Suzanne Thompson went from dusty clubs in a shed to inter-club success and a growing social media community that’s bringing more women into the game. Caomh Breen Allen explains.
The golf clubs sat in Suzanne Thompson’s shed for years, an unwanted Christmas present from her husband. She had been expecting a designer handbag.
It took a Friday scramble in Wexford, a bottle of prosecco in the car park, and absolutely no pressure to score to change everything. “You could have an air shot,” she recalls. “It was just a scramble — no pressure — and I absolutely loved it.”
That was 2018. Today, Thompson is an inter-club player at Corrstown Golf Club in Dublin, a brand ambassador for the KPMG Women’s Irish Open, and the founder of Swing & Tonic, a golf lifestyle page that has grown organically to nearly 4,500 followers with an audience spanning Ireland, the UK and America.
From shed to scratch
Thompson’s early relationship with the game was stop-start. She grew up in Swords, where golf simply wasn’t part of her world. “I never saw another girl playing golf,” she says. “I was never on a real golf course.” Occasional stay-and-play trips with her husband John went no better. “I lost more golf balls and got more frustrated than anything.”
The Wexford scramble changed that. Four weekends in July 2018 were enough to get her hooked. She joined Ballymoney Golf Club, earned her first handicap, then moved to Corrstown. By 2023 she was playing inter-club, helping her team to Leinster North Challenge Cup success.
What the game gave her, she says, goes well beyond the sport itself. “The golf is like a tonic to me. It’s my escape from being a mammy, from work and from running the business. Even if I’m playing bad, I’ve got headspace. Chasing a white ball around the field — it’s my yoga.”
Building a community
The social media side began almost by accident. Thompson was posting casually about courses and trips when she noticed the engagement. “I was getting lots of reshares,” she says. “Everyone was saying, ‘the golf, the golf!'” Her husband encouraged her to take it further, and Swing & Tonic launched in November 2023.
In just over two years the page has drawn followers from across Ireland and beyond. More valuable to Thompson than the numbers, though, are the connections — women she has met through Golf Ireland initiatives like Chip and Chat. “I’ve met friends that I’ll have for life,” she says.
The page has also opened doors. Trips to Old Head, St Andrews and the Olympic Club in San Francisco have followed, alongside a TaylorMade launch event in London where she found herself on a range next to Charley Hull and Annabel Dimmock. “I was literally feet away watching Charley Hull whack the ball indoors,” she says. “Even the noise of it. That was a great experience.”
Her distinctive pink PING driver — picked up by chance — has become something of a calling card, and will be making appearances at Play in Pink charity events throughout the year.
The next generation
Thompson has her own stake in growing the women’s game closer to home. Her five-year-old daughter Tilly has just started lessons with club pro Brian Sweeney, following her two older brothers into golf — and the early signs are promising. “She does dancing and singing like every girl wants to do,” says Thompson, “but she actually gets more excited about the golf.”
” To have all the family playing together would be incredible. It is one of those sports that generations of families can play together.”
It also reflects a wider ambition Thompson shares with Swing & Tonic — making golf feel like it belongs to everyone. “Golf is owned by nobody,” she says. “Nobody owns the sport. It’s out there for everybody.”
