Meet Lottie Woad: The UK’s hottest prospect since Rory McIlroy

Lottie Woad has been tipped to win multiple majors.

Fresh out of college, Lottie Woad has already taken down the tour’s biggest names in Ireland and Scotland. Now she’s primed to do it all over again at the Women’s Open in Wales.

Had things worked out differently, Lottie Woad might well have been turning out for the Lionesses on Sunday night rather than celebrating her own piece of history at the Women’s Scottish Open some 950 miles away.

Woad was, according to her coaches, a promising soccer player in her youth. She was part of Southampton’s academy up to the age of 12 and remains such a big fan that the first question she asked reporters after winning the Augusta National Women’s Amateur last year was whether anyone knew the Leeds score.

The fact they lost “kind of ruined my day a little bit”, she said afterwards, though there was little chance of the same thing happening once England beat Spain to retain the European Women’s Championship on Sunday night.

“I didn’t get to watch it because I was driving back,” she revealed ahead of the Women’s Open. “It was a five-hour drive [so I] listened to it on the radio, and it was great.“

In truth, the nailbiting finish couldn’t have been any different from her own earlier that day, which has become something of a trademark in the two victories she’s posted in the past three weeks.

The first was a dominant six-stroke victory over Solheim Cup star Madelene Sagstrom at the Irish Women’s Open while she was still the world’s No.1 amateur.

The second was no less emphatic and saw her make three bogeys all week as she became the third LPGA player, after Rose Zhang in 2023 and Beverly Hanson in 1951, to win on her professional debut.

“Yeah, I think it’s quite hard to do that, but very special to win in my first event,” said Woad, who held off major winner Hyo Joo Kim to win by three strokes at Dundonald Links. “You know, everyone was chasing me today, and [I] managed to maintain the lead and played really nicely down the stretch and hit a lot of good shots, which is nice.”

She arguably saved the best until last on the 18th hole, when she spun a wedge back to within a few feet of the hole for a closing birdie. After that, she didn’t bother to hang around. There were no tears. No fuss. No wild celebration with her new caddie Dermot Byrne. She merely smiled, acknowledged the crowd, and walked off without so much as a fist bump for the cameras.

“I try to stay as calm as possible on the course,” she told the Golf Channel a day later. “I’m not one for getting too happy. I realise that when I stay level, that’s probably when I play my best.”

What her best looks like is a scary prospect for the other 143 competitors in the field at Royal Porthcawl this week. At the Evian Championship, she shot a final-round 64 and came within a stroke of making the play-off and becoming the first amateur in 58 years to win a major.

Ask Woad about her chances at Royal Porthcawl this week and she’ll give you the same level-headed answer she’s given since her amateur days: “I’m just focused on playing my best golf, one shot at a time.”

Her quiet, businesslike demeanour has inevitably drawn comparisons with Scottie Scheffler and Nelly Korda, but the noise surrounding her has been getting louder for quite some time. In 2022, she made her Ladies European Tour debut at the age of 18 and finished in a tie for 13th at the Madrid Ladies Open.

She left for Florida State University later that summer after winning the Girls Amateur Championship at Carnoustie and in less than two years became the first Englishwoman to win the Mark H. McCormack Medal as the top-ranked female amateur in the world.

Her dominance peaked at the 2024 Augusta National Women’s Amateur, when she birdied three of the last four holes to announce herself on the world’s stage. She’s barely left it since.

“When she gets herself under pressure, she’s one of the best I’ve ever seen,” says Amy Bond, Woad’s head coach at Florida State University.

It’s a sign of how far Woad has come that she’s now being talked about as a multiple major winner and the brightest prospect to come out of the UK since Rory McIlroy. Even the World No.1 has joined the 21-year-old’s fan club.

“I was very impressed with her composure,” says Korda, who was paired with Woad for the first time at the Scottish Open. “I think, when it comes to her shot routine, especially under pressure and in the heat of the moment, sometimes people seem to fidget and kind of doubt themselves.

“But she stuck to it, she stuck to her process every single time, and I think that’s one of the main things that I noticed is how mature she is for her age and how comfortable she was in the heat of the moment.”

Woad’s long-time coach, Luke Bone, can take a portion of credit for that, and for keeping her grounded long enough to avoid the temptation of chasing pay checks long before she was ready. She didn’t even know how much she pocketed for her victory at the Scottish Open, but she intends to buy a car with her winnings as soon as she passes her driving test in the States.

Very rarely will she stray from her routine and comfort zone, which is one of the reasons she is still a member at Farnham Golf Club, in Surrey, despite calling Florida her home. The other is because of Bone, who remains the teaching pro there and has been coaching Woad since the age of seven.

Together they have built an unorthodox action, which sees Woad take the club inside of plane on the backswing and outside into the ball. It’s an unconventional move, but one which has earned her a reputation as one of the best ball strikers on tour.

The next step, she says, is to establish herself as one of the game’s best players, though there’s a feeling among those she’s competing against this week that she should already be considered as such. Beat them again on Sunday and she’ll have a hard time convincing anyone that she is still learning on the job.

Recent events would suggest she’s already graduated.

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