11-year-old qualified for US Open, and made it look easy

Before Lucy Li was a history-making golf prodigy — on Monday she became the youngest player to qualify for the U.S. Women’s Open at the amazing age of 11 — she was a bored little sister.

Li’s start in the game dates back 3 ¹/₂ years to an afternoon on the sidelines of a tournament in which her brother Luke was playing. The youngster from the San Francisco Bay Area grabbed a club, choked up and took a rip. Thwack.

“We realized something special that day,” her mother, Amy Zeng Li, has said.

Special just begins to describe it. Li, who weighs less than 90 pounds and stands 4-feet 11-inches, shot rounds of 74-68 on the par-72 Old Course at Half Moon Bay in California to win the sectional qualifier for the women’s game’s most prestigious tournament by a whopping seven strokes. The sixth grader from Redwood Shores, Calif., will surpass Lexi Thompson as the youngest qualifier in Open history.

Thompson was 12 when she competed in the 2007 Open; Beverly Klass played the Open when she was 10 in 1967, before there was qualifying.

Soon after her eureka moment on the course at age 7, Li began working with renowned teacher Jim McLean in Florida, where she has cranked up her distance off the tee to an average of 220 to 230 yards. Li was 10 when she became the youngest match-play qualifier in U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links history. Later last year, she became the youngest to qualify for the U.S. Women’s Amateur — and shot under par on the second day of stroke play to narrowly miss the match-play cut.

“Playing against older people, I had to hit it farther because the tournaments are held on courses that are really long,” she told USGA.org.

After all that experience against older players, it’s little wonder she triumphed in the girls 10-11 division at the inaugural Drive, Chip and Putt contest at Augusta that preceded the Masters this year.

Her other interests including reading Archie comic books, assembling IKEA furniture and Rory McIlroy.

“I like Rory’s game and he’s very nice,” said Li of the floppy-haired Northern Irishman who won the 2011 U.S. Open.

The accolades came flowing in from the golf community for Li’s precocious accomplishment.

Michelle Wie, who knows a thing or two about early success on the fairways, was more to the point: “WOAH!!! Amazing.”

The U.S. Women’s Open is June 19-22 at Pinehurst No. 2 in North Carolina. In October, Li will turn 12.