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    Golf’s Highs and Lows in 2024

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    There were a lot of exciting tournaments, but LIV still looms over the sport.Winning streaks — illustrious and quirky — defined professional golf for the best male and female players in 2024. They came amid pressure on the business models of both the men’s and women’s professional tours.The PGA Tour continues to struggle with how it’s going to make its tournaments more attractive to sponsors (who are asked to pay more in prize money) and fans who have been tuning out the weekly tournaments. It’s been over two years since its first star players joined LIV Golf and a year since the PGA Tour and its commissioner, Jay Monahan, announced a tentative agreement with LIV to coexist, and the PGA Tour still hasn’t worked out a way to unify the men’s game.For the L.P.G.A. Tour, prize money has continued to rise, but the tour itself continues to struggle to get attention for its roster of top-flight players.Nelly Korda lining up a putt at the CME Group Tour Championship last month in Naples, Fla. She began the year by winning five straight tournaments, tying the L.P.G.A. record.Michael Reaves/Getty ImagesNelly Korda, the No. 1 ranked women’s golfer, began the year by winning five straight tournaments. She tied the L.P.G.A. record, held by Annika Sorenstam and Nancy Lopez.“If I’m being honest, I have not thought about it at all,” Korda said in a press conference after the fifth consecutive victory.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Susie Maxwell Berning, Hall of Fame Golfer, Is Dead at 83

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      She often took time away from the tour for her family. But she tallied 11 championships, including three in the U.S. Women’s Open.Susie Maxwell Berning, a trailblazing three-time champion of the United States Women’s Open golf tournament who was known for her tenacity on the fairway and her grace off it, died on Wednesday at her home in Indio, in Southern California. She was 83.Her daughter Cindy Molchany confirmed the death. She said her mother had had lung cancer for two years.Emerging from Oklahoma City in the 1960s, when women’s professional golf was still a developing sport (she later estimated that there were only about 70 golfers on the tour at the time), she built a glittering career. She shone brightest when the stakes were highest. Four of her 11 wins on the L.P.G.A. tour were in major tournaments, including the Western Open in 1965.The other three were U.S. Open wins in 1968, 1972 and 1973. Berning was one of just six women to win three or more, along with Betsy Rawls, Babe Zaharias, Hollis Stacy, Annika Sorenstam and Mickey Wright — all members of the World Golf Hall of Fame. In 2021, Berning finally joined them in the Hall, which honors both male and female stars of the sport. She was inducted in the same class as Tiger Woods.Berning spoke at her induction into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2022. She was inducted in the same class as Tiger Woods.Sam Greenwood/Getty ImagesFull recognition of her accomplishments came slowly in large part because her career was abbreviated, as she consistently prioritized family.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Supporting the Next Wave of Female Golfers

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      Playing the sport is expensive, but several organizations are reaching out to help smooth the way in golf — and life.Alexis Lamadrid, a 17-year-old golfer from Phoenix, birdied the last five holes at Old Barnwell in Aiken, S.C., to win Underrated Golf’s event in June at one of the best new golf courses in the country.“I didn’t really think about it,” Lamadrid said in an interview.What she was thinking about was how the tour has helped her gain greater knowledge about the world. It was founded in 2019 by Stephen Curry — who led the U.S. basketball team to a gold medal in the Paris Olympics and is a star for the Golden State Warriors — with a mission to give opportunities to underrepresented young golfers.“Golf can take me so many places,” Lamadrid said. “Golf has helped me open my eyes to things that are related to golf. If I don’t go professional — everyone has that dream — golf has so many opportunities.”Another young female golfer, Salma Ibrahim, 18, who grew up in Los Angeles to parents who immigrated from Somalia, hit her first golf shots after her father, a distance runner, watched Tiger Woods on television.“He hated distance running — he wanted to teach me golf,” she said. Her six siblings also learned the game.In addition to competing around the country, she’s found other things in the sport to transport her beyond the tee.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Evian Championship: Céline Boutier Returns Home to Defend Her Title

