IT'S BEEN a long time since Hermitage '79 and the European Championship, but the French player remembers it well. Though Marie Laure de Lorenzi was only 18 at the time, she had already captured the Spanish Amateur and the French and British Girls' titles.
When we talked recently, she recalled her foursomes partnership with Cecilia Murgue d'Algue at Hermitage and the presence of the great Catherine Lacoste de Prado as the number one French player. Then, with a quiet smile, she acknowledged that they had been beaten by Ireland in the semi-finals.
De Lorenzi is returning here this week for another visit to the west side of Dublin. She competed in the 1994 Irish Open at St Margaret's where she finished in a share of 39th place behind Laura Davies, but was not in last year's line-up.
Now she is approaching the form which made her one of Europe's most successful players and twice leader of the Order of Merit - in the 1988 and 1989 seasons. Perhaps most important of all is the fact that she is the current leader of the Solheim Cup standings, making her an automatic choice for the biennial matches against the US at St Pierre on September 20th to 22nd.
She was a member of the inaugural team at Lake Nona in 1990, but missed out on the astonishing triumph at Dalmahoy two years later. Then, for the 1994 matches, patchy early-season form cost her dearly. Though the team was selected after she had shared second place in the Waterford Dairies English Open that year, she declined the invitation of Mickey Walker to be travelling reserve. "I had lost confidence in my swing," she says.
Much of the old flair was evident, however, when I met her during the Danish Open last month. Now 36, she lives with her daughter, Laura, in Barcelona and has become one of the elite group of European players to have exceeded £500,000 in career earnings, which she did by sharing 11th place behind Helen Alfredsson in the recent Hennessy Cup.
She is proud of European golf and not at all surprised by the spectacular successes of Annika Sorenstam and Davies in the US. "Our tour is much different now than when I joined it in 1987," she says. "At that stage I thought it was enough simply to continue playing as I did when I was an amateur and most of the other girls approached the game the same way.
"But you cannot survive on the tour these days with the mind of an amateur. Nowadays we have a lot of young players joining our ranks who are very professional in what they do - the way they practise and prepare themselves for tournaments. It is very different from my early years when we remained amateurs in everything but name."
Looking towards the US and the achievements of Europe's leading players there, she says: "They are successful because of the experience they gained over here. I think it is very difficult to play golf in Europe. Going from one country to another, you have to contend with different courses in different condition, quite apart from the changes in climate.
"It makes the game very complicated and I think you need real talent to be able to cope. Her success in that context cannot be questioned given that she won amateur titles in Spain, France and Britain prior to professional successes in Germany, Belgium, France, Spain, Sweden, Holland, Britain and Portugal. She has, a total of 18 professional victories to her credit.
De Lorenzi takes the view that the challenge of competing in the US is essentially one of acclimatisation. "In the States, you are normally playing in pretty much the same conditions week-in, week-out," she says. "Well prepared courses where you can hit the same type of shots all the time. That has got to be so much easier than having to adapt to the wind and all sorts of problems from week to week. That is why our players win important tournaments there."
Given her commitment to her daughter, however, she appears to have no wish to try the American experience at this time.
Meanwhile, she shows herself to be a keen student of all aspects of the game. "It's not only the technical developments in the game which are important," she claims. "Everybody is learning those. The real difference in talent is achieved through shot-making skills. And I honestly believe that Europeans are better shot-makers than the Americans."
After capturing the Ford Classic in 1990, she went through almost three seasons without a tournament win. At the start of 1993, however, a change of fortune was brought about by her decision to work on swing changes with her coach, Joachim Sierra, at the El Prat club in Barcelona. Her reward was victory in the Var Open de France that season and her highest Order of Merit position, fourth, since the halcyon times of 1988 and 1989.
