Tarmaaaaa

Céline had already inscribed Boutier in the tricolor golf pantheon. All he needed was to take one last step to establish his name definitively in the great and beautiful history of his discipline. This walk was probably the most difficult of all. She chose Évian to climb it, at home in France. Quite a symbol.

Her story with Évian began in the summer of 2014 when the young Céline, then aged 20, started her first dance on the green floors of the Évian Resort Golf Club. At that time, she was still a psychology student at the prestigious Duke University (North Carolina, USA). Haute-Savoie thus reveals the reserved character of a player promised to a bright future. Literally and figuratively, she walks in the footsteps of tricolors Karine Icher, Gwladys Nocera and Joanna Klatten.

She may be a novice in the exercise, but she is nonetheless competitive and talented. Benefiting from the shadow drawn by the influence of its elders, it takes advantage of its first participation to give the French public its first chills. On a course refurbished a year earlier, it cautiously expresses the full extent of its know-how. This week ended in 29th place, one shot behind Karine Icher, is the first act of the Boutier era at Evian.

The following years will confuse hopes and disappointments. The Champions Course did not become a Major course by chance, the intransigence of which it is the object has disappointed many. Many players have broken their teeth there as much as they have known success. Go ask Angela Stanford, winner of the 2018 edition, for whom the balance sheet in Evian includes the same number of top-10s and missed cuts (three for each, in seven participations).

So, since 2014, Céline Boutier has been sharpening her knives, refining her strategy, drawing the outlines of the perfect game plan. Efforts take time to bear fruit. No matter how much she sows the seeds, she cannot force fate. The years pass and the former player of the Paris Country Club collects the top-10 on the other side of the Atlantic. The LPGA Tour is witnessing the gradual emergence of a European who has come to play spoilsport among the Americans and Asians. As a direct consequence of its success, it is more and more expected each season in Haute-Savoie.

The native of Clamart must now deal with an additional parameter that complicates the equation: the increased hopes placed in her. In the space of a few years, the seeds mentioned a few lines earlier have become pretty flowers, and the entire Evian public has begun to dream of a majestic final bouquet. Céline, the woman, must now face Boutier, the exceptional player. The most assiduous among you will have recognized the title of our first article about it.

Increment by increment, she increases her level of play until reaching eighth place in the world rankings last March, a record for a French player. Crowned with a third title on the North American circuit, she also took the opportunity to become the most successful tricolor in the history of the LPGA Tour. Anne-Marie Palli and Patricia Meunier-Lebouc can only bow before the recital of their worthy successor, especially since the second of them is not at the end of her surprises. The rest, you know it. Céline Boutier today won the 2023 edition of The Amundi Evian Championship, the first Major of her career already rich in trophies, from the Solheim Cup to the LPGA Tour, via the Ladies European Tour without forgetting all her victories in the amateurs.

Undoubtedly, there will be a before and after this spectacular and historic coronation. By finally smashing this glass ceiling which it has been coming up against for so many years, the current 15th world player will forever join the Evian galaxy, that of the players who have made the history of this heavenly place. Around Céline, it’s a whole team that has just taken to heaven with her: her family, her mental trainer Meriem Salmi, her coach Cameron McCormick or her physical trainer Manny Hernando. Having become at the same time the third tricolor player to win in Major, after Catherine Lacoste (US Open 1967) and Patricia Meunier-Lebouc (Kraft Nabisco 2003), she offers herself for good a place in the firmament of French golf. A day, she will recount her youthful exploits to those for whom this dream is still only a sweet mirage. For the time being, it continues to illuminate this path which has become celestial.