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      Last year she became the third Frenchwoman to win a major and the first since 2003.Céline Boutier, the most successful French women’s golfer ever, has spent much of her adult life outside of her home country.At 18, she left France to study psychology and play golf at Duke University, winning the N.C.A.A. team title and becoming the world’s top-ranked amateur.After college, she moved to Dallas to live near her swing coach Cameron McCormick, who had helped Jordan Spieth scale the heights and win majors. Since 2018, she has been a full-time member of the L.P.G.A. Tour, reaching No. 3 in the rankings last year.But Boutier, now 30, made the most of one of her rare moments in France: winning her first major last year at the Amundi Evian Championship by a commanding six strokes and getting doused with Champagne on the 18th green by friends and fellow players.“I think it was the most powerful moment of my career so far,” she said in a telephone interview from Dallas. “Just because it was something that I had wanted to win for so long, and it was a tournament that I really watched when I was young. I was always drawn to it, and so it honestly felt a bit surreal to be the one at the center of this award ceremony that I had watched so often with the trophies and the national anthem.”She was the first French golfer to win the title on the picturesque course at the Evian Resort Golf Club. Boutier became the third Frenchwoman to win a major after Catherine Lacoste at the 1967 U.S. Women’s Open and Patricia Meunier-Lebouc at the 2003 Kraft Nabisco Championship. Lacoste, the daughter of tennis star and entrepreneur René Lacoste, is the only amateur to have won the U.S. Women’s Open.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Evian Championship: The Toll of Starting a Golf Career So Young

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      In a game full of players who turned pro in their teens, burnout is common.Asterisk Talley was faced with a tricky question after she made the cut at the U.S. Women’s Open, the second women’s major of the year. Would she have time to finish the homework that her teachers back home had assigned?“I have a bunch of homework and it’s all due today,” said Talley, 15, part of a growing number of young golfers playing at the highest level of the game.The admission spurred a raft of suggestions for excuses for why it wouldn’t get done, not least of all that she was teeing off late on Saturday, just a few shots off the lead.When asked after the second round if she was feeling any pressure, Talley responded: “Not really. I feel like I’m kind of used to it.”Women’s golf has been becoming younger for decades, and Talley is nowhere near the youngest player to tee it up in a major like the Women’s Open. Lexi Thompson, who is retiring this year at 29, was just 12 in 2007 when she qualified for her first one. (The youngest ever was Lucy Li, then 11.)At this week’s Amundi Evian Championship, Yana Wilson, a 17-year-old standout amateur from Nevada, is the youngest player in the field. Andy Lyons/Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Look Back at 2023 in Golf: A Year of Drama

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      The PGA Tour is looking at LIV Golf, and the L.P.G.A. and Ladies European Tour are on the cusp of joining together.Golf is a sport where certain years stand out above others, and 2023 may prove to be one of those years. It’s a heady list.In 1860, Willie Park Sr. won the first British Open, which was held at Prestwick Golf Club, marking the debut of the oldest major tournament.In 1913, the amateur Francis Ouimet won the U.S. Open, beating the two best English golfers of the time, and popularizing the sport in the United States.In 1930, Bobby Jones completed the first and only Grand Slam, winning the four majors of his day in one year.Babe Didrikson Zaharias became the first woman to make a cut on the PGA Tour in 1945, competing in the Phoenix Open and Tucson Open. She went on to dominate that decade of golf.In 1950 the L.P.G.A. was formed.In 1968, a group of professional golfers, led by Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer, broke away from the Professional Golf Association of America to create the PGA Tour.Tiger Woods completed the Tiger Slam — winning all four men’s major championships consecutively over two seasons, from 2000-1.This year could prove pivotal for the men’s and women’s game, with both of the top tours looking at mergers.Rory McIlroy with fans at Oak Hill Country Club in May. McIlroy resigned from the PGA Tour board last month.Doug Mills/The New York TimesBrooks Koepka on day one of the LIV Golf Invitational in October. He was among the highest profile players to defect to LIV.Cliff Hawkins/Getty ImagesFor the PGA Tour, June 6 signifies a before and after in professional golf. That morning Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner, announced a “framework agreement” for the PGA Tour to work with LIV Golf, the Saudi-backed golf league that he had spent much of the previous year disparaging.