After 10 years as a professional, Clara Pietri, 31, has had a front row seat watching how professional golf has evolved on the LET Access Series (LETAS).
“The culture and the mindset around golf is something that changed a lot in terms that power and length now has become such a big thing,” she said. “When we see like those very young players coming out of university in America and just bombing it out on the fairways.
“I feel like golf has just become more and more open, which is amazing to see. That’s the big difference. Just the culture around the game and the way that the players play the game as well, this has improved massively and we just have to keep it up with that.”
Pietri, who has yet to win on the LETAS, will tee it up at this week’s Lavaux Ladies Open on home soil still eager to improve and keep up with her younger peers.
“Golf is my passion, it always has been,” she said. “I feel like I have more to give to the game. That’s what motivates me to keep coming. It’s nice to have a long-ish career, I wish I achieved more but the passion is still there and I’m building experience and creating amazing memories for myself.
“I feel like in golf you’re always working on something, always trying to improve. So I just keep on trying to improve, keep on trying to be better every day. In the long term, I hope to win a tournament on the international scene.”
Off the course, she runs her own golf business known as ‘The Art of Golf’. “I’ve always had the intuition that golf has been much more than a sport, much more than a game,” she said.
“When you are a professional athlete, you’re very close as well to creating art. Just because with golf, between the trajectories and the show that we’re making, it’s very hard just to reproduce the exact same shot like 2 or 3 times.
“Everything that you create or produce is kind of like a one time thing. So I’ve based my business a little bit on that. We make accessories for golf that I create the designs for. We make events as well, between clinics and Pro-Ams and traveling and these kind of things.
“So yeah, just trying to open the door as well, for more people to join golf. That’s always been the goal of mine, just to try to have much more women, much more juniors, to have more diversity and make golf a little bit more accessible to everyone.”
This week, Geneva-born Pietri will have home advantage as she aims to record her first top 40 finish of the season.
“It feels really good,” she added. “It’s always nice to have family and friends and familiar faces around you when you play a tournament. So it’s always nice to have a feeling of home.
“I did my high school in Lausanne, so this always brings back many nice memories with the team and with the junior team that we had. But the tee boxes are different, the set-up is different. The course is in really good shape. So I mean, anything can happen.”
