Maja Stark, the Swede who signed off from the amateur game with top-20 finishes in the U.S. Women’s Opens of 2020 and 2021, is half-golfer and half-musician. Indeed, when she won last month’s New South Wales Open – this was her third victory since joining the Ladies European Tour last August – she bought herself a violin.
Plenty of winners will opt for a new watch or car but, in terms of originality, Stark’s violin is up there with the elephant that Sri Lanka’s Tiru Fernando chose for herself after an LET victory in the ‘80s. Louis Oosthuizen’s tractor – his preference when he won the 2010 Open – is also worth a mention.
You would not want to alarm parents who are out to find the best way of rearing a long-hitting golfer, but the drum kit which Stark wanted by way of an eighth birthday present could well have given her some extra yardage. (In winning last year’s Creekhouse Ladies Open at Kristianstad GC, she caught the green of the 517-yard 18th with a drive and a wedge.)
The Swede may have raised the roof as she hammered away on those drums, but her parents raised no objections. In truth, she sounded quite surprised when GGP queried the point. “Actually,” she said, “they couldn’t have been more supportive.” We can only hazard a guess at what lay behind the parents’ decision to give her a series of guitar lessons for her 12th birthday but, what with their daughter’s school needing Stark, the drummer, for their orchestra, the drums tended to take precedent.
“My coach at home, Fredrik Wetterstrand, is more of a ‘feelings’ guy, so I only listened to him when I was out there. He has always wanted me to be myself on the course because that way I enjoy my golf more.” – Maja Stark
By way of an outdoor activity, Stark was playing golf in her hometown of Abbekås, a little settlement where the population is well short of 1,000 and the wind comes off the Baltic. Her crush on Tiger Woods came later but, when she started golf at nine, it was largely because there was not too much else to do in that part of the world. “I played a bit of football and table tennis but if you wanted to be in a team you had to go to another town,” she explained. “Golf was easier.” Also, her father is the general manager at the Abbekås GC which was recently given a favourable mention on Trip Advisor not just for some fine heathland holes but for the quality of its pizzas.
Though Stark did not seem to attach much significance to the fact that she and her brother were both down to scratch by the time they were 15, the fact that their regular playing companions were a couple of equally talented older lads could well have accelerated their advance.
In Sweden, you change schools at the age of 15 and if, say, you are good at tennis, golf, carpentry or music, you can apply for a place at an establishment specialising in the relevant activity. Stark filled in two forms; the first for a school where music was on the curriculum, and the second for one which focussed on turning out golfers. Such was the competition for both that she did well to get an offer at all, even if it was for her second choice – golf.
Practice sessions and golf lessons filled every afternoon and she found the mix of schoolwork and sport heavy going, while much the same applied when she went to Oklahoma State in the fall of 2019. Yet barely had she started her college career than she won the Hurricane Invitational and, not too many months later, she was lying in the top 20 of the World Amateur Ranking. That feat was rewarded with an exemption for the ’20 U.S. Open at the Champions Golf Club in Houston where she made quite a stir among the professionals with a share of 13th place. What is more, she kept her name to the fore with a 16th place at the Olympic Club in San Francisco the following summer.
In spite of all that success, Stark was never exactly in love with her college experience: “It was fun and stressful at the same time,” she said. “I found it hard to adapt to playing in the U.S. where the golfers are encouraged to have far more of an aggressive mindset than I have. The coach wasn’t right for me because he wanted us to be tough and he didn’t like it when anyone got upset or looked disappointed.
“My coach at home, Fredrik Wetterstrand, is more of a ‘feelings’ guy, so I only listened to him when I was out there,” she continued. “He has always wanted me to be myself on the course because that way I enjoy my golf more.” In other words, it sounds as if Fredrik is happy to let the sensitive musician in his student have its say. (So Yeon Ryu, a double major winner, would approve. She had planned on being a professional musician at one point but gave up all three of the flute, the piano and the violin because of her golf, and in 2018 told Golf Digest that she had been mad at herself ever since.)
Though Stark was savouring the strains of her new violin in the days between the NSW Open and the recent Madrid Open, the lingering sound of the 7-foot birdie putt which plopped into the cup on the 72nd hole in Australia was just as sweet.
“I can often mess up at the end of a round,” she said, “but that putt told me I was getting better.”
The LPGA may beckon at some point but for now, in every sense, Maja Stark is in a good place.