A missed cut in her first tournament of the year at the Saudi Ladies International wasn’t the start Aditi Ashok was looking for. However, the Indian ace is well aware that a golf season is more like a marathon. Even if you are not the fastest off the block, there are plenty of opportunities in the future. What is of paramount importance is to be prepared for the grind and seize the chances when they come.
In a wide-ranging interview, the 25-year-old world No39 – the highest ranking ever achieved by an Indian woman – spoke about the phenomenal 2023 she had, and how she is hoping to make it even better this year.
A part of the interview was published in the newspaper last week, but as promised, here is the more expanded version…
So, how was the offseason? It was a long one for you.
It was good. I always look forward to spending that time at home, eating Indian food that I don’t get to eat all year. It’s always good to be back home and not have to worry about traveling and packing. It was also a bit hectic to try to do a lot of fitness stuff and trying to get back into the gym. Just tried to improve practice-wise, get stronger fitness wise and tried to swing the club faster.
Fitness and strength…was that the main focus?
It was more about swing speed. That’s always what I’ve tried to do at least the last couple of years. That’s what helped me last season. I tried to do more of the same this offseason. I used to focus on hitting it straight, which is a strength of mine. Fitness was more to be injury-free, to withstand the travel.
Have you seen the difference in distance again this year?
I can see a little difference. It’s not as marked as it was last year when I jumped almost four or five miles per hour, which is considerable – almost 15 yards more in the air and another 15-20 after it lands. I don’t know if I’ll be able to see that much improvement because as you get better, the margins of improvement become smaller. But I feel like I’ve still picked up a little bit compared to the end of last year.
How do you look back at 2023?
It was a breakthrough year. I did win in my rookie season, but I had done well on LET in the past and my focus was LPGA Tour, where I hadn’t really done that well. I only had six career top 10s on the LPGA, and then had five in the last year itself. It just shows how much improvement I made and I didn’t even play as much as I could. Because of the Asian Games, I took a few weeks off.
It was very satisfying to see how much the hard work in the offseason made a difference. Sometimes you work hard, but don’t see the gains. Last year, I got to see the gains of all those months of speed training and trying to hit the ball further. I was a short hitter and now I’m closer to average. It’s not a big difference, but it’s big for me. Instead of hitting my third shots from 80-100 yards on par-5s, I’m now chipping from 30-40 yards and giving myself more birdie chances. I am hitting shorter irons into par-4s instead of hybrids.
From April until November, I played all different courses, in different weather conditions and didn’t miss a cut. It showed me that my game was in a place where I could manage all kinds of courses. Making cuts is not really an extremely relevant stat, but I think consistency is important. The biggest takeaway was that my game was good at the highest level.
Are you the kind of person who sets goals?
Most sports people do. Mine aren’t very technical or very specific. After winning twice on the LET in my first year, I moved to the LPGA in 2017. From 2018 to 2022, I never really put myself in a position to win. It made me think hard what I needed to fix in my game to get top-5s on LPGA.
Obviously, 2022 was the worst year for me, finishing 99th in the LPGA Tour Race to CME Globe. That pushed me in the direction of change. I shifted the focus on hitting drives. It is not natural for me to walk into the driving range and practice drives. I’d rather spend more time on the putting green or short game area.
I haven’t won on the LPGA yet, but I feel like I came close. I’m on the right track. I just have to stay patient.
Was it frustrating that you came so close, but could not get it done?
Because I had such few opportunities to win before, I somehow felt I converted more in those few years than I did last year. I should have won more. Obviously, I should have won the Asian Games. Then there was the playoff loss in Los Angeles and even the Mizuho Open in New Jersey, where I made three bogeys in the back nine and lost by two.
So, that was frustrating, but I think it was also good for me. I won in Spain (Andalucia Costa Del Sol Open de Espana) because I felt I should have won a lot more. It was a good win, because unlike the cruise in Kenya (won by nine shots), I was right there in the top three all four days. It was good to get that done when playing in the pressure of leader groups and staying patient.
That winning start in Kenya, and then runner-up in Saudi International, were you surprised?
I would say no, because I played in Kenya a couple of years ago, and finished runner-up. I knew the golf course and felt like I had a good chance to win there. I guess finishing second to Lydia Ko in Saudi was a bit more surprising. It was a star-studded field and played on a big course. I shot 20-under, which is my best score over four days. That’s when I I felt that I was playing much than last season.
When we talk of 2023, obviously, Asian Games always creeps up…
That was so disappointing. It took me a bit to get over that. Because, you were not just playing for yourself. When I finished second in Saudi, I am sure only die-hard golf fans felt bad for me. It’s not the same when you play for your country and when everyone is expecting a gold medal. I knew that it meant a lot more to people and young kids back home, who would never have watched golf otherwise, sitting and watching it.
Some days you play great and some days you don’t. It’s human nature to question a five-over, but we don’t question why we shot a 10-under. That final round was one of the worst rounds I shot last year and I told myself it was just a bad day. Maybe, it was my bad luck that it came on the final day when I was trying to win. The year felt a lot better when I won in Spain, which was my first win on European soil.
