It is “early days” into the 2023 LPGA season, just a handful of tournaments have been played, and yet Lizette Salas already appears amped up for the road ahead. Why? Well, for Salas, there are all sorts of good reasons.
First up is a home game at the DIO Implant LA Open, which begins next Thursday at a venue close to her heart, Palos Verdes Golf Club in California. Salas is an honorary member at the club, where her longtime coach, Jim Gormley, is director of golf. Palos Verdes – or PV, as many call it – takes Salas back to her early days at USC when pretty much the only thing she owned were dreams.
“To win in L.A., in front of friends and family at a golf course that has been so instrumental in my amateur career and knowing the connections I have to PV and the members, and Jim, and just how they love and promote women’s golf, I think it would be a huge win,” Salas said. “Not only for the club, but just for my confidence in general.”
At the tail end of the 2023 season lurks another of Salas’ favorite stops, the Solheim Cup, the first of two matches that will be played in consecutive years. This one will be staged in Spain in September, and Salas knows she needs to get her game jump-started, because she does not want to miss it. That gets her blood pumping, too.
“Salas, 33, … counts two tour victories in a career that began in 2012 – but she definitely is a player whom you want alongside you, as her 38 career top-10s and $7.4 million in earnings attest.
Salas, 33, is not a prolific winner on the LPGA – she counts two tour victories in a career that began in 2012 – but she definitely is a player whom you want alongside you, as her 38 career top-10s and $7.4 million in earnings attest. There is a reason why the U.S. team calls year after year. Already, Salas has been a part of five Solheim Cups, and is driven to make a sixth this fall to compete for U.S. captain Stacy Lewis.
Two years ago, Salas seemed to be on the outside looking in for a Solheim spot as the season faded to a close. She considered not playing in the Women’s British Open at Carnoustie, which was her fifth start in as many weeks after an extensive run in Europe. Her caddie, John Killeen, helped to convince Salas that Carnoustie would be great for her. It was.
She admittedly was somewhat fried and frazzled, with just enough energy inside to focus on each singular shot and little beyond. Yet there she stood late on a Sunday at one of Scotland’s most feared layouts, standing over a putt to force a playoff with Anna Nordqvist. Her runner-up finish was her second major close call of 2021, adding to a memorable battle staged with Nelly Korda at the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship at historic Atlanta Athletic Club.
Here’s all you need to know about what sort of fight lives inside of Lizette Salas. On the first hole of her final round at the Women’s PGA, she and Korda, who would climb to world No. 1 that week, belted drives off the first tee, only to face this: Korda had but a 9-iron left into the green; Salas, who ranked 153rd on tour in driving distance last season, was left with a 7-wood. Both players made birdies.
Trying to win a major is something that continues to drive Salas, who, at 5 feet 4 inches and averaging 232 yards off the tee in 2023, is golf’s version of the “Little Engine That Could.” Her friends on tour call her “L’il,” but there is nothing undersized about her heart.
“She has grit, a ton of grit,” Killeen said last summer when asked to pinpoint what makes Salas successful. “She doesn’t give up. I think that’s maybe being her heritage, and being the baby of the family, too. She just keeps fighting her way to the top.”
Salas only laughs when asked about this tenacious fight inside her, and from where it bubbles. It takes her back to the early days when she and her father, a handyman and mechanic at a local golf club in California, would climb into their 2006 Toyota pickup and hit the road where young Lizette would hone her game and chase dreams that belonged to both of them.
“I think my parents just installed this level of hunger and grind and helping me understand that I’m not going to have – I’m not going to have the same opportunities as others, considering where I grew up and things like that,” Salas said. “So I just try to take advantage of every opportunity, every meeting that I have with people. When I met Jim a long time ago, I felt that this person could take my game to the next level.
“I just love competing and kind of, I don’t know, I guess, being that underdog. I have no idea. I just have this … I just turn into a different person when I step on the golf course. I know I may not be the longest, I know I may not be the most intimidating, but I think I could get the job done, regardless of those things.”
Thinking about how far she has traveled, she laughs and adds, “I just love making putts.”
It took Gormley one bunker lesson with Salas all those years ago when the two were at USC to see that Salas had something extra, something special, a determination that can’t be taught.
“Even in college,” Gormley said, “she was just a fierce competitor. You could just see the look in her eye, and just, I mean, she just didn’t want to be beat. It didn’t matter who you are.”
Two summers ago, when Salas got into the hunt in Atlanta, she earned attention not only for her play but for her personal openness, too. She opened up about her heartbreaking mental-health struggles during the previous 12 months. It was a COVID year, and she felt her world crashing in around her. She wasn’t enjoying her golf, and her usually outgoing personality often was absent. Salas gave strong consideration to walking away from the game.
Salas had shared her mental-health struggles with a few close to her, but never with the world as she stood in front of a microphone in the thick of a major championship and bared her soul. It lifted a weight. Letting things out and hearing words of support that followed gave her freedom.
Salas is 17th in the current Solheim standings, which one might be believe is pretty far back to start making plans for Spain. Those people don’t know Salas, and what churns inside her.
“People tend to keep that stuff inside them,” Killeen said, “and I saw a different person out on the golf course that week.”
Salas is 17th in the Solheim standings, which one might believe is pretty far back to start making plans for Spain. Those people don’t know Salas, and what churns inside of her. Not only is Salas planning to be there, she already knows she has a partner waiting: long-hitting Jennifer Kupcho. The two barely knew each other when they were paired at the 2021 Solheim Cup, going 2-0-1 together. Now they are close friends and a formidable team.
They paired up last summer at the Dow Great Lakes Bay Invitational in Michigan, the LPGA’s summer team event, and shined in a dominant victory. It was a team win, not an individual one, but it counted individually for both players, and did a world of good for Salas, whose only previous LPGA victory had come in 2014.
Speaking in front of Salas on a media call last week to promote the DIO Implant LA Open, Judy Rankin took a moment to deliver some tough love to Salas, reminding her to “take it in the spirit that it’s meant.” Salas was happy to oblige.
“The thing with Lizette is she’s a better player than her record,” said Rankin, a World Golf Hall of Fame member who won 26 times on the LPGA, and will return to the broadcast tower in L.A. as a one-week fill-in for Morgan Pressel, who has other duties that week. “I think she knows that.”
Salas would agree. That’s why winning again last summer was so significant. She hopes to continue to ride that momentum into this new season, which is young and filled with opportunity.
“I’m going to say the biggest perk of winning is feeling that you’re on top of the world and your confidence is at its highest,” Salas said.
It is a long, long way from where Salas found herself just a couple of seasons ago. Salas is so thankful that she made the choice she did when she approached the fork in the road and chose not to walk away.
“There are times I want to throw in the towel and be ‘normal,’” Salas said, “but I’ve accepted this is the journey that I’m meant to be on.”