Carlota Ciganda (Pamplona, ??1990) was predestined to be a soccer player. Due to her family mimicry: her uncle, Cuco Ziganda (he writes it with zeta), now coach of Huesca, had been a player for Osasuna and Athletic; Her father, Jesús, was a soccer player and coached amateur teams; and her brother, Iñigo, came to play in the Third Division… So Carlota, before being the best golfer in Spain of all time and brand new champion of the Solheim Cup – the women’s Ryder – for the fourth time, started by kicking To the ball.
“I was good at it… But hey, it was just a small change: you leave a big ball for a smaller one,” joked Ciganda, popularly known as the Rahm of women’s golf.
“She was the best on the boys’ soccer team, she was capable of giving the ball 150 touches without touching the ground,” always explains the father, a retired businessman who ran the La vaca que laughter factory in Ulzama (Navarra), in whose golf club he played and instilled in his daughter a passion for clubs from the age of five. Carlota, as an active child, was into everything spherical: soccer, Basque pelota on the fronton – hence her strong iron stroke – and golf, which she ended up opting for exclusively at the age of 11. She wanted to be a professional golfer, with few references, like Marta Figueras-Dotti.
At the age of 14 (2004) she debuted in a professional tournament, the Tenerife Ladies Open, and in 2007 she won the British Open Amateur, winning in the final against the Swedish Anna Nordqvist, a European teammate in her six participations in the Solheim Cup. His progression caught the attention of Arizona State University, where he moved to study Sociology and develop his professional career in golf – as Jon Rahm would do years later. So at the age of 18 she moved to live in Scottsdale (Arizona), where she lives with her caddy boyfriend, James, and has not returned home except to visit the aitas monthly, to savor the stews of her mother, Chus. Machiñena, or to walk through the mountains of the Ulzama valley where he grew up.
In 2011 I made the leap to professional and earned a card for the Ladies European Tour, which she won on her debut: at 22 years old she already pocketed 270,000 euros. Carlota took off: Rookie of the year, Order of Merit, fixed in the majors, first call to the Solheim Cup (2013), the first she won, achieving the three points she played for, which were decisive for Europe to win for the first time on American soil. …
Since then, in this decade, Ciganda has established herself as one of the best players in the world – she is currently 28th in the ranking; was top 10 in 2019–, has been to two Olympic Games (39th in Rio and 29th in Tokyo), has won nine individual professional titles –two on the American LGPA Tour circuit and six on the European Ladies European Tour –, in addition to four Solheim Cup.
In this last title, played at the Finca Cortesín in Málaga, Ciganda was decisive by achieving four wins in four duels and the goal of the 14-all draw that retained the crown for Europe. Carlota only has to overcome the barrier of winning a major.
