Swanson: Lilia Vu just wants to have fun
It’s so simple. (No, it’s not.)
Feel good, play good. (But what if you don’t?)
What if, for you, one bad review echoes louder than 100 that were glowing? Or one insult outweighs 100 compliments? One mean tweet? One wrong answer? One bad shot? What if you’re just normal?
“It’s something we battle all the time,” said Alicia Um Holmes, UCLA’s women’s golf coach. “They can hit 100 great shots and latch onto that one bad shot, that’s the one that destroys their confidence. Which is crazy, because they’re so good.”
And few are better than Lilia Vu.
She’s a former Fountain Valley High School Baron and UCLA Bruin standout who graduated to the big leagues in 2019. She has held on through big swings and ups and downs that, for a while, had her wanting to quit playing and go tee up law school.
Her mom, Yvvonne, and other family and supporters in Orange County kept her on course though, and lately golf has really started to click – which is why Vu will be defending her second major title this week at the AIG Women’s Open at St. Andrews.
Vu has put in work, on and off the course, reading greens and books, getting her swing and her mind right. Absorbing what were, for her, life-changing lessons in the titles before the titles: “Extraordinary Golf: The Art of the Possible,” and “The Slight Edge: Turning Simple Disciplines into Massive Success and Happiness.”
A golfer since she was 7 and the best putter Um Holmes said she’s coached in 17 seasons at UCLA, Vu has won five LPGA Tour events, including two majors, in the past year and a half. The daughter of first-generation Vietnamese immigrants, she just represented the United States at the Olympics in Paris, and currently is ranked No. 2 in the world after being on top as world No. 1 from August 2023 to March 2024.
She’s also a regular reason for high-fives between her former teachers at Fountain Valley High.
Vu has proved herself the caliber of player that made me want to ask what’s it like to think she might be a hero for young golfers like Annika Sorenstam, Lorena Ochoa and Se-ri Pak were for her?
Who, her? Oh, please.
“I haven’t processed that yet,” said the 26-year-old Vu this week, via a voice memo. “I don’t think I’m at that level yet.”
Humble too, Vu. So demure. And, sure, Sorenstam was an eight-time LPGA Player of the Year; Vu has claimed that honor just once, so far. Last season, when two of her four victories were those majors titles, coming at the Chevron Championship and Women’s Open in England, where she cruised to a six-shot victory at Walton Heath.
That success is all the more wild because it bookended a midseason slump in which Vu – who, in 2020, finished ranked 1,330th in the world – missed four cuts in five tournaments and started to wonder, she’s said, “if I could ever win again.”
She could, and she would. And I dare say she will again, if she can stay above the nervous-making fray.
Vu is getting better at navigating the pressure-packed arena that is pro golf – which is probably why she’d prefer we keep those heady comparisons of her and past greats to ourselves.
And why she’d rather not be reminded that she’ll be defending a major this week: “Every single time that people think, ‘Oh, I’m defending something, it feels like you have something to lose,’” she told reporters on site in Scotland on Tuesday. “But when you start fresh at the beginning of the tournament, you haven’t won the tournament yet. So I think I’m going to stick to that kind of mindset.”
GREAT EXPECTATIONS
“It’d be funny, she’d come in, ‘I shot 3 under and I played so bad!’” said Carter Keyser, who remains Fountain Valley’s girls and boys golf coach.
Vu’s self-critiques as a shy freshman were neither a flex nor humble brag, Keyser said. It was just how she felt, a sign of how much pressure she was putting on herself en route to annual Sunset League MVP honors and CIF State tournament berths and, eventually, the roster spot at UCLA she’d coveted.
“When we watched her as a junior golfer, she played with a little more stress (than in college),” Um Holmes said. “In those junior golf days, she had all that immense pressure that juniors face: ‘Where am I gonna play college golf?’ ‘If I don’t play well, I’m not gonna get to go to the school I want.’”
At UCLA, she could relax, Um Holmes said.
She’d made it. She was playing for the Bruins, loving life as part of the squad, enjoying the game so much that she blossomed into an eight-time collegiate winner and the world’s top-ranked amateur for 31 weeks and … and uh-oh.
The better she played, the more that was expected, and the more that was expected, the worse she played.
“When she puts too much pressure on herself, she stops playing golf,” Um Holmes said. “I saw it when she became the No. 1 amateur in the world, there was this heavy burden. And then again when she turned pro: ‘OK, you were Player of the Year, you should make it out there, you should succeed.’”
She made just one cut in her first nine LPGA starts.
“Instead of going out there and doing the things that really helped her become a great player – which is to enjoy the moment and have fun – she turned it into a job,” Um Holmes said.
A stressful job.
That she’s great at.
When she isn’t stressing.
So on the Symetra Tour in 2021, Vu changed her approach, won three times and finished the season first on the money list, claiming the tour’s Player of the Year honors and earning her LPGA Tour card for 2022.
She wrote a post on lpga.com ahead of her second season on the premier tour promising that this time, she wouldn’t let “the ‘LPGA’ part of an event get to me… every LPGA Tour round is just another 18 holes where the most important shot is the one in front of me.”
That’s an especially good habit to have on weeks like this, during a major tournament when being able to zone in on the shot in front of you is everything – and the whole point of the sport.
To just play it.
“For me, I keep it pretty simple,” Vu said in response to my question about what she’d advise those young players she’s inspiring. “I mean, over every putt, I just think, ‘OK, it either goes in or it doesn’t.’ It’s not that deep.
“The goal of the game is to have fun. When you make your goal of the day just to have fun, golf kind of solves itself.”
Reigning Women's Open champion Lilia Vu has vowed to treat herself to another pet cat if she win's the Women's Open at St Andrews pic.twitter.com/92ZCNPHcUK
— Sky Sports Golf (@SkySportsGolf) August 20, 2024