When Lilia Vu, the 2021 Twin Bridges Epson Tour champion, jumped into the pond after winning the 2023 Chevron Championship, the LPGA’s first major of the season, I smiled remembering her getting doused by her friends at Pinehaven’s 18th green.
At Chevron, Vu collected $765,000 for the victory. At Pinehaven, she took home a $26,250 winner’s check. The long-term payoff of winning at Pinehaven was priceless.
Here’s what Vu wrote in an essay “Journeys to the LPGA Tour: My return” published on LPGA.com in December 2021 after earning her LPGA card on the Epson Tour:
“I’ve grown up. I’m still growing.
At the Twin Bridges Championship in 2021, I hit a bad shot on the eighth hole on Sunday and got so angry at myself that I slammed my favorite putter down after coming off the green. Then, as I was walking on the cart path from eight to nine, I thought about my grandpa and how disappointed he’d be if I throw all this hard work away simply because I was angry for missing a shot.
That was a defining moment.
I had a choice to make during that walk. I could have the best back nine possible, or I could let that shot define the rest of the event.
I birdied the next hole and came back to win the tournament — my second victory on the Epson Tour that year.”
Vu is now the hottest player and one of the top-ranked players on the tour.
At Chevron surrounded by the media, Vu repeated the story of how her late grandfather built a boat to help his family, including Vu’s mom and siblings, escape Vietnam during the war. That’s why she thinks of her grandfather when things aren’t going well on the golf course. She didn’t want to disappoint him.
“Things won’t always go my way and the only thing I can do is control how I react,” she wrote.
Her grandfather died…
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