MARIA FERNANDA TORRES
AGE 26 • SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO
The Puerto Rican flag implies a relationship with the United States, with its stars and stripes and red-white-andblue colorway. However, even though the island a thousand miles southeast of Florida is technically an American territory, it is considered a country by the International Olympic Committee.
Puerto Rico is a sports-mad place—with a rich history in baseball, basketball, boxing and tennis. (Monica Puig won Puerto Rico’s first gold medal, in women’s singles, at the Rio Games in 2016.)
When golf was voted back into the Games in 2009,
Maria Fernanda Torres was a freshman equestrienne-turnedgolfer at the Cupeyville School in San Juan. “I used to ride horses, and one day on the way back from practice, there was a range, and my dad asked me if I wanted to take classes,” Torres says. “When I tried it, I had a passion that made me want to continue.”
Continue she did, practicing relentlessly and making trips to the mainland for American Junior Golf Association tournaments across the Southeast. Torres earned a scholarship to the University of Florida, where she won five times and was the 2016 Southeastern Conference Player of the Year. She also represented Puerto Rico in the 2014 and 2016 World Amateur Team Championships—which in 2014 were played in Japan. Torres turned professional in 2017 and won a playoff for the final fully exempt spot through LPGA Tour qualifying school for the 2018 season.
That status set her up to earn enough world-ranking points to join the PGA Tour’s Rafael Campos as the two professionals who will represent Puerto Rico in Tokyo. “My dream was to play college golf and to win on the professional tour, but the Olympics is another thing. That’s a bigger dream,” says Torres, who had her best LPGA season in 2019 when she finished 73rd on the money list. “Everybody knows when the Olympics are, and the people at home are feeling the vibe. It’s amazing—another level.”
The postponement of the Tokyo Games to 2021 upset golf’s collective schedule, but it might actually have been a blessing for Torres. Puerto Rico was pounded by a series of earthquakes in early 2020, followed by rolling blackouts. She and her family were safe, but those issues—plus COVID lockdowns that made it almost impossible for her to practice— would have been difficult to overcome ahead of a July 2020 tournament assignment.
“Thankfully, my family was fine through that, and we didn’t suffer serious damage, but it has been one thing after another,” she says. “It’s made for an irregular year, but I’ve been able to get back to work on the things I need to do for my game to be ready.”
Torres’ game has always been long on explosiveness. She averages more than 260 yards off the tee, and she is among the LPGA’s leaders in eagles. Now she’s working on her short irons and simplifying her pre-round routine to help channel her attention. “I’m going to try to take it like any other tournament and enjoy the ride. It’s a smaller field, and it’s a lot of the same players you play with every week,” Torres says. “I wish we would be able to see some of the other athletes and how they get ready to play, but it doesn’t look like that will be possible because of the restrictions. It would have been incredible to learn something from what they do. But if I saw LeBron James, I might die.”