Vandermade's Game Fashioned for a Bigger Stage
Before Hunter Mahan, Justin Rose and Tiger Woods, noted instructor Sean Foley had Nicole Vandermade. Foley was an aspiring golf instructor in 2003 teaching junior golfers at Glen Abbey Golf Club in suburban Toronto, Canada. In walked a tall, 13-year-old junior golfer looking for a new instructor.
“Sean was a random junior golf coach at Glen Abbey and my coach had just moved far away,” Vandermade said. “Jen Kirby, who’s on the LPGA now, and I grew up together, and we just sort of stumbled across Sean at the same time. Eleven years later, and he’s up there and my career is evolving.”
Vandermade attributes the development of her game to her continued work with Foley. She has wintered in Orlando since her senior year in high school to learn from Foley. She continues to interact with him weekly during her Epson Tour career. She also enjoys the time spent with players such as Mahan and Stephen Ames, who are coached by Foley.
“Hanging around with great players is bound to have a positive effect,” she said.
Vandermade’s third season on the Epson Tour was anything but positive until early June. She was ranked 90th on the Epson Tour money list, had missed five cuts in the first eight events of the season and was visiting home in Brantford, Ontario during an off week. The LPGA’s Manulife Financial LPGA Classic was scheduled for that week nearby and Vandermade took a stab at Monday qualifying. The 24-year-old qualified and made her first LPGA career cut, finishing 77th.
That momentum carried over to later in the month on the Epson Tour, first with an 18th-place finish at the Decatur-Forsyth Classic in Decatur, Ill., then to last week at the Four Winds Invitational in South Bend, Ind. Thanks to a final-round eagle on the 16th hole in South Bend and the assistance of former University of Texas teammate and one-day caddie Desiree Dubreuil, Vandermade captured her first professional title. The victory moved her up to eighth on the Epson Tour money list and closer to the LPGA in 2015. The play on the course was stabilized with the assistance of Paul Dewland, the mental coach at Orange County National in Orlando, Fla., with whom she recently began working.
“I’ve gotten a big confidence boost over the last month, at exactly the right time,” Vandermade said. “When I made the Manulife cut, I felt like I could compete on the LPGA. Having some success breeds more success.”
Vandermade’s game is fashioned for a bigger stage. She was a star post player in basketball in high school, but realized that despite her 5-foot-11 height, she would need to move to the perimeter in college. Plus, some of her hoops friends were going down with knee injuries, an interest that led to her University of Texas degree in Kinesiology. Golf was safer.
Vandermade was also drawn to golf because of her power game. She led the 2013 Epson Tour in Driving Distance with a 271.4-yard average and is second this season with a 261.3 average. Her favorite club? Driver. Yet, she has improved by learning when to scale back and hit fairway wood or hybrid off the tee.
“I grew up playing with the boys and trying to keep up with them,” Vandermade said. “At a young age, I really had to learn how to hit it with them. The course I grew up on was a traditional course where you had to hit it long and straight. Hitter it longer gives me a lot more opportunities than many players.”
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