Fresh off her career best finish of tied-sixth at the Lavaux Ladies Open, LET Access Series (LETAS) rookie Gala Dumez is eager to continue her fine form on home soil.
At this week’s Terre Blanche Ladies Open, the Bordeaux-born golfer, 26, can count on family support.
“My grandmother lives only 15 minutes away from here in a very small village,” she said. “It does really feel like home. I get to stay with her, go back home, hang out with her, get some homemade cooked meals. So it’s really nice. I know she’ll be looking at the live scoring and thinking about me.
“This week, I’m trying to keep building my confidence in my game. Really try to execute everything I’ve been working on. I know if I do that for 36 holes, I will be in a good position on Saturday morning.”
Dumez’s maiden top-10 finish in Lavaux, Switzerland, has lifted her into the top 50 of the LETAS Order of Merit standings.
“I feel like it’s just everything I’ve been working on the weeks in, the month before. I could feel my game feeling a little bit better every week, so I guess it was just the build up of a lot of little things.
“I liked the course as well. It’s always a good thing when the course fits very well. And I managed to stay pretty calm all week. So I guess a little bit of everything.
“It’s always nice to see that the work you put in paying off. So hopefully I can use a little bit of what I did in Lavaux and try to keep up the momentum.”
At the age of 12, Dumez watched her father and brother start playing golf which motivated her to pick up the sport. After taking lessons with her mother, she gradually improved her game before earning a scholarship to play NCAA Division 1 golf in the United States at Texas Tech University in 2018.
“I spent five years there,” she said. “If I have to pick one lesson, I think it taught me consistency really well. So it’s a bit boring, but it’s very true. The environment over there is awesome. We get everything we need and more.
“So to be able to keep working really hard and fit into all of the expectations we have, stay consistent in everything we do… I think it made the transition to pro golf a lot easier for me. Now it doesn’t feel like a duty or it doesn’t ask a lot of effort of me to go out there and practice for hours.
“The biggest change is you go from travelling with a team with coaches always there to help you to travelling alone. But you have control of your days, you can decide everything you do in terms of practice and everything else.”
Five years from now, Dumez hopes to be competing regularly on bigger stages in golf.
“I definitely want to reach the LET,” she said. “Hopefully I’ll be able to compete out there. I do have LPGA in the side of my head, but as of right now, LET is my main goal. So I’ll try my best to keep working and get there.”
