5 lessons from the US Women’s Open champion to shoot low scores

Maja Stark’s win at the 2025 US Women’s Open was a great performance for the 25-year-old Swede. Already an LPGA, Solheim Cupper and Olympian, victory at Erin Hills marked another impressive achievement on his CV.

But the victory came at an unexpected cost.

“When I won, I kept thinking, Well, I just did the biggest thing I’ll ever do in my career,” Stark says: “For weeks, maybe months, I couldn’t stop thinking about that week. And it made me lose some motivation. I didn’t really know what to chase next.”

For the rest of the season, Stark worked with his team to regain that motivation — and recapture the form that won him the title at Erin Hills.

Now in 2026, Stark continues to strive to be better every day. Here’s how he and his coach, GOLF 100 Master Teacher Joe Hallett, work on each part of his game to achieve victory.

1. How to make more putts

Joe: Maja has a good pre-shoot schedule for greens. He will catch the ball with his right hand and see himself rolling into the hole. It’s a great way to get a feel for the distance and to see how the ball will react when it starts rolling towards the hole. It’s one thing to see the line – to hear that it’s really paying off.

Maja: I do this while standing or bending over. What I think works best is if you do it in slow motion – it’s good to set the tempo of the next stroke. During the rounds, I visualize this movement, but on the green, I do it: roll the ball into the hole with my strong hand and putt in the same place. Your tempo can’t help but improve.

2. How to save money all the time

Joe: You can’t hit everything green. This is where your short game can save you. Copy Maja. He uses different setups for great shots. He brings his feet together and moves his foot back, making what you might call a “closed” stance. Very few golfers do this, and few professionals, but it automatically stops him from bringing the club in the right direction.

Maja: I use this setup because I feel like it strengthens my lower body and almost ensures that I swing the club on line or even slightly off relative to my body (not the target line). What you get is really good communication! If you really want to get a good feel, set up like I did, but with your track foot on the toe and hit a few shots. Then, go for a walk. You won’t believe the results.

3. How to make more birds

Joe: Like any professional, Maja works the way he works, aiming to improve his swing. But he ends each practice session by trying to condense those swirling thoughts into a single feeling or word. If not, analytically disabled.

Maja: Keep any technical thoughts out of your work, but finish it with emotion. And never approach any round without a plan of how to best attack each hole. There will be a number of objectives; check the yard book and look for a few that you feel comfortable with and think of ways to get home with two different swings: a full shot and a small shot. If you passed both, well, you’re going to have a great day!

4. How to beat most vegetables

Joe: Another area where Maja has made big gains is in her iron shot sequence. He often made the mistake of “whipping” the club too far and inside his takeway [1]which led him to get a little “stuck” as he went back [2]. Now, he’s working on swinging the club back and forth first and then finishing [3]. It starts a chain reaction that helps him bring the club to the ball well and is optimized for pure ball pressure [4].

Maja: I hope you can see the difference in my old and new pickups, and how powerful and flighty I am when I approach impact. The key is to try to keep the clubhead out of my hands as I breathe. The hidden advantage is that, with my better delivery position, I have to do less work with my hands with the ball. Things are very stable now. The result: less curve and more zoom shots that land where I want them to.

5. How to take it forward

Joe: Maja is a strong player off the tee. Working with the experts at PING, he was able to improve his launch angle – a testament to the importance of matching your gear. Although Maja has sat comfortably in the top 50 in driving distance since joining the LPGA, he has never cracked the top 10. Maja gets her strength from the big windup and the powerful windup. When it all works, his swing speed is off the charts.

Maja: This is complicated, and it goes against what any golfer has been taught: Backswing creates speed, not swinging the fence on the way down. I focus on “easing” my driver swing as I reverse. Wider is better. A good way to get the right feel is to place the alignment stick on your target line directly behind the ball. As you begin to swing back, try to keep the clubhead of your driver as close to the club as possible, as if you are “painting the ground” as you begin to swing back. Fast range — and speed.