Brittany Lincicome hits her second shot on the 18th hole during the Marathon Classic Presented By Owens Corning And O-I at Highland Meadows Golf Club on July 15, 2018 in Sylvania, Ohio.Matt Sullivan/Getty Images
When Brittany Lincicome tees off against men on the PGA Tour this week, Canadian hockey star Hayley Wickenheiser wants her to tune out the noise and just play her game.
As someone who spent years competing in men’s leagues in Europe, Wickenheiser knows how daunting that experience can be.
“Play your game and learn not to listen to the critical opinion of others, because you’ll get it,” Wickenheiser said when asked what wisdom she’d impart to Lincicome.
“Just play your game, have thick skin. I’m sure she knows fully what she’s getting into. She doesn’t need a lot of advice.”
Lincicome will compete on a sponsor exemption at the Barbasol Championship starting Thursday in Nicholasville, Ky., making her the sixth woman to play in a PGA Tour event and first since fellow American Michelle Wie did it 10 years ago.
Annika Sorenstam, Suzy Whaley, Shirley Spork and Babe Didrikson Zaharias also played PGA events while Isabelle Beisiegel of St. Hilaire, Que., played six stops on the men’s Canadian Tour in 2011.
Wickenheiser, a retired four-time Olympic gold medalist and seven-time world champion, joined a professional men’s league as a 24-year-old in 2003, signing with Kirkkonummi Salamat in the second-division Finnish league.
She played 23 games that season and scored twice, becoming the first woman to record a goal in a men’s pro league. Wickenheiser played 40 games the following year and had another stint on a Swedish men’s league team in 2008.
While her tenure with Kirkkonummi didn’t get off to the best start – she laughed while recalling scoring into her own net in her first game – Wickenheiser described the experience as one of the best she’s had in hockey.
“It was hard in the sense that every single day I knew I had to be at my best, whether it was practice or a game, I didn’t have the opportunity to have an off day physically,” Wickenheiser said in a phone interview.
“It really challenged me to take me out of my comfort zone and it gave me a lot of resiliency and mental toughness that I carried with me throughout my career.”
But the experience wasn’t always positive. Though Wickenheiser said she never had a problem with any of her teammates – she still keeps in touch with some of them – her opposition wasn’t always so open to the idea of a woman on the ice.
“There were one or two guys that I knew were going to try to run me every game,” she said. “When I played in Finland my assistant coach would come before every game and say, ‘Okay watch for No. 8 and No. 15, they’re going to try to take you out.’ Everyone else was just playing hockey. The game was too good, too fast to worry about where the girl was on the ice.”
Wickenheiser still remembers the media attention she garnered for her first practice with the Finnish team. She also remembers the questions that followed, with some hinting her presence there was merely a publicity stunt.
The Shaunavon, Sask., native took that in stride.
“I knew that there would be all sorts of judgment but I was confident in my ability and I knew it would only be a matter of time before that would not be a discussion point,” she said. “It was part of my whole life as a kid, it was something I was very attuned to.”
As for the 32-year-old Lincicome, she has eight victories on the LPGA Tour and narrowly missed a ninth last weekend at the Marathon Classic.
The Barbasol Championship will be difficult though, even with the top men’s players away at the British Open. No woman has made the cut in a men’s pro event since Zaharias in 1945.
Wickenheiser said the challenge is what’s important for Lincicome this week.
“I think every athlete wants to be challenged and play at the highest level they can,” she said. “I don’t really see it as a gender thing. It’s a performance thing.
“If an athlete is capable of playing there and they can perform to their abilities, then they should play there.”