When Anika found out she had been awarded one of the Valderrama Foundation's first
scholarships, her reaction was instant. “I was really, really excited,” she remembers,
“because a new part of my life was going to begin.”
She was right — and not only on the golf course. Ask Anika what the game means to her and you get an answer wise beyond her years. “Golf, for me, is a way of learning,” she says. “You learn skills for how to manage yourself on the golf course and outside it. You learn a lot about yourself — that you have to keep calm — and about all the things you can improve.”
“Golf, for me, is a way of learning. You learn a lot about yourself.”
Her ambitions stretch across the Atlantic. “My dreams for the future are to go to the USA with a golf scholarship, to become a professional golf player, and to play in a lot of big tournaments.” Between her education at Sotogrande International School and her training at La Reserva Club, every part of that path is now open to her.
But when Anika talks about what the scholarship has already changed, it isn't trophies she mentions first — it's school. “I would like to thank the Foundation, because they changed my life in a really good way. I really needed a change of school, and now I'm so happy in this school. So — thank you.”
Sometimes the biggest transformation a scholarship brings isn't the one anyone planned. For Anika, it has already begun.