“I would ask any player that has left or any player that would ever consider leaving: Have you ever had to apologize for being a member of the PGA Tour?” Monahan had said a year earlier.It was one in a series of comments he and officials made connecting LIV, which is funded by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (P.I.F.), with the country’s history of human rights abuses.But that day in June, in an about-face, there was Monahan sitting next to the fund’s governor, Yasir al-Rumayyan, calling for cooperation.“There are only a handful of people who weren’t surprised given the past two years,” said Kevin Hopkins, vice president at Excel Sports Management. “Not knowing what this is going to lead to is going to be the next headline.”As shocking as this announcement was for golf fans, it was also a surprise to the PGA Tour’s membership, which was largely caught off guard.Suzann Pettersen, the captain of the European team, led her team in their fight for the Solheim Cup in Spain in September. The competition ended in a draw but, as hosts, the Europeans retained the cup.Bernat Armangue/Associated PressThe year in the women’s game was more positive — exciting major championships, the debut of a promising young star, a hotly contested Solheim Cup that ended in a draw between the two teams — but the women’s tour also has a cloud of uncertainty hanging over it.After the L.P.G.A. and its equivalent across the Atlantic, the Ladies European Tour (L.E.T.), reached an agreement to merge, the L.E.T. vote to approve the merger was abruptly postponed. Here’s a look back at a roller coaster year.Behind the scenesThe PGA Tour-LIV announcement looms large for the sheer suddenness of the tour’s reversal and the way that it angered and alienated some of its top players, including Rory McIlroy, who had been one of Monahan’s staunchest allies. He has since resigned from the PGA Tour board.“My reaction was surprise, as I’m sure a lot of the players were taken back by it, by what happened,” Woods said last month at his Hero World Challenge. “So quickly without any input or any information about it, it was just thrown out there.”The move galvanized top players to push for control on the tour’s board. Woods, who now sits on the board, said players wanted to ensure that, going forward, “we were not going to be left out of the process like we were.”For his part, Monahan has expressed regret with how the announcement was made. “The rollout was a failure on my part,” he said at The New York Times DealBook Summit last month. “I’ve owned it, and I’ve continued to own it.”Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner, surprised many in June, when he announced a “framework agreement” for the tour to work with LIV Golf.Mike Ehrmann/Getty ImagesOn the other side, LIV Golf was given a boost, if not a lifeline. The league had been rolled out haphazardly. Its first tournaments in 2022 had been marred by problems, such as the lack of a television deal and team uniforms.The P.I.F. put hundreds of millions of dollars behind the new league, but after the initial wave of star defections to LIV — Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka and the then-reigning British Open champion, Cameron Smith — attention shifted to poor attendance at events and a lack of a major media partner to broadcast the events.The June 6 announcement gave the fledging league relevance.“We went from being cast unfairly as outsiders in golf to our chairman sitting shoulder to shoulder with the commissioner of the PGA Tour,” said Gary Davidson, LIV Golf’s interim chief operating officer in 2023. “We always knew that LIV could coexist.”With the L.P.G.A. and L.E.T., their merger talks had been going smoothly. The two tours have been operating in a joint venture since 2020, a period when prize money rose on both tours.This year the two boards negotiated terms for a merger, with the L.P.G.A. effectively taking over the L.E.T. Whether it happens depends on a vote by the L.E.T. players.“The vote has been postponed by the L.E.T. board from its original Nov. 21 date as more time was needed to evaluate all relevant information received,” said Mollie Marcoux Samaan, the L.P.G.A. commissioner. “A new date for the vote has not yet been set. The L.P.G.A. board remains enthusiastic about the opportunity to bring our two organizations together.”Jon Rahm won the first major of the year, fending off Brooks Koepka to win the Masters at Augusta National Golf Club in April.Christian Petersen/Getty ImagesIn the spotlightBoth the women’s game and men’s game also provided compelling story lines on the course.The first men’s major, the Masters Tournament, came down to a duel between Jon Rahm, a stalwart of the PGA Tour, and Koepka, a multiple major champion who had left for LIV. Rahm prevailed, but in the next major, the PGA Championship, Koepka pulled away from the field to win his fifth major.LIV saw this as validation. “Competing in the Masters and then winning the PGA Championship was massive for us,” Davidson said. “It proved the competitiveness of LIV, that it could prepare the guys well for majors.”