If Queen Elizabeth I played golf: rated 86, best at course IQ

Queen Elizabeth I as a golfer: scouting report

Queen Elizabeth I would play golf the way she ran a court full of ambitious advisers: patiently, shrewdly and always a few moves ahead. Course IQ is the top mark on her card. She reigned for more than forty four years and was famously well educated, reading and speaking Latin, Greek, French and Italian, and that same sharp mind would solve a golf course hole by hole rather than trying to overpower it.

Her nerve is right behind her course IQ. She took the throne at twenty five in an age that offered a queen very little room for error, and she held it for decades by keeping her composure and her own counsel. That is exactly the temperament a golfer needs on the back nine. Her putting is the best part of her shotmaking, and her irons and short game are nearly level with it, which gives her a complete scoring game from a hundred yards in. She was also a keen horsewoman and a lively dancer who loved music at court, so there is athletic rhythm in her swing even if raw power is not part of it.

Driving is the weakness. She would rather find the fairway than chase distance, so The Long Course Championship, where carry and length decide everything, is her worst fit. She belongs at The Links Open, on windswept courses where strategy and imagination matter most and a well placed low runner beats a towering drive. Her reign gave its name to an entire era of English history, and that is the sort of lasting presence she brings to a roster. Draft her early as a scoring anchor and pair her with a big hitter to cover the long weeks.

Plays like A calculating tactician who never plays the shot she does not need

Put Queen Elizabeth I in your lineup

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