hit it far. They have a lot of power and so they have the ability to make a lot of birdies and go low. I would say those two compare very well actually.”
It’s a good clue as to the kind of pro career that could await Lindblad when she’s ready to seize it.