Malene Krolboll Hansen's journey: From Denmark to the best ever at Coastal Carolina

Malene Krolboll Hansen created a list of pros and cons before she decided to attend Coastal Carolina on a golf scholarship in 2014.

At the top of the cons list was the distance Coastal is from her family in Denmark. More than 4,000 miles is a daunting number for a teenager about to leave home.

But she also had an unwritten list of goals in life, and attending an American university was going to facilitate those. So she took the leap.

“It’s a long way,” Hansen said. “In the end I want to be a pro golfer and I want to live of golf someday. I knew I needed to get better and I wasn’t ready to go pro after high school. So I knew I needed to come here first and get better, then try later.”

Coastal will end its season Wednesday in the final round of the NCAA Regional in Tallahassee, Fla., where the Chanticleers are in 15th place through two rounds, and the greatest women’s golf career in school history will also come to an end.

Hansen has won four individual titles – three this season including the final two events prior to the regional – has the two best single-season scoring averages in program history at 72.66 last season and 71.41 through the conference tournament this season, and has the best career scoring average by two full shots at 72.50.

She’s also the 2017 Sun Belt Conference Women’s Golfer of the Year and is a shoe-in to repeat the honor this year, and is ranked 40th in the Women’s World Amateur Golf Ranking.

“She has a lot of the intangibles, she has the whole package,” CCU women’s golf coach Katie Quinney said. “Really it’s about short game and making putts. The days she shoots 66, 67 she makes the putts, the days she shoots 72, 73 she maybe misses a few greens and doesn’t quite make the birdies.”

Hansen is certainly happy the pros outweighed the cons.

“I have had so many great experiences," Hansen said. "We have traveled so many places and I’ve had great teams and great supporters along the way. It’s kind of sad it has to end soon, but then a new one starts.”

Hansen has earned a marketing degree and has a work visa to remain in the U.S. She plans to go home to Denmark for a couple months this summer, play in the Women’s World Amateur Team Championships in Ireland in late August, and return to Myrtle Beach to prepare for the LPGA Tour Qualifying Tournament. She intends to use Myrtle Beach and CCU’s facilities as the base of her pro career.

“Of all the players I’ve ever coached she has the best chance to get [LPGA status] on her first go at it,” said Quinney, who was an assistant at her alma mater Florida State for three years before taking over at Coastal 10 years ago.

Hansen’s 5-foot-7 frame, solid build and dedication to strength are among her best attributes in the game. She hits the weight room five or six days a week.

Quinney describes Hansen’s ball-striking as “phenomenal. She drives the ball as good as anyone in the country, her ball-striking is as good as anybody, she’s a great bunker player and a good wedge player,” Quinney said. “Really she does have the overall package to play any type of golf course in any type of weather or conditions, because she is physically one of the absolute strongest girls in college golf.

“You’d be more impressed if you had video of her in the weight room than on the driving range. She can muscle it through anything. She’s as strong and fit as anybody. She could play 50 holes in a row if she needed to.”

Finding CCU

Hansen said golf isn’t played by many women in Denmark, though her mother is a golfer. She started playing at age 6 because her parents were members at a club and wanted her to be able to take part in family rounds on vacations.

“I didn’t care much for golf in the beginning, I was doing so many other sports that I would rather to do,” Hansen said. “It was kind of a drag, but the way my parents described it as soon as I hit the first shot I loved it and I wouldn’t go home. But getting me there was the challenge. Starting tournaments and having people support you in the golf club, it started to get fun.”

Quinney credits the Hansen family’s loyalty for her landing at CCU. Quinney was one of the first two coaches to recruit her, and that was before she won the prestigious Annika Invitational Europe hosted by Annika Sorenstam in 2013. Quinney walked all 18 holes of the final round to watch Hansen win.

After the victory, Hansen began getting calls and attention from some top programs throughout the U.S.

“She stayed really loyal to the relationship she and I had been forming,” Quinney said.

Hansen wanted a school in the south so she could play year-round, and her final two choices were Coastal and Baylor. Quinney’s attentiveness throughout the recruiting process played a role in Hansen’s choice.

“I like Coastal a lot because there are a lot of golf courses here and it’s the place for golf,” Hansen said. “I like the school because I’m not just a number here, I’m a person. The professors care about what you do and know your name. The players on the team were nice and I just liked the place.”

Hansen had to make a number of adjustments after arriving at CCU.

“My freshman year was difficult. I really wanted to go home. I was very home sick and the culture was very different from what I imagined,” Hansen said. “. . . Suddenly you can’t call your parents every time and you don’t have your friends, and you don’t know anybody when you get here. I wanted to go home, but I knew how big of an opportunity this was so I figured I’d give it a year more and it only got better.”

Hansen struggled with the coaches’ supervision of her game and team-oriented drills. In Denmark, she was used to practicing on her own at home and setting up her own practice plan while seeing an instructor no more than once a week, even through her time on the Denmark National Team. So she wanted to determine what parts of her game she worked on and when. “It has gotten better, I just learned to do my things on my time,” said Hansen, who is analytical about her game.

“She’s really stubborn, which has helped and hurt her over the years,” Quinney said. “The positives of having a stubborn player are that they usually are extremely determined, extremely passionate, extremely dedicated to their goals.”

The coaching staff worked with Hansen on a new putting grip early in the spring and it has paid dividends. “She’s very coachable when you can explain to her from statistics, from black and white that this is what needs to happen, this is where we are and this is where we need to be,” Quinney said.

Hansen also struggled with authority in general. She said in Denmark, it’s common to question instructors and debate issues. “Over here there is a little more authority that the professor is right or the coach is right,” Hansen said. “I had a few problems testing my luck in the beginning.”

There were also some cultural adjustments. “You’re very friendly over here. I had a lot of problems with the ‘How are you?’ ” Hansen said. “I stopped [to talk] when people asked me how I was doing, and people didn’t stop. So I got very confused. I thought I had met them before and I hadn’t, so that was always fun.”

Hansen is playing in a regional for the second consecutive year. She played as an individual last year after the Chants finished ninth in the Sun Belt championship. CCU won the 2018 conference tournament by 34 strokes on April 16, and Hansen won the individual title by five strokes over junior teammate Sena Ersoy.

“She is very selfless when it comes to the team,” Quinney said. “This has been a special year for her to finally have the team effort she deserves around her, having from top to bottom a team that can compete this well. I know she’s having more fun. . . . They work so hard. They’re really dedicated to everything. This has been a really special team to coach.”

Hansen tied for 45th in last year’s regional in Texas and is tied for 71st at 8-over 152 through two rounds at the Florida regional, where Ersoy leads the team with a 149, which is tied for 48th.

It's not the finish she wanted to her stellar career, but Hansen leaves the program with her name atop numerous categories in the CCU women's golf record book.

Hansen’s school records include the lowest 18-hole score of 6-under 65, lowest 36-hole score of 9-under 135, which she shares with Jessica Alexander in 2011, and lowest 54-hole score of 9-under 207.

“It has been an amazing journey,” Hansen said.

This story was originally published May 8, 2018 at 7:05 PM with the headline "Malene Krolboll Hansen's journey: From Denmark to the best ever at Coastal Carolina."