When Julie Aime was a youngster in Nice, France, she had aspirations of being a lawyer. But instead of a putting criminals behind bars, she ended up shooting birdies and pars.
Aime attended Lamar on a golf scholarship and has now come full circle as associate head coach of LU’s women’s team.
“If you were to tell me back then that I would spend my days outside and just be on the golf course and be on the athletic side of the world, I would have never believed you,” Aime said.
Aime played golf on Wednesdays and Saturdays as a hobby while focusing on her studies. Her home course was contacted by recruiters who asked if they had any students who were interested in continuing in golf after high school.
“Apparently, my home school and course gave my name so I was contacted and asked if I wanted to play golf for an American university while getting my studies done,” Aime said. “I had absolutely no idea what college in America or golf universities were like, but I just wanted warm weather, a good team and coach. And LU was Division 1 and doing really well at the time, so it sounded like a good opportunity.”
Aime said she quickly realized that she needed to change her mindset from golf being just a hobby.
“I still had so much room for improvement that when I got here I could tell right away, if I would put in the work, I would get so much better,” she said. “It was very different from what I grew up with at home, and obviously the biggest challenge was the heat, the humidity, and different types of grass and courses.
“It was almost a blessing that I didn’t know too much about what I had at home, because it was not too bad of a transition when I came here still learning.”
Aime played golf for LU from 2010 to 2013, earning a bachelor’s in corporate communications before staying and an extra year as a graduate assistant. When her visa expired, she moved back to France.
“I missed America, but I was just trying to get back into the normal way of life back home,” she said. “I ended up getting a job at a golf course in the south of France, and during my lunch breaks I would go to the driving range and hit some shots now and then, just because I was missing the game a little.
“One day, a very close family friend who’s known my family for several generations looked at my swing and said, ‘If you give me a year, we can get you back on track and get your swing ready for Q-school. He was the one who put that seed in my brain at the time.”
Qualifying school is a multi-stage competitive tournament system that allows aspiring professional golfers a chance to earn their card for professional tours.
“It’s in stages,” she said. “You have to be within that top percentage to move on and qualify for the next stage and so on. The further you go in that competition, the higher the category your card is on tour.
“If you go all the way to the finals and really get going on those final rounds, you can get full access.”
Less than a year after deciding to pursue professional golf, Aime went through Q-School in Morocco and qualified for the Ladies European Tour in 2016.
Aime played for two years, competing on the LET and the LET Access Series, winning the Westin La Quinta Golf Championship in Spain for her first pro tournament win.
A travel snafu led Aime to think about the Ladies PGA Tour in America, the top ladies tour.
“I missed a flight one day for a tournament because it was overbooked,” she said. “I went to have breakfast and was waiting for the next flight. I ended up meeting another girl that was playing in the tournament.
“She was from Mexico, but lived in Miami, and I just happened to ask her how she lived in the U.S. being a foreigner. She mentioned that if I did Q-School but on American soil, I could get my visa back up and live in America.”
Aime went to Q-School that year and earned her tour card as well as a new visa. She would go on to play the LPGA Tour from 2019 to 2023. She was named 2019 Epson Tour Rookie of the year. During her time on tour she made the cut 60 times and recorded seven top-10 finishes in 89 events, before retiring from professional golf in 2024.
“We loved golf and gave it our all, but my husband and I wanted to move on to the next chapter by settling down and living in Beaumont,” Aime said. “But like any retiring athlete, it was very hard to get back into normal life, because you’ve lived such a weird lifestyle that most people don’t understand.”
Aime started giving lessons and said she really enjoyed sharing what she loved and it kind of got her back into the golf community.
“A lot of people knew that I moved here for Lamar, so they were kind of putting two and two together,” she said. “They said, ‘Now that you’re home, how about you start teaching at Lamar, and it would be the best of both worlds because you’re doing that now.’ It was a little idea that got inserted in my brain maybe a year and a half ago but nothing really came out of it.”
Aime said she was open to the idea of being a coach, but didn’t want to force it. When the associate head coach position opened, she was contacted.
“Within two to three weeks I had the office keys and computer, and everything was so sudden ,” she said. “|But I’m so glad, because it feels like a full circle moment to me. It feels like I never left, because I’ve actually never really left. It’s so cool to be able to give back and be on the other side this time.”
As a professional golfer, Aime is used to focusing on one shot at a time. Her career path has seen her take advantages of each opportunity that comes her way. Coaching is just the next shot and it would not be a surprise to see her ace it.