From Kmart to college in Oklahoma to Epson Tour status as a pro, Perth’s Maddison Hinson-Tolchard is one of the ‘COVID class’ of graduates from US colleges now forging ahead.
I’ve been playing golf since I was 2 years old. Mum worked shifts at the airport, and she would watch me during the day while dad was at work. Dad’s version of babysitting was spending afternoons at the golf club. I had a plastic set of “Thomas the Tank Engine” clubs. Dad would set me up to hit balls against the wall at the back of the range while he practised.
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Ritchie Smith used to run an all-girls clinic on a Saturday at Melville Glades, about 15 minutes from my parents’ house. Every Saturday morning, I was one of 15 girls who’d get lessons from Ritchie. Once I was about 11, Ritchie became a lot busier when his other students – Minjee Lee and Hannah Green started to get really good as elite amateurs. He stopped those clinics, so I started doing individual lessons with him.
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Ritchie has been a big part of my career. He’s been like a second dad to me. I love the way he teaches. It’s the only thing I’ve ever known, and I would never want to go anywhere else, either. He coaches for longevity, which I like. He teaches you to protect your spine while producing the most power you can. He’s got so much knowledge and has coached some great golfers. Look at Minjee, Hannah and even Min Woo Lee. It’s cool to be part of that stable. I get to see them sometimes and see how they practise. It’s learning from the best.
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As a junior, I was playing local events in Perth. I made the junior state team at age 12 and then the women’s state team. There was quite a bit of travel to east coast state events in Australia. In high school, I travelled over to the US during school holidays and played some US Junior Amateur qualifiers, as well as the Women’s Western Amateur and the IMG Junior World Championships. I qualified for the US Junior and that helped me get scouted by some college coaches over there. That started my journey to the US.
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I was recruited by a couple of schools and I made official visits to Virginia and Oklahoma State University. I loved the campus at Stillwater, Oklahoma. I knew it was the place I wanted to go to college.
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My official site visit to Oklahoma State was incredible. The campus was exactly what I’d pictured in my head that a US college should look like, and I was absolutely in love with their practice facilities. The quality was out of this world, and they’ve just completed a $US35 million revamp of the golf course – the renowned Karsten Creek Golf Club.
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I signed with Oklahoma State and the rest was history. [Hinson-Tolchard won the Big 12 Individual Championship in 2023, was the Big 12 Player of the Year in 2022 and 2023 and earned First Team WGCA All-American honours in 2023.] It was awesome going to school in a very small college town. I felt safer, and it was easy to get around and explore. My teammates were awesome.
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I was meant to start college in August 2020, but that was scheduled before COVID-19 hit that March. I couldn’t start in the fall/autumn of 2020 because the US embassies closed in Australia during the pandemic and I couldn’t get my visa in time. I ended up studying remotely for six months from Australia and I worked at Kmart for 10 months.
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When I got to the US, a lot of our classes were online. We had to do COVID tests every week to be able to travel to tournaments. My first tournament I played, we could only play with our own teammates, not with golfers from other colleges, which was very weird. In 2021, I was stuck in the US and couldn’t come home to Australia from January through to the end of November. I did come back in Christmas 2021, quarantined for two weeks in a hotel and eventually flew back to the US the next semester after that.
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When I first started at Oklahoma State, our team was so strong. We had girls like Maja Stark on the team. We had a couple of other girls who have gone on to play the Ladies European Tour. It was so competitive. We had a squad of 12 people, and probably nine out of those 12 could be competing for a spot in the line-up every week. If you weren’t working as hard as you possibly could, and producing great scores, you wouldn’t make the team.
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I didn’t want to be in a position where I was left at home and wasn’t able to travel to tournaments, so I was just working constantly on my game. There were two months when, as a team, a couple of our players didn’t shoot over par.
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I have always been really into my education, so I wanted a degree, I wanted that piece of paper in my back pocket. That was important to me in choosing the US college pathway. When I turned 18, I didn’t think I was ready to turn professional, whereas some golfers do feel ready. I needed a bit more experience, and college prepared me for tour life, in a way. You’re travelling every second week to a tournament. Your time management has to be excellent because you’ve got all your university work on top of the travel. You’re training three times a week in the gym. Now I’ve turned pro, I understand how beneficial college was.
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I graduated with a degree in exercise science. I loved my degree. I didn’t want to go over to the US and do just a business or marketing degree, because I’ve always been passionate about strength and conditioning in golf and biomechanics. It was a lot of work. My senior year was gruelling – I was in class all day Tuesday, all day Thursday, from 8:30 in the morning until 5:45 at night. I didn’t even get time to practise on those days, but it was so worth it in the end.
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My best golf memory was when our team finished runner-up at the NCAA Championship in my first year. Even though we lost the final, it was still so cool to be able to get the whole way through. The best moment outside golf was graduating with my friends. I had three awesome friends in the same class as me, whom I graduated with, and we’ve got friendships that are now going to last a lifetime.
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I was really excited to turn pro in May last year, not long after playing the Augusta National Women’s Amateur. I made my pro debut on the Epson Tour in Michigan and definitely felt ready by the time I graduated from college. I was able to go to qualifying school at the beginning of my senior year, and I got my Epson Tour status.
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It has been a strange adjustment, going from college into the professional game, and it took me a couple of weeks to find my feet. It’s lonelier than travelling with my teammates. It’s a lot more intense. But it’s also been so much fun. I’ve learned a lot.
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I played practice rounds at the 2023 US Women’s Open with Hannah, and I’ve always picked her brain since junior days back in Perth. Recently, she was back home in WA and I got to see her. She’s always been really friendly. We were talking about me turning pro and she said, “Enjoy it all; enjoy the ride.”
So I will.
Photo by: david cannon/getty images
