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By Shannon Owens
What's next for 17-year-old golf phenom Lexi Thompson after charging through junior and amateur competitions and becoming the youngest player at the time to qualify for the U.S. Women's Open? Being immortalized in a Tiger Woods video game, of course.
"I didn't see it coming, but once my manager, Bobby [Kreusler], told me, I was so excited to get this experience," Thompson said. "I mean to be on a video game ... there's nothing like that."
Except actually meeting Woods.
Watch Lexi behind-the-scenes in "Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14"
Thompson met her golf idol for the first time in August during a private reception for the competitors in the Notah Begay III Foundation Challenge in Verona, N.Y. The 12-player tournament was split into two groups of six American golfers and six Asian golfers for an East versus West challenge. Thompson and Cristie Kerr were the two LPGA competitors invited to compete on the West team.
"I posted a picture of me and him on my Facebook, and a lot of my friends were going crazy saying, 'That's so sick that you met him.'" Thompson said. "They're definitely a little jealous. But he's just a normal guy and a world-class player, obviously."
Life after London — Jessica Hardy
Much like Woods, the juxtaposition of the normal and abnormal seems to be a dominant theme in Thompson's meteoric rise to golf fame.
She is the second-youngest player to win a LPGA tournament after 15-year-old Lydia Ko, who won the Canadian Women's Open this season. But Thompson still sits in rarified air of women's golf. She is just the second woman to wear a motion-capture suit for the "Tiger Woods PGA Tour" video game. Paula Creamer did it two years ago.
Samantha Davies's Solo Odyssey
Read more about Lexi after the break!
