Helen Briem: The German golf hope in portrait

“The place is extremely long, tight in many places and it is still very windy,” says Helen Briem and runs the hood of her hoodies over his head on the terrace of the club house of the Green Eagle Golf Course, 50 kilometers south of Hamburg. Under this, your long ponytail leaves out. Helen Briem breathes deeply: “This place is a real challenge.”

The 19-year-old is just back from the trial round of the course that the German Golf Association classifies as the most difficult in the country, called the “Green Monster”. This is where Briem competes with the Amundi German Masters, the first profit tournament in Germany this year, the only one in this country with the entire elite of the Ladies European Tour. Pressure? Don’t feel pressure. “Pressure and great expectations always come from yourself.” And after a break, Helen Briem adds: “You shouldn’t forget: I am only eleven months professional for the day. You don’t have to bring that much yet.”

In fact, many of her expect nothing less than victory. Helen Briem is considered the greatest talent in Europe in international women’s golf, some even say in the world. Last year she was the first German to make it number 1 on the amateur world rankings. As an amateur, she won three times in a row in the professional league. And at her first tournament as a professional on the Ladies European Tour, she also emerged as the winner – a historical success.

Now the favorite is working on the “Green Monster” on the next coup, but she only says: “I’m much younger than most. I don’t have the experience yet. I know that I can play in front. But the more experience you have, the better you can play.”

Briem is already doing her balls a lot further than almost all of the competition. With 280-meter discounts, the 1.90-meter athlete reaches lengths that are common in men. This is also why experts certify the potential to be able to become one of the best golfers in the world. One that can dominate the scene as it was with men Tiger Woods. But she says: “I never had the intention of becoming a professional golfer.” Until a year ago, she didn’t even watch Profigolf on television. To this day, she prefers to see skiing or biathlon on TV than the sport in which she is preparing to become a big one.

Your sports heroes all come from winter sports. The ski racers Mikaela Shiffrin or Lindsey Vonn, as well as the biathlete Laura Dahlmeier. Why? While Helen Briem is still considering, her father Jochen, 55, answers for her: “They just won everything that works.” In fact, the sports are not that far apart. “The athletes are always on their own. With slalom, when shooting in biathlon, and also with the Golf: it’s always about nerve strength.”

This is exactly one of her greatest advantages that Helen Briem makes a exceptional gale: her mental power. “You have to learn to win,” says Helen Briem and almost smiles. “I am lucky enough to have played many tournaments as a child, always at a high level, always at the forefront.” Very often it happens that she immediately opened the first train with a birdie, i.e. less than a place of space. Every professional is already looking forward to it. A birdie at the start as a bang scores competition right from the start. “But if you get on in the end, you only decide on the last track, the last put. You need patience,” says Briem. “If it is pointed on button, you need to know: How does your body react, what does the adrenaline do. And you also have to be able to read your opponent.”

Her father Jochen, owner of a company for measurement technology in Nürtingen, Swabian, helps, hobby golfer with Handicap 10. When Helen Drei was, he pushed a golf club for the first time. Since she played competitive golf, he has always been at her side as a caddy. Of course, he also went to Garmisch with her for the Ski World Cup race in the late winter to meet the superstar Lindsay Vonn. Now Helen Briem knows each of her three sports idols personally, spoke to all three. “Of course that was a highlight,” says the father, who raised the value that the daughter did not neglect the school in all the sport.

Despite Golf, Helen Briem took her high school diploma last year with a grade of 1.9. Shortly afterwards she moved to the profile warehouse, although that was not planned. “But my horizon was expanded with every start. And at some point I took the step.” But Bernhard Langer, who is still on the pitch at almost 70, does not want to emulate it. “This is not the plan,” she says. She also likes skiing too much. In addition: “It needs a plan B after the Golf.”

Despite all the successes, she has studied pharmaceutical technology at the Albstadt/ Sigmaringen University of Applied Sciences since autumn. It was very good for her to “do something for the head next to the sport.” Discipline is of course needed at around 20 weeks of tournament a year, in which father and daughter are traveling around the world together. Discipline was always there. “And Helen can determine how much she wants to study,” says father Briem. “She can do it how much she can do.”

This is obviously a lot. The other day, at a tournament in Tenerife, she was assigned a late discount time. “Then I just did a math test beforehand,” she says. Passed? “Naturally.” The tournament ended them as second. Now she wants to exist in Green Eagle, although she knows that some of the colleagues who “caught four ordinary days can win the thing”.

Of course, it also depends on the wind, “her biggest enemy”, as her father says. In any case, she has already improved in a short game and putting. For the experts in the scene, it is only a matter of time of time when it changes to the professional tour in the USA, where the collected world elite plays for large prize money. “Conceivable,” says Briem only. “This results when you have the consistency. But nothing can be planned in sports.” The father adds that the top ten in the European tour have the chance to qualify for the US tour. Helen is currently in fifth place in Europe. “If it doesn’t work this year, maybe next year,” says the father. “It would not surprise me. You can’t miss such a chance.”

Then Helen Briem would already be in the country in which she was big: gold at the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. It is already considered the great hope to the German Association there. For Helen Briem, the games are “the highest importance”. “But honestly. I don’t have a clear plan. Everything step by step,” she says. “Olympics are the highest, that’s the last stage.”