The 19 years old Valentina Albertazzi has a handicap 3,7. Awarded a scholarship at the Kent State University, in the USA, she combines her degree in Marketing with golf. She has been playing since she was 5 and her dream is to get to the LPGA some day. Humble, discreet, disciplined and a hard worker, Valentina has many qualities to ascend very high in golf.

We meet her at the PG Academy. She spends hours there practicing her putt, the rest of her golf clubs or playing at the Atalaya Golf Club, which sponsors her. Patient and relentless, she knows that it is necessary to work very hard to get to the highest level. She’ll go back to the USA to continue with her classes, that at the time are online, in December. She knows clearly her objective when she finishes her degree: “Turning a professional and focus on golf. I would like to stay in the USA, but you never know, the European Tour would be good also. I would like to play both, but if I have to choose, I prefer the American one.” She explains asserting that Lexi Thompson is her role model: “She has her own swing and her own way to play, but she has a very high level.”

Enjoying sports since she was a child, her parents were the ones that brought her closer to golf. She was born in Turin, Italy, and her family moved to Marbella just to be able to play golf during the winter as well: “I started playing when I was 4 years old, and I have never stopped since then. I used to practice many sports (swimming, skiing, gymnastic…) and I chose golf in the end. I like it because it is a solo sport, and it is not something quick in which everything is decided within a few seconds. In golf you have 18 holes, five hours and it is unpredictable. Furthermore, what I like about golf is that you can always improve it”, she comments and goes on: “I enjoy playing golf, I have experienced the best feeling of my life playing golf. I can’t do without it. The best of the feelings is when you sink that putt to win, those experiences that you won’t change for anything else in the world. When you get to the ball, you assess the green and you know where the ball is going to go, your self-confidence is there, those feelings are what I like the most from golf.”

Valentina is a solid player, however she suffers on long courses: “I play quite evenly, there is not a part that is very good and another one that is not so good, everything is more or less there. It depends on the day, but I usually play quite balanced. Long courses are what I find most difficult, they are hard for me, there is where I can lose swings”, she explains and continues: “The worst is that you suffer much when you don’t play well, when things don’t turn out well even though you have trained a lot, it is disappointing. One suffers a lot playing golf.”

Judicious and very mature, Valentina is conscious that life, as much as golf, has its own plans: “The University is my Plan B. You can’t plan what life will bring you. I’m going to try as hard as I can to be able to play golf as a professional, but anyway, there are many factors out of your control. I’ll consider my options, but in any case, I would like to stay in the golf world.”

Valentina has just lived one of her best experiences in golf: “I have never played in a professional women’s tournament before, and I have just played the Santander Golf Tour in Madrid. It has been a great experience. You can learn a lot watching the professionals. You realize in what parts of your game you need to work harder. You see where you need to improve and you clearly feel good sharing the course with players of such a high level.”

Playing the LPGA or even the Solheim Cup would be her dream. She knows that women’s golf is not at its best in Italy and she would love to carry her flag to the highest level in golf. Forza Valentina!