Beth Lillie plays her best golf when she doesn’t know she is playing her best golf.
There once was a time she did know. A time she celebrated every birdie, lamented every bogey and rode the highs and lows of each stroke. That was years ago, though, and over time, Lillie has made it her priority to show no emotion – positive or negative – on the course.
Her motto is: Don’t think about it.
“It’s all in your brain,” Lillie said of the sport she first picked up as a 6-year-old. “I try to play without getting mad at myself or getting happy at myself. I just hit the ball whenever I can, and I think that’s one of my strong suits. I don’t get mentally overwhelmed when I play.”
The youngest of three daughters, Lillie never wanted to be left out. Her older sisters, Alison and Meredith, regularly took golf lessons growing up, and one day, Lillie recalled, she wanted “so badly” to join her sisters at practice. Handed a club and given minimal instruction, she took her first swing.
An outstanding soccer player during her formative years, Lillie soon took a liking to golf’s independence, its self-reliance. She began taking private lessons and sanctioned youth tournaments soon seized her spare time.
It was in elementary school when David Hutchens, a PGA professional at Black Gold Golf Club in Yorba Linda, first started working with Lillie. Hutchens said her attitude and willingness to learn accelerated her apprenticeship, making her a “pure joy to teach” and “so much fun to be around.”
Always responsive to significant changes in her swing, Lillie soon carved her niche in the American Junior Golf Association.
By high school, her peers were no longer her competition. Lillie instead chased her sister, Alison – a former four-year letter winner at Troy High now playing for the University of San Francisco.
Warriors coach Jerry Cowgill said Alison Lillie, four years her sister’s senior, was the program’s last freshman to start on varsity. Beth Lillie, he anticipated two years ago, would be the next.
“She’s got a good pedigree,” Cowgill said of Lillie. “She’s got golf in her family. They’ve taken that seriously from a young age. Her mom and dad have done a great job of not putting pressure on her. Beth loves golf, and she’s not being put in a position where she has to do well for things to go her way.
“I’ve had girls come in as freshmen and get right to varsity,” the coach continued. “But we had a good team last year. We won CIF, and Beth was the best player. As a freshman, stat-wise, I don’t think there was anybody competing with her.”
Lillie played spectacularly for Troy last season, capturing individual titles and placing in her share of tournaments. Troy captured its first CIF girls golf championship in 2013, and Lillie received first-team All-Orange County laurels at season’s end – the lone Troy golfer honored.
As good as she was last fall, Lillie said she never felt she was improving in “leaps and bounds.” That changed this summer.
“Something happened,” said Lillie, who in June won the AJGA Junior at Steelwood in Alabama with a tournament score of 219, 3-over-par. “I don’t know what happened, but something happened. I stopped making double (bogeys), stopped making triple (bogeys), and I gained so much confidence, honestly.
“It’s not really much of my game that’s gotten better,” she continued. “My confidence tripled during the summer, and now I feel I can win any tournament I go in to.”
Lithe, but athletic and a long hitter, Lillie begins her sophomore season a known commodity in Orange County and one of the brightest young stars in a sport brimming with such talent.
“It’d be nice to repeat what I did last year,” Lillie said, “but I’ll be happy as long as I think I got better. Shooting better scores would be nice, too. So, I want to repeat what I did, and do more, because if you’re only repeating what you’ve done, you’re not getting better.”
Contact the writer: 714-704-3790 or bwhitehead@ocregister.com
