By Michael Haag | Sports Editor
On one of No. 9 Baylor women’s golf associate head coach Carly Ludwig’s recruiting trips to Europe, there was a unique Norwegian athlete that caught her eye. Ludwig immediately contacted head coach Jay Goble to tell him of this golf player that she said had a “special” talent level.
It was freshman Silje Ohma that impressed Ludwig across the Atlantic Ocean, and Goble started to engage in some conversations with Ohma over the phone. Goble liked what he heard about the Bergen, Norway, native and enjoyed the pleasant talks he had with her. Once Ludwig had watched Ohma play a couple of times, she told the head coach they needed to find a way to get Ohma to Waco.
Goble decided to do something he doesn’t often do.
“She’s one of the few players that I did actually offer a spot on the team and a scholarship before her visiting campus,” Goble said. “That’s not typically my M.O., but we did offer her a scholarship and a spot on the team before she had visited Baylor.”
The last thing Goble and Ludwig wanted was for Ohma to slip through the cracks and end up elsewhere.
“When you have the opportunity to get a talented player, you have to move quickly sometimes,” Goble said. “I felt comfortable, [Ludwig] felt comfortable, so we moved forward with offering her a spot. I think she’s a great golfer obviously, but she’s an even better person; I think that she’s going to be a great teammate for us for the next couple of years.”
What struck Ludwig and Goble was that Ohma was crushing the ball off the tee. Her power with a driver allowed her to smash the ball over 300 yards, giving her a huge advantage on a golf course over her peers.
“She has endless talent when it comes to her physical ability in golf,” Goble said. “She is probably the longest [hitting] or close to the longest player in women’s college golf. She gets her driver 300+ yards, which is insane.”
After displaying her talent in front of Ludwig, Ohma said her conversations with both coaches went really well and they “became really good friends.” After Ohma committed, Goble gave her the option to visit before signing day to ensure she wanted to be a Baylor Bear.
She said she was just as confident in committing to Baylor before visiting as she was after seeing campus. The next step for Ohma was adjusting to the American lifestyle. Thankfully for Ohma, this wasn’t the first time she had to move away from her family for golf.
“When I was 16, my best friend and I moved to the other side of [Norway] to go to a golf school there,” Ohma said. “For the past two years, I didn’t really live at home with my parents. So, I was kind of used to not seeing them everyday.”
Now, living over 4,800 miles away, it’s much harder to make a weekend trip back home to see her family. Ohma said adjusting to that, along with the language barrier, has been the hardest part of going to school in the U.S.
Ohma, who opened the spring season on fire thanks to three-straight top-five finishes before the Darius Rucker Intercollegiate, said she decided this was “[her] year” after spending some time with the Norwegian national team in January.
She worked on her technique and started to develop goals and aspirations for the 2023 spring season. Coming in as a highly-touted recruit, she said those goals gave her the ability to handle certain expectations.
“Right now I have some goals that are result-focused and some goals that are process-focused, so if I’m just doing the process goals, then the score is what it is,” Ohma said. “I feel that my goals have really helped me balance my expectations.”
After seeing Ohma play for the entire fall and the early part of the spring, Goble said “the ceiling is pretty endless” in terms of her potential moving forward. The true freshman can get a huge jump on her competition with her long game, but even she admitted her short game has room for growth.
Ohma said she ultimately wants to play professional golf on the LPGA Tour when her days at Baylor are over. Goble, a coach that has seen golfers under him do just that, believes she has the capability.
“She’s going to continue to improve, and that’s a scary proposition because she can be as good as she wants to be,” Goble said. “She can still pitch the ball and chip the ball, but if her short game gets anywhere close to her long game, she’s going to be unbeatable.”
