Mitch Calvert
Fort Frances native Christin Thomson isn’t letting a little thing called the off-season slow down her quest to land an LPGA Tour card.
Thomson, 25, is spending the next month leading up to Christmas in Phoenix, Ariz. preparing for another full year of golf.
“I’m working on my ball striking and putting mostly,” Thomson said in a phone interview from Phoenix. “I’ll work really hard on that [next] month, and then when I come back after Christmas, I’ll start to put everything together and do a lot of stuff on the course.”
She began last season with six tournaments on the Cactus Tour (events solely held in Phoenix) in the spring, culminating with a third-place finish at an event last April. She then played three tournaments on the CN Canadian Women’s Tour over the summer in Vancouver, Winnipeg, and Ottawa.
Thomson gradually improved in each one, eventually placing in the top 25.
She tuned up for ‘Q’ school with a few more tournaments on the Cactus Tour in the late summer before her season came to a close with a pair of LPGA ‘Q’ school events, first in Rancho Mirage, Calif. and then in Venice, Fla.
Qualifying school is a daunting golf experience, regardless of your pedigree or ability to shoot low scores, and Thomson missed the cut by four strokes in her first attempt at qualifying.
She fared better in Florida—shooting back-to-back 75s (including a birdie on the 18th hole of the second round) to make the cut on the number.
Unfortunately, only the top 30 golfers out of 200 or so from the initial stage qualify for the finals, and Thomson wasn’t able to put it all together during the final two rounds to advance.
Had she advanced past that stage, another top-30 finish in the final would secure a Tour card. Positions 30-50 get a non-exempt Tour card, which gets you into eight-10 tournaments over the course of the season.
“I didn’t make it to the final stages, but I kind of went for the experience and really enjoyed it,” Thomson said of her ‘Q’ school performance.
“There is a lot of pressure, but it was fun and in a way it’s what you work for all year,” she added. “I think my nerves played a bigger role in the first one, but then I learned from that and improved my putting a lot for the second event.
“With continued improvement, it’s a goal that is definitely attainable.”
Thomson said the success she had on the Cactus Tour in the spring really went a long way towards building up her confidence as the season progressed.
“It helps to play the three days in a row, and get out there and play a lot of competitive golf,” she said of the busy Cactus Tour schedule.
“I had a few bad tournaments this year but I had a few good ones, and I was able to get things together and have some good finishes so it certainly did help with my confidence,” she enthused.
“It makes you feel like you are making progress and working on the right things when you get results.”
Thomson’s first big finish of her Cactus Tour season came with a top-10 showing in mid-March at an event at Las Colinas Golf Course, carding a final-round 69 to finish with a three-day total of 221.
She then followed that up with a ninth-place finish at the next Tour event, carding three consistent rounds of 73, 72, and 72.
And after her top-three finish at Foothills in mid-April, Thomson returned to the Cactus Tour in August and was rewarded with a seventh-place finish at Eagle Mountain. She once again saved her best for last—carding a final round 70 for a 221 total.
“It seems to be a trend,” Thomson said of her final-round low scores. “My first-round scoring is not the greatest, but I think I kind of calm down for the next two rounds and gradually improve.
“I think with the changes I’m working on right now, just trying to build some consistency with my swing, that I think next year I’ll be able to see better results overall.”
Thomson plans to continue working hard on the range and on the course leading into her first Cactus Tour event of the new season Jan. 26-28 in Phoenix, then plans to assess her goals moving forward at that time.
“This month [up to Christmas], I’m just working on things, but I think next month I’ll get more specific with [my goals],” Thomson admitted.
“I think I definitely want to win a few tournaments down here and really put myself in contention in the Canadian Tour events, but my major goal again will be focused on ‘Q’ school and qualifying for the LPGA,” she insisted.
“I’ll base a lot of my events on preparing for ‘Q’ school because that’s the main focus.”
