Aditi Ashok performs a tee shot through the first spherical of the ladies’s Olympic competitors Wednesday.
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SAINT-QUENTIN-EN-YVELINES, France — After enjoying for 5 hours, capturing 72, racing to the airport, flying 9 hours, crossing customs, claiming her baggage, rechecking her baggage, flying one other 90 minutes and getting her baggage as soon as extra, the actual kick within the shin got here for Aditi Ashok.
The Olympics accreditation station at Charles de Gaulle was closed for the night.
“So then I had to return to the [Olympic] Village, which is an additional hour,” Ashok mentioned. By the point her head hit the pillow it was almost midnight, a full day and alter after she’d completed T22 on the Portland Basic. Ashok recounted the journey day from Le Golf Nationwide in France, 9 time zones away, after carding one other 72 within the first spherical of the Olympic golf competitors. This one needed to really feel higher than her closing spherical in Portland.
Ashok was the one participant within the discipline to make this commute, and was promptly rewarded by the IGF with a 9:22 a.m. tee time, the third group out. As a result of her late arrival, and the Olympics schedule pushing up the match to Wednesday, Ashok’s solely prep work got here on Tuesday, and all of that got here on the driving vary.
This Olympic golfer and her father made a wild guess. In opposition to all odds, she received it
It helps that Aditi performed the course a pair occasions final month, forward of the close by Evian Championship, however you can inform her caddie — her father, Ashok Gudlamani — didn’t have any time to do the standard looper homework; he typically wasn’t certain the place to position her bag across the greens, unaware of the route to the subsequent tee field.
No hassle, although. If you hit almost each fairway and almost each inexperienced, your caddie doesn’t actually need to know the golf course. Good golf means easy golf.
Olympics golf followers will keep in mind Ashok from three years in the past, when she was the darling of the Tokyo Video games.
“Individuals convey it up so much,” she says.
She performed so effectively the Prime Minister of India was tweeting about her, spiking golf curiosity in a sports-mad nation, if just for only a weekend. Ashok was 23 then, one of many shortest hitters within the discipline, however making each putt she checked out. She’s 26 now, nonetheless one of many shortest hitters within the discipline, and nonetheless principally making each putt she appears at. However do you keep in mind the 18-year-old Aditi, the youngest golfer in Olympics historical past, teeing it up in Rio? Her profession has been outlined by this occasion greater than some other golfer, and she or he hasn’t even received a medal.
Ashok completed fourth in 2021, only one stroke out of a playoff for silver. We had been enamored by her clean swing, her untucked shirts, and that her mom was on the bag, after dad caddied in Rio. We had been all-in on that magical placing stroke and the black glove she wore always, even on the greens.
None of that has modified. The shirts are nonetheless untucked. The glove remains to be black and virtually all the time covers her left hand. She yanked it off after the spherical to disclose the most effective golfer’s tans going. The one apparent distinction about Ashok is she’s sneaking up on veteran standing now. 2024 is her eighth yr as a professional. She’s bagged a pair wins on the Girls European Tour, and now constantly oscillates between fortieth and 63rd on this planet. However she performed 24 occasions final yr and that is her nineteenth this yr, touring from Saudi Arabia to Thailand to New Jersey and even mixing in just a few stops in California. For somebody who nonetheless lives in India, that’s so much — however welcome to professional golf. Given her expertise, going again 9 time zones doesn’t utterly wreck her prefer it does the remainder of us. It’s why she’s headed to southwest Scotland subsequent week for the Girls Scottish Open. After which to the east of Scotland after that, for the Girls’s British Open, her seventh match in a row.
Ashok doesn’t simply fly like a professional, she talks like one, too. Why did she play in Portland? She appreciated the golf course. It reminds her of what she grew up on. Tree-lined and never a lot water. What occurred on 18 Thursday, the place she made double-bogey 7? “I hit a foul drive. I hit a foul second shot. I hit a foul third shot. So not a lot good occurred there.”
Not a lot good, however the one unhealthy of her day. Ashok figured that flying blind onto the first tee truly helped her keep defensive on a troublesome day. She bought snug chasing par and ended up making 13 of ‘em. The double on 18 introduced her again to even, the place she sits at T13, prepared for an evening of regular sleep. Early Wednesday morning, it was clear her physique wasn’t fairly on Central European Time but, as she counted sheep between 1 and 4 a.m.
“I haven’t figured it out but,” she mentioned, “however hopefully it will get higher because the week goes on. Not at one hundred percent however shut sufficient.”
