SINGAPORE – When Celine Boutier first burst onto the LPGA Tour scene in 2018, she found the going much tougher than expected.

Eager to prove herself after stellar performances the previous season on the LPGA’s developmental Symetra Tour, where she captured two wins and eight top-10 finishes, the Frenchwoman instead struggled against the world’s best women’s golfers.

“I felt like I lost myself a little bit,” Boutier, 30, told The Straits Times on Feb 27 about her early days on tour. “With how good everyone else was, I lost confidence because I looked around too much and tried too hard to be like everyone else.

“I had a mental block and a lot of performance anxiety.”

Undaunted, she moved to set things right.

Over the next five years, she worked with a sports psychologist to help her handle the stress. She also began fine-tuning her training routine.

Instead of spending long hours on the range practising her swing, Boutier limited herself to an hour plus distance control with her wedges.

She tried to be on the course at least three times a week to familiarise herself with more stressful situations.

“You just have to learn from experience how to channel (the pressure) and not turn it into a negative thing,” she said.

“Even if it’s playing with other people and like gambling, I feel that is a good way to test yourself under pressure. You have to be comfortable when you are in contention and be able to trust that you can pull it off.

“I feel like in 2022 I had a lot of top 10s, positions where I was in contention and I wasn’t really able to convert them into wins.”

Boutier’s efforts finally paid off in 2023, when she displayed remarkable composure to win four times on the LPGA Tour, including her first Major – the Evian Championship – on home soil.

Of her four wins in her breakout season, two of them came down to sudden-death play-offs.

At the Drive On Championship last March, she edged out Georgia Hall with a birdie on the first extra hole.

Boutier said: “I think that was really the turning point for me to have more confidence when I was playing for the win. Getting it as early as March helped me.”

Seven months later, at the Maybank Championship, Boutier recovered from four shots behind former Thai world No. 1 Atthaya Thitikul and outlasted her in a thrilling nine-hole play-off.

“I posted a solid round and was kind of waiting around in the clubhouse for a while. And right before the first play-off hole, we got a weather delay,” she said.

“I really just tried to stay patient and settled myself in the locker room by myself, to be a bit more centred on staying calm and staying in the present.”

As the world No. 3 gears up for an eventful year in 2024, she is relishing the chance to feature at the Paris Olympics in August.

Playing at Le Golf National, which is just a 30-minute drive from Clamart, the Paris suburb where she grew up, will bring a mixture of emotions, said Boutier.

“I’m really looking forward to experiencing an Olympic tournament at home.

“I think it’s more excitement than nerves. It’s always fun to compete when my family and friends are there, but I also never want to disappoint anybody. I always want to put on a good week for the fans.”

France is a happy hunting ground for Boutier – her first Major came a year ago at Evian-les-Bains while she captured the Open de France Dames on the Ladies European Tour at Deauville in 2021.

But she was coy when asked about the prospect of an Olympic triumph.

“The Olympics is in August and we’re only in February. I’m just trying to focus on the next few tournaments and to get my game as sharp as possible heading into the summer,” she said.

Boutier has the opportunity to kickstart her season with a good showing at this week’s HSBC Women’s World Championship at Sentosa Golf Club, where she finished joint 11th and eight shots behind champion Ko Jin-young in 2023.