(On Thursday, LIV announced that Rahm would join its tour next year.)The five women’s major championships also provided excitement. Lilia Vu won the first and last of the majors, to rise to the No. 1 ranking and claim the player of the year title. Céline Boutier became the first French player to win her home country’s Amundi Evian Championship. And Allisen Corpuz, a young American in her second year on the tour, won the U.S. Women’s Open.Allisen Corpuz notched her first win on the L.P.G.A. Tour in July, at the U.S. Women’s Open in Pebble Beach, Calif.Ezra Shaw/Getty ImagesThe L.P.G.A. also got a feel-good story with Rose Zhang, who had long been the No. 1-ranked amateur woman in the world. Zhang turned pro in June and won the first event she entered.“It’s been a whirlwind for her, but she’s done what people have expected her to do,” said Hopkins, who runs Excel Sports Management’s L.P.G.A. practice. “The L.P.G.A. is excited to have her as one of the stars.”Team competition was intense on both the men’s and the women’s sides, but in different ways: The Solheim Cup was close and exciting, while the men’s equivalent, the Ryder Cup, was a rout. Team Europe blew out the U.S. team, which succeeded only in preserving its 30-year losing streak in Europe.There is one wrinkle for future European teams, and that’s the partnership the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour have struck. The PGA Tour has effectively made DP World a feeder tour, granting membership to the top 10 players on its annual Race to Dubai rankings. This effectively culls the best players in Europe.With just weeks left in the year, there’s still the possibility of more drama. While all eyes are on whether the PGA Tour-LIV framework agreement gets signed by year end, questions remain whether the L.P.G.A. and L.E.T. merger will go through too. It’s a fitting end to a tumultuous year. More

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      Betsy Rawls, Winner of Eight Golf Majors, Dies at 95

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      With a strong short game, she won four Women’s opens and a total of 55 L.P.G.A. Tour events between 1951 and 1972. She also had leadership roles with the tour.Betsy Rawls, who won eight major golf championships, including four United States Women’s Opens, in the first two decades of the L.P.G.A. Tour, and as an executive and tournament director helped propel the arrival of the women’s pro circuit as a big-money attraction, died on Saturday at her home in Lewes, Del. She was 95. Her death was confirmed by the Ladies Professional Golf Association.Rawls was the first four-time Women’s Open champion, winning in 1951, 1953, 1957 and 1960, a record matched only by Mickey Wright, who captured her fourth Open in 1964. From 1951 to 1972, Rawls won a total of 55 events on the L.P.G.A. Tour, which was founded in 1950.Her other major victories came at the Women’s Western Open in 1952 and 1959 and the Women’s P.G.A. Championship in 1959 and 1969. She was a three-time runner-up during the 1950s in the other major tournament of her time, the Titleholders Championship, and was among the six original inductees into the L.P.G.A. Tour Hall of Fame in 1967. She was also inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame.Rawls received the 1996 Bob Jones Award, the United States Golf Association’s highest honor, and the L.P.G.A.’s 50th Anniversary Commissioner’s Award in 2000 for her contributions to women’s golf. She was selected in 1980 as the first woman to serve on the rules committee for the men’s United States Open.Elizabeth Earle Rawls was born on May 4, 1928, in Spartanburg, in northern South Carolina, one of two children of Robert and Mary (Earle) Rawls. In the early 1940s, the family moved to Texas, where Betsy’s father worked as an engineer at an aircraft plant in Arlington, a suburb of Dallas, during World War II.Robert Rawls, who had played golf as a young man in Indiana, hired Harvey Penick, one of the game’s most renowned teachers, to give Betsy her first lesson when she was 17. Penick charged $3 for that one-hour session at the Austin Country Club and remained her coach, free of charge, for her entire career.“He always brought me back to the basic mechanics on which a good swing is built,” Rawls recalled in “Harvey Penick’s Little Red Book: Lessons and Teachings From a Lifetime in Golf.”Her strong suit was the short game. “I had a reputation of being able to get the ball up and down out of a garbage can,” she told The News Journal of Wilmington, Del., in 2010. “The sand wedge, off the fairway or out of the rough, was my best club. I could get it down in two from almost any place. I was a good putter under pressure.”Rawls graduated from the University of Texas in 1950, earning a bachelor’s degree with concentrations in physics and mathematics. She also finished an astonishing second, behind Babe Zaharias, as an amateur in the Women’s Open in 1950, the L.P.G.A. Tour’s inaugural season.She turned pro in 1951 after Wilson sporting goods recruited her to join its staff of leading players who were giving clinics on its behalf around the country. That year Rawls bested Louise Suggs by five strokes to capture the Open.At the time, Wilson paid her expenses, along with a salary that she recalled was about $3,000 a year (around $35,000 in today’s dollars), since prize money at the time was meager.She led the tour in victories in 1952, 1957 