Quebec golfer tees it up at Women’s U.S. Open
Céleste Dao was only three years old when she first started hitting golf balls off a mat into a net in the garage of her family home in Notre-Dame-de-l’Île-Perrot.
She was introduced to the game by her father, Duc, a golf fanatic and a member at the Summerlea Golf and Country Club in Vaudreuil-Dorion.
“He is a good golfer,” Dao said about her father. “He loves the game and he practises a lot and he plays in tournaments at our club.”
Dao, who is now 17, doesn’t remember how old she was when she played her first round of golf, but does remember her first score for 18 holes was 104. She never shot over 100 again.
She started playing in tournaments at eight and broke 80 for the first time around 11. Her best score ever is the 6-under-par 66 she shot this month at the Mexican Junior Girls Championship before winning the tournament on the third playoff hole at the Cancun Country Club. It was the second straight tournament victory for Dao after winning the Toyota Junior World Cup Qualifier two weeks earlier at the Bear Mountain course in Victoria, B.C.
Dao followed up her victory in Mexico by winning a 36-hole Women’s U.S. Open qualifier on May 16 at the Cape Cod National Golf Club in Brewster, Mass., with a 4-under score of 140.
On Thursday, Dao will tee it up with the best female golfers in the world at the 73rd U.S. Women’s Open Championship at Alabama’s Shoal Creek Golf Club (3 p.m., TSN5, RDS2). Dao’s tee time is at 2:10 p.m.
“I played the qualifier to gain experience,” Dao said over the phone Wednesday night from Alabama after completing a practice round. “If you asked me in January what my goal was this year, I wouldn’t say to be at the U.S. Open. It was a surprise for me.”
Dao is in her first season as part of Golf Canada’s women’s team and for the last four months has been living with her teammates in Victoria. Last year, she won six tournaments, including the Future Links Quebec Championship, the Quebec Amateur, the Quebec Junior and the Canada Summer Games. She is completing her final year of high school at École secondaire du Chêne-Bleu in Pincourt and is hoping to land a scholarship to an American university.
But for now her focus is on playing in the second major tournament of the season on the LPGA schedule.
Dao’s practice-round partner on Wednesday was fellow Canadian Brooke Henderson of Smiths Falls, Ont., who became the youngest player in LPGA history to win a major championship with her victory at the 2016 KPMG Women’s PGA Championship when she was 18.
Dao and Henderson met each other for the first time this week.
In her golf bag Thursday, Dao will have a pink ball her mother gave her when she was young.
“I always have it in my bag,” Dao said. “It’s like a lucky ball for me.”
Dao no longer uses that ball, but it would certainly be nice if it brought her some luck this week.