The 24-year-old from St. Gallen is honing her skills in Ticino and the USA. Today she represents a new wave of strong Swiss female golfers.
Golf pro Chiara Tamburlini, here still in the uniform of the University of Mississippi, where she played and studied college golf.
Andrea Tina Stalder / TBM
Chiara Tamburlini kept thinking that she would soon lead a normal life. She thought this at the age of 16 when she was at the sports school in Ticino – after graduating from high school she wanted to study at the University of St. Gallen. She thought this while studying in the USA, where she successfully played college golf – after completing her bachelor’s degree, she wanted to continue studying in Switzerland, back to normal life.
But Tamburlini’s golf game kept getting better. So good that she always wanted to keep going. Until she saw no reason to remain an amateur and decided to turn professional. That was in July of last year. At the beginning of 2024 she was still ranked just below the top 500 in the world rankings, since then she has won a tournament on the Ladies European Tour, was third another time, and improved to 200th place. And suddenly Tamburlini has the chance to qualify for the Olympic Games Paris to qualify.
So not quite as normal as planned. “A start in Paris would be incredible as a rookie, i.e. in your first year as a professional,” says Tamburlini as she spends a few days at home in St. Gallen between tournaments from Morocco to Australia to South Korea. She laughs and says: “My parents used to not want me to go to the ski club in the Engadine because the distance would be too much effort, but now I play golf all over the world.”
Tamburlini likes to talk between beats
Laughing is an essential part of the golf course for the 24-year-old. It is one of her “best performing me”. Her four years in the USA come through in conversation; she consciously takes her personality traits “happy, talkative, bubbly” with her to the field. She likes to talk between strokes, needs looseness for success. “If I try to control every detail too much, things usually turn out worse.”
But Tamburlini is highly concentrated when hitting. She can switch to competition mode like no other, says her swing coach Jeremy Carlsen, who is also the Swiss women’s national coach. “It’s a superpower that she won’t lose again in her career.”
The interplay between ambition and lightness has accompanied Tamburlini almost since the beginning of his career. As a child, the eldest of three sisters played on Sundays in the golf kindergarten on the course in Niederbüren near St. Gallen while her parents golfed. She started playing herself at the age of eight and had overtaken her parents by the time she was twelve.
The training for the children was playful for a long time, “no one shows you the perfect swing,” says Tamburlini. “You do it intuitively the way it makes sense to you.” The training only became really serious with four to five hours a day when she went to the sports school in Tenero at the age of 14 and took her high school diploma in Italian. She caught the attention of American college coaches at the U18 tournaments; Ultimately, she was able to choose from several full scholarships.
No luxury on the tour – everything is organized yourself and the Airbnb is shared with other players
The woman from Eastern Switzerland chose the University of Mississippi in Oxford, south of Memphis. The small town lives for the university, the extremely successful golf team – with Tamburlini it won the college championship for the first time – enjoyed a lot of attention, had its own press spokeswoman, regular photo shoots, and was celebrated. Golf is very important in the USA. “It was the time of my life,” says Tamburlini.
At the same time as golf, she completed her bachelor’s degree in finance with top grades. As a college athlete, my days were structured starting with fitness training at 6 a.m. Only when the football team played did the other athletes get time off from training, and up to 100,000 people flocked to campus.
Tamburlini feared she would get bored after switching to the pros. The fear was unfounded, just organizing all the trips and accounting take up a lot of time. The professionals are responsible for everything themselves; Tamburlini usually books an Airbnb at the tournament location together with others.
She expects costs to be almost six figures for a season on the Ladies European Tour (LET), on which she is now playing; it is the best in Europe. Only the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA), which mainly consists of tournaments in the USA, reigns supreme above it. She doesn’t yet know whether Tamburlini will try to make the jump there this year or next year.
Tamburlini during tee-off practice at the Niederbüren Golf Club, where she learned to play as a child.
Andrea Tina Stalder / TBM
The learning curve as a professional is still steep. After a third place in Kenya at the beginning of the year, she was invited to tournaments in Saudi Arabia and Morocco, where she missed the cut in each case and took home neither points nor prize money. Golfers also have to deal with this rollercoaster of emotions during the tournament, for example if they miss a shot. In Morocco, the St. Gallen resident had trouble hitting the tee. “At some point you’re so afraid of the next blow that you stiffen up.”
Tamburlini does not currently have a mental coach, but several coaches are responsible for different aspects of her game. They offer her help in such situations. In Morocco, she was supposed to feel like she was on the beach when she shot, with the wide sea in front of her. The goal is to find the moment again, not to get lost in emotions and to put the achievements into perspective. That means getting rid of bad balls and concentrating on the holes that are still to come.
The fact that Tamburlini is in a good financial position for this year also helps against the tension – through sponsors, sports aid, private patrons or the support of the Swiss Golf Association, which pays the fitness trainer. She received 45,000 euros in prize money for winning the tournament in South Africa. This eliminates the fear that a bad tournament without prize money might mean you won’t be able to pay for all trips to planned tournaments.
Now the dream of the Olympics could come true. Switzerland is allowed to send two players, the deadline is June 24th, based on the world rankings. According to the current status, Albane Valenzuela is ranked 65th, Morgane Métraux is ranked 190th and Tamburlini is ranked 200th. The first two named play on the LPGA Tour and can score more points there than Tamburlini on the LET.
Today there is more support from the association in the transition to the professionals
National coach Jeremy Carlsen is pleased with the comfortable starting position. In addition to Valenzuela, Métraux and Tamburlini, who he describes as having “limitless” potential, there are other young, successful Swiss women.
Valenzuela has shown that you can be world class as a Swiss woman – she was number 2 among amateurs and today plays successfully on the LPGA Tour. She is also a great role model for Tamburlini. “She has opened a lot of doors, which gives the others a lot of self-confidence,” says Barbara Albisetti Heath, the sports director of Swiss Golf.
A few years ago, the association decided to better support the players in their final amateur and first professional years. Know-how was obtained, for example, from trainers like Stuart Morgan, a renowned coach with a lot of international experience.
After the transition to the professionals, the association tries to find individual support options for the athletes, be it, as with Tamburlini, paying the fitness trainer, a putting coach or a machine with which precision can be trained. There are also regular get-togethers for the national teams.
Even the best twelve-year-olds can enter the system, they are then supported by an association trainer, and the association also organizes and pays for fitness tests and trips to tournaments abroad. Tamburlini also benefited from this.
In addition, the Ladies European Tour has blossomed again. Just a few years ago it was doing poorly and could hardly offer any tournaments or prize money. The strong European players all threw themselves into qualifying for the LPGA. Until she realized that a strong European tour – which is only limited to Europe in name, the tournaments take place worldwide – would help women’s golf in general. So the LPGA began supporting the LET.
“The two organizations are now working together, which is reflected in an attractive tournament calendar and slightly better prize money,” says Albisetti Heath, even though the men still earn up to ten times as much for a similar tournament. But the LET has once again become a strong address where European players can develop.