and 1959, when she set single-season records with 10 wins (including two majors), $26,744 in earnings and the lowest scoring average per round, 74.03, bringing her the women’s Vare Trophy.She got a break in winning the 1957 Open, at Winged Foot in Mamaroneck, N.Y.Rawls received the winner’s trophy at the 1957 Open. Jackie Pung, who was disqualified from the tournament for an incorrect scorecard, can be seen at left, with her head in her hand.Bettmann ArchiveJackie Pung of Hawaii finished with a four-round total of 298 to Rawls’s 299. But officials quickly noticed that Pung’s playing partner, Betty Jameson, who was keeping score for Pung, had listed a 5 on the fourth hole of the last round, though she had actually scored a 6. Pung had made the same error in keeping score for Jameson, who wasn’t in contention for the victory.Although Pung’s card showed a correct total score, she was disqualified, as was Jameson, the automatic penalty under golf’s rules for a player who hands in a card with an incorrect score on any hole.So the championship, along with $1,800 in prize money, went to Rawls.“It’s always great to win, I guess, but I sure hate to do it this way,” United Press International quoted Rawls as saying. “I feel sorry for Jackie.”But Pung wound up as the No. 1 money winner: Members of the Winged Foot Club, distressed over her losing the title on a technicality, raised about $3,000 to ease her loss.Rawls was the L.P.G.A.’s president in 1961 and 1962 and its tournament director for six years following her retirement from competition in 1975. After that, she was the executive director of the McDonald’s Championship, which was discontinued in 1994 when it became the longtime sponsor of the L.P.G.A. Championship. Continuing in her post with that major event, she helped raise millions of dollars for charity.Rawls in 2005. She helped raise millions of dollars for charity in her later years.Al Messerschmidt/Getty ImagesRawls was treated for breast cancer in 2000 but continued overseeing the L.P.G.A. event, held at the DuPont Country Club in Wilmington, Del. She retired from her executive director’s post in 2002 but stayed on as the tournament’s vice board chairman.Rawls’s brother, Robert Rawls Jr., died in 1992. She left no immediate survivors. Rawls earned $302,664 in her 25-year career on the pro tour, landing below the top 450 on the L.P.G.A.’s current earnings list.“Today I look at the money they play for with amazement, but not with envy or bitterness,” Rawls told The Philadelphia Inquirer shortly before receiving the Bob Jones Award. “In the beginning, we played for so little that money wasn’t the motivating factor. But when I won, it seemed like it was a lot of money at the time. I enjoyed winning when I did.” More

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      5 Players to Watch at the Evian Championship

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      Any one of these talented women could win the golf tournament in France.It’s not easy to pick the winner of a major championship in women’s golf.Over the last 21 majors there have been 20 different champions. The most recent: Allisen Corpuz, who captured the United States Women’s Open at Pebble Beach earlier this month for her first tour victory.Will the trend continue at the Amundi Evian Championship, which begins on Thursday at the Evian Resort Golf Club in France? The chances are pretty good given the many talented players who could get on a roll.Here are five golfers to keep an eye on.Rose Zhang hitting from the ninth tee during the first round of the U.S. Women’s Open golf tournament in early July.Darron Cummings/Associated PressRose ZhangNo one in women’s golf has generated more buzz recently than Zhang.While a student at Stanford, she claimed her second straight N.C.A.A. individual championship, which no woman had done. Then, after turning professional, she defeated Jennifer Kupcho on the second hole of a playoff in the Mizuho Americas Open to become the first woman since Beverly Hanson, in 1951, to win her pro debut.Zhang, 20, played well in her first two attempts at winning a major this year: a tie for eighth at the KPMG Women’s P.G.A. Championship in June, where she was in contention until finding the water with her tee shot on the 18th hole, and a tie for ninth at the U.S. Women’s Open.Zhang has a chance to be a member of the U.S. squad at this year’s Solheim Cup matches in Spain.Corpuz hitting a tee shot on the third hole during the final round of the KPMG Women’s P.G.A. Championship in June.Christian Petersen/Getty ImagesAllisen CorpuzWhat can Corpuz possibly do for an encore? Win her second major.Corpuz, 25 — who almost backed up her Open triumph with another win a week later at the Dana Open, finishing second by three — was unflappable during the final round of the Open, as she became the first American woman to win it since Brittany Lang, in 2016. Corpuz played the last 11 holes in one under par and was the only one to break par in each of the four rounds.