Life comes easily to Kelsey Bennett.
She is stoic, has a magnetic character, a dazzling smile and – outwardly at least – the kind of take-the-bull-by-the-horns attitude that makes her bulletproof.
Then there’s golf.
While much of the off-course positivity flows into her game, there have been a few – nay, many – times when even she must have thought: Will I ever get that victory?
That stress-relieving “W” that opens tournament doors, balances cheque books and, most importantly, takes the sporting world’s worst words directly from the vocabulary, `What if …’.
Fittingly, it took a tempest at the Australian Women’s Classic for Bennett to rise to the place that so many of her admirers thought was inevitable.
Having bogeyed three holes in succession from the sixth – admittedly on the toughest stretch when southerly winds whip across Magenta Shores – her nerves jangled, almost audibly.
Then came the steel that really defines the 26-year-old throughout her life.
With biblical rain and 70km/h gusts lashing into the faces of the final groups as they stood on the 10th hole, the dream she’s worked so hard for could so easily have literally been washed away.
But not this time.
Bennett found that magic that those who watched her progress through Golf New South Wales ranks knew was there.
She made a gutsy par on the 10th and followed with another on the 11th – both holes that were “sodas” on days 1-3, but were suddenly golfing behemoths.
She turned downwind on 12 and ripped an enormous drive, but couldn’t cash in with a birdie it deserved.
And then her special moment.
With English pair Caley McGinty and Meghan MacLaren nipping at her heels, Bennett stepped to the 13th tee to confront a 151m par-3 that had claimed more victims than Jack the Ripper – so much so that the group in front each played provisional tee shots to a normally innocuous flag.
She rifled her tee shot inside 10 feet and later admitted it might have been the best shot of her life.
Until the very next one, which she rolled in for her third birdie of the round and her first breathable gap on the leaderboard.
She drove the ball in the greenside bunker on the 14th, a downhill, down-gale par four and for the first time in about three full rounds, had a bit of luck on the greens when her birdie putt finally lipped in.
One by one, her rivals fell away, and Bennett was left with the greatest moment in any pro golfer’s life – a (relatively) stress-free walk up the last hole with an effectively unassailable lead.
Drowned in the champagne that comes with such monumental breakthrough moments, particularly on the global Ladies European Tour, she said all the right things in presentations and press conferences.
As if she’d done it all before.
But the glint in her eye gave her true feelings away.
“I guess it means I can go to the (Women’s British) Open and book flights for my Nan now to come and watch,” Bennett said as some of the situation’s gravity sank in.
She’s going to wake up on Monday morning the No. 1-ranked golfer on the LET.
“That’s pretty damn cool, I’ll hang on to that.
“I need to keep it there the whole year, though.”
Come on Kels, enough!
You’ve earned this moment – take a few more to savour it.
And leave the rest of us to ponder the genuine possibility of it being the first of many.
