Lauren Coughlin's Brush With Perfection

One reason so many of us are transfixed and fascinated by golf is that it is almost impossible to achieve perfection. It is a puzzle that cannot be totally solved.

There have been 24 perfect games thrown in the history of Major League Baseball. Wilt Chamberlain once scored 42 points on 18-for-18 shooting in a 1967 NBA game against the Baltimore Bullets. In the NFL, Jared Goff went 18-for-18 during a regular-season win against the Seattle Seahawks (and caught a touchdown!) in 2024. But no one has ever birdied every hole in a round of golf, or even come close.

It’s such a ridiculous feat that when Yasir Al-Rumayyan, head of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, announced in 2022 that he would award $54 million to anyone who could shoot a perfect score of 54 in a LIV Golf event, people rolled their eyes. Making a birdie on every hole feels a bit like you’re taunting the golf gods. Bryson DeChambeau hasn’t even done it while playing in a scramble for his YouTube channel.

Yet for a couple hours in Arkansas two weeks ago, Lauren Coughlin taunted the golf gods.

Coughlin, who is in her ninth year on the LPGA Tour, birdied nine consecutive holes in the second round of the Walmart NW Arkansas Championship. When the alert came across my social media feed, I assumed I must have been reading it wrong. I’ve played a fair amount of golf with Coughlin, who I consider a friend, so it was easy to fathom a round where she shot 9 under. But opening with nine straight birdies? That seemed ridiculous. Annika Sorenstam didn’t even do that when she shot 59 in 2001.

Just a couple days before the event, Coughlin and I had been texting back and forth about our favorite TV shows, and how we disagreed with some of the rankings on the New York Times’ “Best TV Shows of the Century” list. Now she was doing something that no one had ever done in the history of women’s golf. Even when Mark Calcavecchia set a PGA Tour record with nine consecutive birdies in the Canadian Open, he did it after making pars on the first two holes. When Kevin Chappell shot 59 at the Greenbrier in 2019, he made nine consecutive birdies, but he started his round with a par. Jim Furyk made two pars on the front nine when he shot 58 at TPC River Highlands. Amy Yang shot a 9-under 27 on her back nine of the final round of the 2015 LPGA KEB Hana Bank Championship, but it came after shooting just 1 under on the front.

“Bob Rotella texted me a couple days later and was like, ‘I think that was probably the best nine holes in the history of professional golf,’” Coughlin said. “I don’t even know why all of a sudden I was able to do it for nine straight holes. But what’s crazy is, none of the putts even lipped in. They were all dead center. It just felt so good to keep doing it.”

I wanted to talk to Coughlin — and share her perspective — not just because it was such a rare occurrence in golf, but because I think her approach offers a good lesson for most of us hacks. Sometimes your best golf appears when you least expect it.

Coughlin wasn’t even sure she wanted to be at the NW Arkansas Championship. She contemplated skipping it entirely. She was emotionally wrung out from the Solheim Cup and only committed at the last minute because one of her sponsors was playing in the pro-am and she felt she owed it to them to show up.

“It’s not that I didn’t care, but there was a big hangover from Solheim,” Coughlin said. “I was exhausted mentally. I was practicing a bit on Wednesday and just venting to my caddie (Jack Fulgham) about how I did not want to be there. I really didn’t want to be playing golf.”

After shooting an uninspired first-round 73, Coughlin was even more annoyed with herself. She felt worried she had dragged Fulgham to Arkansas for nothing.

“On Friday, Jack put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Let’s go have fun,’” Coughlin said. “I said, ‘Listen, I don’t want to play golf today, but I’m going to try as hard as I can. I don’t want to waste either of our time. I’m not going to mail it in.’”

She figured she needed to shoot 6 under to even make the cut.

“Felt like a tall task considering how I’d played the day before,” Coughlin said.

On her first hole (the 10th, because she started on the back nine), Coughlin hit an iron to 10 feet. Putting has always been the biggest variable in her career; the rest of her game doesn’t fluctuate nearly as much. So when she poured in that first putt right in the center, it felt like a good start to a respectable day.

On the second hole, she hit it to six feet. Made the putt.

On the third hole, she hit it to seven feet. Made it again.

Her fourth hole, she rolled in a 10-footer. Her fifth hole, another one from eight feet. It started to feel a little eerie. Every yardage felt comfortable. Every putt, she could visualize exactly where the break was.

“It just felt like I couldn't miss,” Coughlin said. “I could tell what I was doing, obviously. It was in my head, but then at the same time when it came time, I was able to keep executing. I don't know why. I was just so in the zone, I guess. I don't really know how else to describe it.”

When she hit it to three feet on the seventh hole, she turned to Fulgham and let him know this was uncharted waters for her.

“That's the most birdies I've ever made in a row,” Coughlin said. “I've never made more than six straight my whole life.”

When Coughlin shared that anecdote, I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. Most of the golfers I play with regularly might make six birdies in a summer. Even the best players I know start to feel it when they birdie three in a row. It’s a good reminder that professional golfers are not normal, even if you text with them about your shared love of “The Sopranos.” But even this was starting to feel surreal for Coughlin.

On her eighth hole, Coughlin hit it to 12 feet and was left with a downhill putt that was breaking left to right and moving pretty fast. She poured it in again.

“It wasn’t even close. It was dead center. It was never not going in,” Coughlin said. “I even walked it in a little too. I was definitely feeling it at that point.”

On her ninth hole (the club’s 18th hole), she overcooked her driver a bit, found the rough by a couple yards and decided she had to lay up. But then she wedged it to two feet for her ninth consecutive birdie. It was impossible not to start thinking about becoming the second-ever LPGA player to shoot 59.

“I really wanted it,” Coughlin said. “I wanted it bad.”

She even hit a good drive on No. 1 and had only 98 yards left, but the pin was tucked into a front-right portion of the green. The greens were soft, and she knew if she hit her sand wedge, the ball would likely spin back like crazy. She had to hit gap wedge. But she was so pumped up on adrenaline, she left herself an 18-footer. She missed it a hair low. The spell was broken.

Every approach on the back nine felt a bit like a “tweener” for Coughlin. It was hard to feel completely comfortable. The putts felt good and looked good halfway to the hole, but she made one more birdie, and ultimately signed for 61. Coughlin shot 66 in the final round and finished T-12, eight strokes behind winner Yuna Nishimura.

“I was kind of in shock that I did it, but at the same time disappointed I didn’t shoot 59,” Coughlin said. “I kept thinking, ‘God, it would be so cool to have that with Annika.’ And it was right there. It really was in my grasp.”

It’s hard not to fixate a little on what could have been.

"I keep thinking, ‘Gosh, if I could just get another chance, I feel like I might mentally be able to handle it a little bit better,’” she said.

I couldn’t help but chuckle a little as I listened to my friend unpack the best round of her life. That’s the beauty of this game. Even if you accomplish this historic thing, the golfer in you can’t resist talking about the couple of shots you left out there.