A lot of people thought that if Ashok (her father) was on the bag, it could have been a different story.
Specifically him or not, I don’t know. But as pros, we’re so used to having a caddy with whom we can talk through everything. Even though I had one that week, it was different with the language barrier and everything. Even your routines becomes different. That does make a difference, but it was the same for everybody. And you just got to accept that. It’s like you wouldn’t complain about the weather, or the golf course. In the end, it’s my responsibility to play good golf.
And you have the Paris Olympics this year.
Very excited about that. Hopefully, do better than what I did in Tokyo. Again, it will be a bit of a logistical challenge and I may have to miss a couple of LPGA events that I really love playing. But doing well in Paris is another goal for me.
How much do the Rolex Ranking mean to you?
I don’t make rankings my goal. It’s complicated with the number of events you play, and your divisor and all of that. I don’t look at that too much, but to see my ranking get better alongside all the great stuff I did last year, that is something. Not just for me personally, but also for kids back home to see an Indian golfer, especially a woman, playing at this level.
If there is one complaint against your 2023, it would be your performance in the majors. Is that a valid view?
I would say yes. I played in four, but they weren’t that great. However, the improvement in the majors that I saw is that I made the cut at all four, which I’ve never done before. Although that’s not an achievement, it means you are trending in the right direction.
It’s always been a goal of mine to have a better finish at a major. I feel like that’s one thing I haven’t really done. They’re just different weeks… the courses are longer, which is difficult for a shorter hitter. You make mistakes in majors and they get magnified. Like at the US Open this year, I made a quadruple bogey on the eighth hole at Pebble Beach, and if you take that one hole out, it would have been a top-10. Just one bad swing in a regular event probably won’t cost you much. However, I don’t feel like I’m far off.
You now have a coach.
I’ve been working with Gaurav Diwan in Bengaluru from the offseason in 2022. That’s been good and I started getting good results. It was important to have someone trained because it’s not like I know everything about my swing. It’s good to have someone look at it and give me different ideas on how I can swing it faster and just give me basic keys where I can work on my swing through the year. Another stat that I improved last year was greens in regulations. I’ve never been great in that, but last year, I improved to 69.8% in that category, which was a big improvement. That’s also thanks to him.
Have you ever worked with a mental coach?
Not really. Growing up, I did read a lot to a lot of stuff, like mental exercises. My mom (Mash) was big in that. She used to read up a lot and taught me all those things, like how I need to talk about my game. For example, if it was raining that morning, she taught me not to be upset with the rain, but to embrace it and to be prepared that I have to go play in those conditions and play a good round. I think growing up, those things are important. Because once you start seeing things a certain way, it’s tough to change that when you’re older. And this is one sport where you lose more. The most successful golfers barely win like 15 per cent of the time. That would be Tiger’s win rate. And even when you shoot a great round, 45 people may be better than you. Having a good mindset is really important and I must thank my mom for that.
THE WEEK THAT WAS:
PGA TOUR
Tournament: The Genesis Invitational
Winner: Hideki Matsuyama (JPN)
Winner’s scores: 69-68-68-62 (17-under)
Prize fund/Winner’s Cheque: $20 million/$3.6 million
Indian scores: No Indians in the field
LIV GOLF
Tournament: No event last week
ASIAN TOUR
Tournament: IRS Prima Malaysia Open
Winner: David Puig (ESP)
Winner’s scores: 66-71-62-62 (23-under)
Prize fund/Winner’s Cheque: $1 million/$180,000
Indian scores: Veer Ahlawat T13 (62-71-70-66); Yuvraj Singh Sandhu T22 (70-64-67-69); SSP Chowrasia T46 (69-65-68-71); Honey Baisoya T52 (70-66-70-68); S Chikkarangappa T66 (69-66-73-69)
LADIES EUROPEAN TOUR
Tournament: Aramco Saudi Ladies International
Winner: Patty Tavatanakit (THA)
Winner’s scores: 66-70-69-65 (18-under)
Prize fund/Winner’s Cheque: $5 million/$750,000
Indian scores: Aditi Ashok MC (78-71); Diksha Dagar MC (76-74)
DP WORLD TOUR
Tournament: No event last week
LPGA
Tournament: No event last week
PGT OF INDIA
Tournament: TATA Steel PGTI Tour C’ship presented by Tollygunge Club
Winner: Manu Gandas
Winner’s scores: 66-67-64-64 (20-under)
Prize fund/Winner’s Cheque: INR1 crore/INR15,00,000
Top-5 scores: Rahil Gangjee 2nd (65-65-64-68); Akshay Sharma 3rd (67-67-64-65) Stepan Danek (CZE) T4th (64-66-67-67); Saptak Talwar T4th (66-65-65-68)
ASIAN DEVELOPMENT TOUR
Tournament: No event this week
The following article was originally published in this week’s edition of Fairways and Greens. Subscribe here.