Linn Grant has found silver lining after being barred from U.S. due to vaccination status

SPRINGFIELD N.J. — Linn Grant has established herself as one of the game’s best players — but she still feels like a rookie. 

“Still feel like I’m out here to prove myself,” she said Friday at Baltusrol, “which I don’t feel like it’s a bad thing.”

This week at the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, the 24-year-old, who sits four strokes off the lead at even par after two rounds, is making her first major start on American soil as a professional because she was barred from playing in the United States until last month due to her COVID-19 vaccination status.

However, in the past few years, she took an alternate path to success — and made the most of it. 

The world No. 22 claimed four wins on the Ladies European Tour en route to capturing the circuit’s Order of Merit and Rookie of the Year award in 2022, following in the footsteps of fellow Swedes Annika Sorenstam and Anna Nordqvist. Plus, Grant had four top-10s in six LPGA starts last season outside the U.S. 

Full-field scores from the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship

“In the beginning, it was kind of tough,” Grant said, “when I earned my status out here I really wanted to come. But then on the other hand, I kind of told myself that I was going to do Europe full-on, and if anything changed, that was just an opportunity.

“I kind of went with that mindset instead and just thought that whatever opportunity I get to play out here, whenever the tour comes to Europe or we go to Asia, I kind of saw that as my chance of like doing good.”

After the U.S. government lifted the vaccination mandate for international travelers in May, Grant finally made her first LPGA start in the U.S. at the Bank of Hope LPGA Match-Play — and finished third. 

Of course, vaccination status is a very polarizing topic. And Grant, who has kept her reasoning to remain unvaccinated private, saw what people were saying about her choice to not receive the COVID-19 vaccine. But to her surprise, she received a bevy of support. 

“I read everything that’s on my Instagram, but most of them are actually positive,” she said. “I think a lot of people think that they’re negative, but at least on my Instagram they’re all positive.”

There were still detractors, but she didn’t let them shake her. 

“The few negative I get, I just brush them off,” she said. “They don’t know me. They don’t know my reasons.”

Grant added: “You always expect people to judge you in a harsh way. But I mostly got nice ones.”

It’s hard not to think: What if the former NCAA All-American at Arizona State was able to tee it up in the States the past few years? However, Grant has found a silver lining in all of this. 

“I think I wouldn’t be here with the confidence I have now and being as prepared as I am now as a pro if I were to come like when I was supposed to,” she said. “I think playing at home, I’ve gotten a lot more confident and comfortable with playing as a pro and with all that media and all the other stuff that goes around with it, traveling and all that. I try to see it as a positive. That’s pretty much all I can do. I think I got a lot of positives out of it.”

Now, everything that transpired in the past year is in Grant’s rearview mirror — and her focus in on proving to herself that she can win on American soil for the first time.

Baltusrol would be the perfect place to do it.