AUBURN, Ala. – The 2021-22 season wrapped up last week, and as we look ahead to next season, we're wrapping up our newcomer series with Carys Worby, a freshman from Pembrokeshire, Wales. Worby was the 2019 Girls Order of Merit winner in Wales and also won the Welsh Girls' title in 2018. She redshirted this past season at Auburn.
1. What is the biggest golf highlight of your career?
Worby: I would probably say when we got second in Home Internationals in 2018. We played at Ballybunion, which is just an amazing golf course. It was the best we'd done in quite a few years, and we could have won. So just to be in that position was so much fun and to represent your country as well, it just means a lot.
2. Do you have any pre-tournament superstitions?
Worby: My dad always gives me a fist bump before I go out. He always has. We've never really said anything, but it's kind of like an unspoken rule.
3. What is your favorite club to use?
Worby: I really like my 3 hybrid. Sometimes I get scared of my 3 wood, so when I stand over my 3 hybrid, it just looks a bit more welcoming to me.
4. What are you studying at Auburn? What do you want to do with that?
Worby: I'm majoring in supply chain management, and I think I want to do a minor in natural resources and economic policies because I very much want to do the sustainability side of things. Coach calls me the eco-warrior of the team. My whole family is very into recycling and all these kinds of things, so just making supply chains efficient but less harmful to the planet.
5. What has been the biggest adjustment coming from Wales to Auburn?
Worby: Just the people. Everybody is very different. Americans are much more vocal with everything that they're feeling and thinking, and everybody's very polite. At home, people would run you over. Here, everybody stops the car and is happy to let you walk across the street. I'm vegetarian, so the food is very different, too.
6. What's the biggest thing you miss about home?
Worby: Probably my coaches from home and the people I would play golf with at home. I still speak to my coaches, but I miss not being able to see them all the time. And definitely the links golf courses. The golf courses here are very different, and we have some phenomenal links courses at home. And I do miss being able to pull out my bump-and-run every hour of the day.
7. What is your favorite golf course?
Worby: Probably St Andrews. The Old Course. It's quite a cliche answer, but it lives up to the hype. It really is incredible.
8. Your last meal. What are you having?
Worby: Mine is so niche. I've had this conversation with so many on the team. It's a Ginsters Cheese and Onion Slice, but it has to be from this gas station at home. And it has to be cold from the fridge. It's almost like a hot pocket, but it's savory and it's cheese and onion.
9. What does the Auburn Family mean to you?
Worby: We had really bad lockdowns at home before I came out, so I hadn't really been around anybody for almost a year – apart from my parents. I was a bit worried about it. And then I came out and within like a week, I just loved it. I have about six sets of American adoptive parents already who just look after me. Lots of people on our team, we don't have parents here, and it can be a bit daunting. But they really go out of their way to kind of take you in, which is very nice.