Seventh place in the Andalucía Costa del Sol Open of Spain, tied with the fabulous Celine Boutier and ahead of her admired Carlota Ciganda. It was an extraordinary finale to the great season that Andrea Revuelta Goicoechea has signed, one of the jewels in the crown of Spanish women’s amateur golf. “A 9.5, outstanding,” that’s how the 17-year-old from Madrid evaluates her sporting year a few months before crossing the pond to enrol at Stanford, along with her friend Paulita Martín. Her red-marked challenge in this 2023 was to get a place at the prestigious university where Tiger Woods studied and where Rose Zhang still has to finish her studies. “Being compared to them seems too strong to me, but okay…”, she says laughing.
Not only has Andrea’s end of the season at the Real Club de Golf Las Brisas caught attention. She has been coming on strong for some time and this 2023 has only confirmed her meteoric golfing progression. This small curriculum of these months proves it: absolute champion of Spain, sixteenth in the La Sella Open, victories with the European team in the Solheim and the Ryder Juniors, European under 18 team champion, fourth in the Junior Invitational, eighth in the World Junior Girls Championship, ninth in The Women’s Amateur and in the R&A Girls Amateur Championship… A deserved rating of 9.5, no doubt. In 2022, by the way, she won the Junior World Championship with Cayetana Fernández and Paula Martín, her former teammates from Cetema and now in the NCAA.
Revuelta, another prodigy from the prolific Spanish quarry, started to get hooked along with Álvaro, her older brother, because of her father’s love for golf and her two younger sisters, Ángela and Amanda, also handle the golf bag well. The Team A, we could say, with all the offspring’s names starting with that letter.
“I’m very happy with my year, I give it a 9.5, outstanding,” the Madrid woman celebrates. “My main goal was to get into Stanford next summer and I’ve achieved it. And I’ve also achieved everything else, which is fantastic, so I’m very proud of the work, it couldn’t have gone better,” Andrea summarises, who highlights above all the Andalucía Costa del Sol Open of Spain and the victory in the Ryder Junior. At La Zagaleta, in the PING Junior Solheim, she also participated in the European success against the Yankees and at Finca Cortesín, where the Solheim Cup was held that week, she had the chance to meet Rose Zhang, whose meteoric university career led her to turn professional after her second year at Stanford and, days later, win the title in her first tournament with the new status: “I spoke a little with her, I introduced myself and so on but they had to leave and it was very quick. She’s a lovely girl. I guess I’ll see her because I’m going to visit Stanford in February, I’ll be with the team and she sometimes goes to train on campus and maybe we’ll see each other”. Surely so, as the Californian of Chinese origin has exams pending.
She will probably go for Arts, although she doesn’t know which career she will choose when she goes to the NCAA. Of course, she does not hesitate to name an illustrious cardinal among her references. “Tiger Woods seems to me the clear example of overcoming and I also admire Rafa Nadal and Kobe Bryant a lot. And of course I love Carlota Ciganda, who in addition to being a great player off the field is very good”. Stanford and the long shadow of Tiger… “Being compared to him and Rose Zhang seems too strong to me, but okay… Many people say: ‘Following in the footsteps of Tiger and Rose Zhang’. Well, I don’t think so, eh? Hahaha”, she emphasises as a joke.
She will have an ally in Paula Martín when she arrives at The Farm, as the Stanford campus is popularly known. The also Madrid woman was a pioneer in obtaining the first full golf scholarship from a Spaniard at the illustrious centre: “Yes, we have talked a lot, she has told me and she is delighted. I am really looking forward to living the experience with her, who has made a very good start to the season, getting great results”, Revuelta narrates, who values the talent of the new batches of the female Armada.
“In women’s amateur golf in Spain, a very, very strong generation has arrived that has never been seen before, both the girls of my year, like Cata (Fernández), Paulita (Martín), Rocío (Tejedo), Anna (Cañadó), Cloe (Amión), me… and then there are those who are a bit older like Carolina (López Chacarra), Julia (López), the two Carlas (Bernat and Tejedo)… They have been two very strong groups that have stood out. What we have done this year winning the absolute European and the under 18 is a very strong thing. And it has also been seen when we go to professional tournaments and we do very well. There is very little difference between the amateurs and the professionals”, Andrea celebrates, who shared with Rocío Tejedo a great September: “We played the Solheim Junior, then the Ryder Junior and then we went to the World Championship in Canada and very well. She is a very good player and this year she has done very well”, says the twenty-third player in the world amateur ranking.
Andrea boasts of her driver (“I’m very straight and I don’t hit short”) and her putt, although she understands that she has room for improvement with the irons. Having given up another of her passions like ballet and put aside other hobbies like the piano (“it’s very complicated to combine everything although sometimes I try to play”), her life is completely focused on golf: “The goal is to turn professional and for now it’s going great”, Revuelta summarises, who knows that to reach the top, like her admired Nadal, you have to sweat blood and work hard: “In the end it’s like everything. If you want something, it costs something, but I’m aware that as a child I sacrificed many things, many plans, but I think it has all been worth it. The experiences I have been able to live and am living now are incredible. You have to sacrifice a lot if you want to go far, there is no other way”.
For now, the year has turned out round, a 9.5, waiting for the start of 2024 to be similar and in January they confirm her presence in another tournament she has been dreaming of since she was a child: the Augusta National Women’s Amateur. And then Stanford, the nest where Tiger and Zhang were raised, those two idols with whom she doesn’t want to be compared, but it never hurts to set the bar in the sky…
