Two years ago, Cydney Clanton lost out on her full card by $8. The cost of a burrito. She went to Q-Series to try and improve her LPGA status, but after a deflating eighth-round 80, took six weeks off. It marked her biggest break from golf since age 10.
She felt defeated.
“If you let the game identify you,” said Clanton, “you can get beat up pretty quickly.”
Professional golfers walk a razor-thin line between success and trunk-slamming. Clanton hired a sports psychologist for the first time in her pro career and dug into a book her pastor had referenced, Joyce Meyer’s “Battlefield of the Mind.”
Managing mental health ranks high on the priority list these days for Clanton, who tasted the spoils of victory at the highest level for the first time on her 30th birthday at last year’s new Dow Great Lakes Bay Invitational.
With the motto “All In” emblazoned on their caps, Clanton and Jasmine Suwannapura won the team title along with a spot in this week’s season-opening Diamond Resorts Tournament of Champions, a celebrity pro-am party that features the smallest, most elite field on the LPGA schedule.
Winners only.
“I want more,” said Clanton of her goals for 2020, “and I think I can be more.”
While the odds of winning an LPGA event will never been better than at the TOC, there are a number of heavy-hitters in the field – Lexi Thompson, Jessica Korda, Nelly Korda, Brooke Henderson and Ariya Jutanugarn. Not to mention LPGA Hall of Famer Inbee Park, who is starting her season much earlier than usual.
Of course, the list of players who took a pass is equally as interesting as it includes all the major winners from 2019, most notably World No. 1 Jin Young Ko. (AIG British Open winner Hinako Shibuno isn’t eligible as she’s not an LPGA member.) And Michelle Wie, who recently announced that she’s expecting her first child, a girl, this summer.
Clearly some of the LPGA’s biggest stars wanted a longer offseason. Clanton, who’s a bit of an outlier in this field as a late bloomer, took all of one week off before getting after it back home in Concord, North Carolina.
Her consistency faded late in the season last year, and she was eager to figure out why. That first LPGA title came with a two-year exemption on tour. While that gives Clanton some breathing room, the Auburn grad’s main focus is to capitalize on what’s ahead.
“My biggest goal is I want to be competitive week in and week out,” she said.
While Clanton said she hadn’t given the list of celebrity participants too close of a look, she fancies playing alongside an MLB pitcher. Though part of a team, Clanton said, a pitcher stands alone on the mound. A Hall of Fame pitcher, John Smoltz, happened to win last year’s celebrity division.
“A pitcher is gonna be about as close to what we have to face every day, in every shot,” she said.
Clanton has three brothers and knew she wanted to be a professional golfer as early as the sixth grade. She played nearly everything growing up – tennis, swimming, travel soccer, AAU basketball. She pitched on a boys’ team in the third grade and played first base.
“They didn’t really like that a whole lot,” she said.
Mom wouldn’t let her play football.
“I was always trying to find a better team,” said Clanton, “move up in age or try to get on a travel team.”
Golf was the first sport that she really had to work at, and that piqued her interest. At every level, Clanton proved a slow cooker in a microwave age. Youth rules, in women’s golf especially.
Clanton said she has learned the importance of not comparing herself to others. Even in something that seems positive, like, trying to go an entire tournament without making a bogey. Once she started focusing on trying to make fewer mistakes, she also ended up making fewer birdies. Clanton learned not to set goals that didn’t match her strengths.
She tells college players all the time – figure out who you are as a player and own it. And another thing too – the biggest difference between the Symetra Tour and the LPGA is that a round of even par will typically throw a player out of the mix on the LPGA. Whatever numbers you’re putting up in college – think lower.
“I can talk golf all day long,” said the self-described golf nerd, “and not a lot of girls are that way.”
Clanton loves mechanics. Loves to watch tournament golf. Adam Scott and Luke Donald own some of her favorite swings in the game. Right now she and swing coach Davis Ross are studying Justin Rose’s action. Ross has been Clanton’s swing coach since the beginning, and she has long told him that the only teacher she’d leave him for is Butch Harmon.
One of the toughest pieces of the professional puzzle for Clanton has been figuring out how to use a caddie. She has a great relationship with her current looper, Randy Wilkins, but has found that the less information she receives, the better.
“Honest to goodness if they said in 2021 you didn’t have to have a caddie and you could carry your own bag,” she said, “I’d probably try it for a long time.”
Clanton said she talked to Angela Stanford shortly after winning about resetting after reaching a goal.
“We are all chasers at heart, I believe,” said Stanford, who won her first major at age 40. “Set a new goal and go get it.”
There aren’t many 30-year-old first-time winners on the LPGA. That’s another thing Clanton finds herself telling youngsters, that PGA Tour players typically don’t hit their peak until late 20s, early 30s.
“Golf,” she said, “kind of has its own time-table.”
And $8 doesn’t have to be the end of the world.
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