“It was something I had dreamed of,” she said, “but at the same time kind of just never really expected it to happen.”The victory wasn’t a total surprise. In late April, she was tied for the lead after three rounds of the Chevron Championship, the first major of the year, before shooting a 74 to finish in a tie for fourth. She tied for 15th at the KPMG Women’s P.G.A.Corpuz became the second player from Hawaii to win the U.S. Women’s Open. The first was Michelle Wie West in 2014.Lydia Ko of New Zealand hitting off the 18th tee during the first round of the Mizuho Americas Open golf tournament in June.John Minchillo/Associated PressLydia KoPoor Ko. It has been that kind of year.Can she recover from what took place two weeks ago in the final round of the Dana Open, when she was assessed six penalty strokes for playing preferred lies, and another for picking up her ball?Preferred lies come into play when a golfer is allowed to move the ball because of the course becoming too wet. It had rained heavily on Saturday, so the players were allowed to play preferred lies on holes No. 1 and 10, but Ko also adjusted her ball position on three other holes. As a result, her score was a 78, dropping her into a tie for 65th.It was fair to expect a stellar 2023 from Ko, 26, after what she accomplished last season when she was the Player of the Year and won the Vare Trophy for the lowest scoring average (68.9).Early in the season, however, Ko of New Zealand missed the cut at the Chevron Championship, tied for 57th at the KPMG and tied for 33rd at the Open.Nelly Korda playing a shot during a practice round before the KPMG Women’s P.G.A. Championship in June.Sarah Stier/Getty ImagesNelly KordaThe year was going very well for the No. 2-ranked Korda, with six top-six finishes in her first seven starts — until an ailing back forced her to miss tournaments in May and June. Still in pursuit of her first tour victory this year, she has an opportunity to make up for lost time.And it looks like she might do just that.Two weeks ago, Korda won the individual title in the Ladies European Tour’s Aramco Team Series.She hopes to “take that momentum into the next two big events.”In the majors, she finished third at the Chevron Championship, missed the cut at the KPMG and closed with an 80 at the U.S. Women’s Open to finish in a tie for 64th.Korda, who turns 25 on Friday, won her lone major at the 2021 KPMG Women’s P.G.A.Jin Young Ko of South Korea hitting a tee shot on the eighth hole during the third round of the Cognizant Founders Cup in May.Mike Stobe/Getty ImagesJin Young KoKo of South Korea is due to break out of her small slump. She hasn’t posted a top-10 result since a victory at the Cognizant Founders Cup in May.She certainly knows how to come up big in big events. In 2019, she won the ANA Inspiration and the Evian Championship.With 13 top-10 finishes in 2018, Ko, 28, was the L.P.G.A.’s Rookie of the Year, and in 2019 she was the Player of the Year, an honor she received again in 2021. In late June, she passed the former star Lorena Ochoa of Mexico to set a record for the most weeks (159) at No. 1.“It’s an honor people saying with Lorena and me in the same sentence,” she said. “It makes me happy, but also it makes me humble.” More

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      Preparing for the Evian Championship

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      Golfers say this major’s longtime course is unique, some say it’s quirky, but players still must go over it again and again to get ready.Brooke Henderson, who has won 20 times since turning professional in 2014, rolled in a putt on the final hole of last year’s Amundi Evian Championship to win the women’s major by one shot over the rookie Sophia Schubert.It was Henderson’s seventh time playing the championship, which starts on Thursday and is the only major played in continental Europe. It is also the only women’s major played on the same course every year, the Evian Resort Golf Club in France, which has hosted the tournament for nearly 30 years.That presents an opportunity and a challenge for players trying to prepare to play on a course that was significantly redesigned a decade ago. It would seem to make it easier to get ready year after year. But the course itself is not universally liked. It’s been called quirky and unfair, and one player, Stacy Lewis, who is a major champion, skipped it for two years.It also stands in contrast to courses for the other majors, which have moved to be hosted at the same venues where the men have won.The United States Women’s Open was held at Pebble Beach Golf Links for the first time this year. And it’s set to be played at Oakmont, Pinehurst, Merion, and the Los Angeles Country Club, which hosted this year’s men’s United States Open.It’s the same with the KPMG Women’s P.G.A. Championship, which was played this year at Baltusrol, and the A.I.G. Women’s Open that was played last year at Muirfield, one of the most historic golf courses in Scotland.Yet few players are going to skip a major. So, does their preparation for the Evian differ from preparing for the other majors? And with a schedule that calls on players to travel farther and more widely in the season than the men do on the PGA Tour, is their preparation for the Evian different from their training for majors on courses they have seen before? (Add to that the fact that many players were in the United States last week, playing the Dow Great Lakes Bay Invitational in Michigan.)