Late arrival

ST. ANDREWS, SCOTLAND | Lauren Coughlin, who will be representing the U.S. in next month’s Solheim Cup in her home state of Virginia, takes a quiet pride in being a little different from the rest of her teammates. Whereas she is 31 and playing in the match for the first time, the others, save for Ally Ewing, another 31-year-old but one who has three Solheim Cup appearances under her belt, are in their 20s.
Coughlin very easily could have given up on golf toward the end of her schooling. Where most of the golfers in her age group were being recruited by one university or another, no one approached her. She laughs about it now, but at the time, her disappointment was dire. “In the end,” she said, “I was a walk-on student at the University of Virginia.”
And that’s when she told herself that instead of brooding on her unlucky lot, she would set her heart “on getting a little better every year.”

Only once did she stray from that intention. Having earned a paltry $12,625 in 2018, her rookie season on the LPGA Tour, she rang her former coac...