Astrid VAYSON DE PRADENNE
Golfer

Astrid received a grant to finance her participation in international competitions. 

What is your sporting background ?
I am a somewhat atypical case in professional golf because I started late, at the age of 15, after ten intense years of tennis (ranked 5/6). I started golf in Châteaublanc, in the suburbs of Avignon. I had a meteoric rise in my index: 18 ‘handicaps’ in 3 months, 4 hcp in 1 year and 0 in 2 years. During these years as an amateur, I won a few grand prizes locally. Then, for many years, I put my passion for golf on hold in order to focus on my university studies and my role as a care worker. Since I turned professional in the spring of 2013, golf has taken up a prominent place in my life. I mastered professional golf and developed my game on the LETAS (2nd European division), for 4 years, with great results. In 2016, I finished 2nd at the LETAS Azores Ladies Open, 4th at the LETAS in Strasbourg and I had my first victory on the French circuit at the Arcachon Open. In 2017, I got 3rd place in the LETAS in Spain and 2nd place in Sweden. 2018 gave me the feeling that all the work done in the last few years was finally rewarded as it deserved to be. I won the Jabra Ladies Open in Evian, a new LET/LETAS double badge tournament, on a course that is so special in the hearts of women golfers. On this occasion I was awarded a full category 3 card on the LET until December 2019. I am participating in the Ricoh British Open and the Evian Championship. I'm getting my bearings on the LET by learning new courses and new players.  

How do you see your profession today ?
I am very lucky to be able to play golf professionally. I sometimes have the feeling that it's golf or die. I live my golf intensely, with an enthusiasm that imbues my whole body and with a darker side that sometimes makes me sink into a bottomless void. Professional golf makes me experience a range of emotions in a short space of time. On a golf course, during a week of tournament play, there are immense joys, ‘small deaths’, redemptions? As the European women's tour is being rebuilt, women golfers are going crazy because playing is financially a real challenge on our dear old continent! But the passion for golf is impossible to contain so we take the plunge, we try our luck, we trace our way towards the chimera of victory, towards the impossible and beyond. 

How do you see yourself in five years ? In 10 years ?
With today's obsession with the immediate, it is difficult to imagine yourself in five years and more so in 10 years! I find that it can even be a kind of arrogance when one knows the intrinsic impermanence of human life. But if I speak from the heart and believe in the reality of my dreams, in five years, I see myself performing across the Atlantic on the LPGA, playing with my head held high in major tournaments. In 10 years, I see myself on a sailboat because, in another life, I was a fish, and I see myself on the move, in-between tournaments, swimming in lakes, fjords, swimming pools...

This interview was conducted in 2019
Photo credit: Amandine Besacier