Get to know the inspiring LPGA player everyone on tour is talking about

NAPLES, Fla. – Not long after Sean Foley started working with Lindy Duncan, he asked her to compose a personal mantra. Duncan, he said, wrote an elegant, vulnerable six-page essay that showed incredible depth.

“Girl, I need it to fit in a yardage book,” he told her.

Duncan, a Duke graduate, has always enjoyed the writing process. Earlier this year as part of a purge, she threw out stacks of journals she’d kept over the years. Perhaps the most famous self-help tinkerer on tour, Duncan has been known for her homemade gadgets, which she named and carried around in a rifle case. Her mom, Debbie, ultimately told her she needed to ditch the rifle case when they’d practice at a Secret Service-guarded Trump International.

The analytical 34-year-old began working Foley, whom she’d gotten to know while practicing with Lydia Ko at Lake Nona, about a year ago. Foley helped her hit the ball higher and farther, but mostly he sat on his green chair and asked big questions about life.

“We needed to rebuild her computer program,” said Foley of the player he calls “Dunc.”

They talked a lot about the why behind her chase.

On Monday night at the CME Group Tour Championship, Ko walked to the podium during the Rolex LPGA Awards to present the Heather Farr Perseverance Award to her friend. Duncan said she rewrote her acceptance speech 20 times, trying to find ways to make it simpler.

The result was the highlight of the evening; the speech everyone kept talking about.

“After college, I failed to earn full status four times,” Duncan told the crowd. “When I finally earned my card, I eventually lost it. And not that long ago, on the very last hole of Q-Series, I made an eight.

“To be clear: On the 144^th hole of the most stressful tournament of my life, I made an eight. … and missed full status by one shot.

“This was not a ‘golf is hard’ eight. This was a total out of body eight. A complete mental collapse.”

The experience caused Duncan to do a deep dive on whether or not she should keep playing the tour, an exercise she’s done a number of times over the years.

After several weeks, she decided she had two choices: walk away or change.

After Duncan lost in a playoff at the Chevron Championship earlier this year in Texas, she began to open up about the work she’d been doing with Foley. She started to feel different on the inside in March of this year, finding ways to let the personality she has outside of golf – playful and fun-loving – replace the harsh version that lives inside the ropes.

In her speech at the Rolex LPGA Awards, Duncan told the room it all came down to one question: If I gave everything I had, and it wasn’t enough, would I still play?

“Wrestling with that question revealed many things: One, that I’m a golf nerd who loves this game so much I’d play it for free.

“And honestly, I have played it for free many times, unintentionally, by missing a lot of cuts.

“The harder truth was that I hadn’t really been giving my all. For years, I told myself I was playing out of love, but that wasn’t true. Real love doesn’t demand anything in return. And mine did.”

Duncan posted the entire speech on her Instagram account and player after player called her an inspiration.

This year, Duncan sailed into the CME field ranked 29th in the standings. Her $1,177,085 in earnings is more than double what she’d ever made in a single season. Last week, Duncan reached a career high in the Rolex Rankings at 44th. At this time last year, she was 175th.

“I think a lot about my sister's mantra, ‘struggle less, fight harder, never quit,’” said Duncan, whose younger sister McKenzie recently retired from the military as a captain and now studies policy management at Georgetown.  

“It's been wonderful,” said McKenzie of watching Lindy's growth. “I definitely could feel her stress as her sister.”

Growing up, Duncan was a promising soccer player before three sprained ankles in one season led the doctor to prescribe a one-year layoff from contact sports.

It was devastating to Duncan, who was soon invited out to the public golf course where her soccer coach worked. Come hit some balls, he told her, see what you think.

“We couldn’t get her home,” said Debbie. She was obsessed.

Duncan played collegiate golf at Duke and excelled academically as a psychology major because the competitor in her wanted the best grade. The 2012 NGCA National Player of the Year and Golfweek Player of the Year, Duncan was a first-team All-American all four seasons at Duke.

Duncan said she never thought about leaving school early because, as someone who was homeschooled much of her life, she felt she wasn’t ready for the big stage.

On Monday, Duncan owned the stage and the room as she explained how she came to redefine the meaning of joy.

“For years, I thought joy was earned through accomplishment,” she said. “Then I realized: joy is a choice, independent of scores or outcomes.

“That shift, choosing joy over validation, gave me freedom to be honest and vulnerable. Freedom to play and live fully, for the first time in a long time.”

The first time Duncan began to share her story after the playoff loss at Chevron, she was terrified to feel so exposed.

The response, however, blew her away.

“That humanness,” she said, “meant more than a trophy.”

The reward came anyway.