Time & Perspective Quote by Natalie Gulbis

There’s a particular kind of awe in sports that doesn’t look like trash talk or chest-thumping; it looks like gratitude with a spine. Natalie Gulbis isn’t just praising Nancy Lopez here, she’s locating herself inside a lineage. “Always been a role model” does two things at once: it signals personal inspiration, and it quietly reminds you that women’s golf has a relatively short, hard-won canon of visible heroes. Lopez isn’t a generic idol; she’s a proof-of-possibility figure, the kind whose career made later careers imaginable.

The phrasing is carefully humble without being small. “To have the opportunity” frames access as earned but not entitled, a nod to how rare real proximity to your heroes can be even at the top level. The subtext is about validation: playing “for her” isn’t merely playing alongside her, it’s performing under the gaze of someone whose approval carries cultural weight. That’s mentorship as a kind of spotlight.

Then there’s the pivot to “spend time with her,” which broadens the achievement beyond the scorecard. Gulbis is telling you what matters in an era when athletes are brands and highlight reels: intimacy, conversation, being welcomed into the room where the sport’s memory lives. “Has been amazing” is intentionally unadorned, the plain language of someone trying not to oversell a feeling that already sells itself. It reads like reverence, but also like a bridge being built in public.