Olympic Gold Medalist Now Focused on Professional Golf

By Lisa D. Mickey

Vera Shimanskaya walks with the poise of an athlete who has achieved at the highest level. Olympic gold medalists tend to do that.

And now that she has shifted her focus away from rhythmic gymnastics, the Russian Olympian knows that patience and hard work will be the key in making her transition to professional golf. Shimanskaya missed the cut at the recent Duramed FUTURES Tour Qualifying Tournament, but the impeccably fit athlete with perfect posture returned for the final round to walk the course as a spectator. She was there to see where she soon hopes to be.

“I don’t have a lot of experience in golf and I need a lot of work,” said Shimanskaya, 26, who won the gold medal in rhythmic gymnastics at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia. “I just need to play more tournaments.”

Remarkably, Shimanskaya began playing golf less than three years ago. And while her scoring still hovers in the 80s, her swing is solid – a testament to her athleticism and focused determination.

Several years ago, another high-level athlete, Californian Gabrielle Reece, who won the 1997 Beach Volleyball World Championships, retired from competitive volleyball and attempted to launch her golf career. But unlike Shimanskaya, Reece never attempted to qualify for either the LPGA or Duramed FUTURES Tours. Shimanskaya actually turned pro in October at the Ladies European Tour Pre-Qualifying Tournament in Italy, but also missed the cut there.

While those starts could be discouraging to some, Shimanskaya has used her experience at both the LET and Duramed FUTURES Tour qualifiers as a gauge to evaluate her progress.

“I learn from other players and it is important experience,” said Shimanskaya, who wears a small tattoo on her right upper arm that bears the words, “Olympic Champion Sydney 2000.”

The Russian has been watching and learning sport techniques all of her life, so the latest chapter in her athletic development is not a new concept.

“She’s such a gifted athlete, so the potential is certainly there for her in golf,” said her instructor Larry Marshall, a senior instructor and the director of the post-graduate program at IMG’s David Leadbetter Golf Academy in Bradenton, Fla. “She has a high level of athleticism and a focus that you don’t see every day.”

Gymnastics became a part of her life at age 4, and by age 19, she had won an Olympic gold medal. She also won the 1998 and 1999 World Gymnastics Championship and in 2001, she added another title at the European World Championship. Now widely recognized and respected in Russia, Shimanskaya returned home and opened a gymnastics academy in 2002. She taught many children herself and the academy still operates under her name.

But it was the mother of one of her young gymnasts who gave her the idea about golf. The woman worked at the Russian Golf Association and often spoke to Shimanskaya about the game. The Olympian took her first golf swing on an indoor golf simulator at a special event where prominent sports figures were invited. She was instructed on how to hold and swing the club and ended up winning the event’s golf competition.

“Before that, I had never heard anything about golf,” she said.

She got another glimpse of the game when she traveled to the U.S. in 2002 for the World Gymnastics Championship. She stayed in a hotel in Las Vegas and saw “idiots chasing golf balls outside in really hot weather” from her hotel room window. Soon after that, she was invited to play in an amateur golf event. Shimanskaya may have remembered those “idiots” back in Las Vegas and felt a little out of her league swinging a golf club, but she did her best to disguise it.

“I weighed 10 kilos [20 pounds] less than I do now and I felt like I was flying with the driver when I swung it,” she said. “But I wanted to prove to myself that I could do this.”

Shimanskaya knew that Russian sisters Maria and Anastasia Kostina were playing professionally in America on the Duramed FUTURES Tour and followed their progress on-line after meeting their mom, Katia, who works in the pro shop at Moscow Country Club. Knowing that other Russians were excelling in golf, Shimanskaya began planning a new future for herself.

“In gymnastics, I was taught how to use my practice time and to be very committed to my concentration, as well as how to handle my emotions in competition,” she said. “I was used to 12-hour days of practice, so I thought, ‘I can do this.’ ”

Another thing that appealed to Shimanskaya was that in rhythmic gymnastics, a competitive routine would last for 2 ½ minutes, but in a competitive round of golf, players had four to five hours to perform at their best.

“In gymnastics, if you make one mistake, you cannot fix it, but in golf, if you make a mistake, you have plenty of holes to make up for it,” she said.

She also knew that she had already reached the peak of her gymnastics career, but at age 20, she wasn’t ready to simply rest on the laurels of her past accomplishments.

“Of course I was really happy to accomplish my goals, but I felt an emptiness because there were no more goals left,” she said. “In gymnastics, you’re ‘old’ when you are 20, so I wondered what else I could do? I opened the [gymnastics] school because that was all I had learned to do all of my life. But then I realized that I needed another challenge.”

So Shimanskaya and her husband, Vladislav Lunev, a former Russian hurdler in track and field, packed up and established residence in Orlando, Fla. Shimanskaya traveled from Orlando to Bradenton, Fla., twice a week for four months for golf lessons at the David Leadbetter Golf Academy. She returned to Russia and played in some amateur tournaments at home, preparing for the LET’s Q-School.

“I’ve had access to other athletes taking up golf, but I’ve never had one who was shooting for the LPGA Tour,” said Marshall, her swing coach. “I told Vera that the LPGA is really the equivalent of winning the gold medal in women’s golf.

“How far she goes is ultimately reliant on what’s inside of her,” he added. “You can tell that she is motivated to learn and succeed, and I’m trying to help her focus on the right things. But really, what she has to do most is just to keep playing and playing, wherever she can.”

Golf still falls in the shadows of the various Olympic sports in Russia, but it is growing slowly. Shimanskaya noted that the mayor of Moscow has proposed the “building of 500 golf courses,” but that proposal is years away. Actual golf courses where Russian youngsters can learn to play currently are limited to two 18-hole tracts in the entire nation -- making golf an unknown sport for most Russians.

And while Shimanskaya’s first attempt at earning status on the LET or Duramed FUTURES Tour fell a little short, the Olympian is not discouraged. She will continue her lessons and training and will continue trying to gain competitive experience on mini-tours wherever she can compete. By joining the Kostina sisters in the attempt to help generate more awareness for the game in her home country, Shimanskaya has found a new sense of excitement to compete in golf.

“I’m trying my best and I think I have a chance,” she said. “It’s very important that I start playing golf and that other well-known athletes begin playing it so the public can see it. The press is interested in what Olympic athletes are doing and if they see golf, they will write about it. Right now, they think golf is just a sport for grandmas and grandpas. I once thought that myself and I thought golf was easy, but then I realized, after walking 36 holes in the Russian Amateur Championships, that it was a lot harder than I thought.”

Still, an Olympian with the will to compete might have as much to look forward to as she has a competitive history from which to learn. One way or another, Vera Shimanskaya can see a lot of fairways and greens in her future.