“Given that it is a course we come back to each year, we adjust our strategy slightly based on prior experience and course conditions,” Henderson said.Stuart Franklin/Getty ImagesHenderson, who is two-time major champion, was circumspect in her response about preparing.“My team and I focus on peaking at the majors and work particularly hard to prepare for those weeks both mentally and physically,” she said. “The venue at the Amundi Evian Championship, like all major courses, is unique and really tests all aspects of your game in different ways. Given that it is a course we come back to each year, we adjust our strategy slightly based on prior experience and course conditions.”Other players, particularly those who aren’t major champions, think about these weeks differently.“We always circle the majors to try to peak during those certain tournaments,” said Ally Ewing, a three-time winner on the L.P.G.A. Tour. “I’m a process person. I want to be ready in the spring to play solid golf at the Evian. There are a lot of things that go into competing in a golf tournament there. I circle those dates.”Ewing, who tied for 30th at the Evian her rookie season in 2016, said her focus this week had always been on controlling what she could put into preparing.“All three of my wins have been brand-new golf courses for me,” Ally Ewing said. “Getting to a golf course where I have no past recollection of, I feel like rookies get to an event and they have this cram mind-set.”Stuart Franklin/Getty Images“It goes back to the hours I put in at age 14 to make sure the ball position was always the same place and that my putting stroke was repetitive,” she said. “It’s about a solid base. My prep should be focused on my tempo and knowing my way around the course. I need to dial in the speed on the greens and learn where to place on our approach shots.”In that sense, the memory of returning to the Evian each year helps with some of the variables.“All three of my wins have been brand-new golf courses for me,” she said. “Getting to a golf course where I have no past recollection of — I feel like rookies get to an event and they have this cram mind-set.”“When I get to the Evian and there are a ton of side-hill lies, I’m working on creating comfort where I am. Every golf course is going to play differently, but I’m the same.”For Ewing, it comes down to strategy, whether she’s played a major course a half dozen times, like at the Evian, or if it’s her first time at a venue.“Sometimes, it’s simply looking and asking, do the greens have a lot of pitch back to front,” she said. “Do we want to be below the hole to score? Or on a course with a lot of runoff areas, we need to pay attention to the spots where we can miss. Let’s leave ourselves a chance to make birdie or, worst case, a par.”She added: “As a professional, we miss shots. I miss some shots left and some shots right.”“I have yet to figure that course out,” Lizette Salas, who is in her 13th season on tour, said. “It’s definitely a challenging golf course, as far as the layout. You’re hardly ever going to get a flat lie at the Evian Championship.”Stuart Franklin/Getty ImagesLizette Salas, who is in her 13th season on tour, hasn’t always liked playing at the Evian.“I have yet to figure that course out,” she said. “It’s definitely a challenging golf course, as far as the layout. You’re hardly ever going to get a flat lie at the Evian Championship. Also, the weather is a very big factor to determine how low we can go for that week. I feel there’s only so much you can do to that golf course, other than tear it completely down.”She admits that some courses just don’t suit a player’s eye, or they’re places that they’ve not always played well at. “But as the purses continue to rise, that just encourages us not to suck it up, but to take it as a new challenge and try to make it work.”In eight appearances at the Evian, her best finish was her first time, tied for 11th in 2013.For Salas, playing well in a major is about the prep work.“I definitely prepare differently today,” she said. “In my earlier years, my goal was to play the course as many times as possible. But I realized it’s not a sprint; it’s a marathon. Today I like to play the course no more than twice ahead of time and focus on the main trends of the course.“It’s a course we’ve seen over and over again, but we don’t have the luxury of getting there early because of our schedules. If you like a course more than others, it dictates your practice schedule.”At this month’s U.S. Women’s Open, she went to Pebble Beach a month early. “I got to play an afternoon and a morning round to see the wind tendencies,” she said.As the defending champion at the Dow Great Lakes Bay Invitational, Salas played that tournament in Michigan and then flew to France to get ready for the Evian.But one thing that doesn’t change is her emphasis on what she calls “boring golf.” “You’re not trying to hit a ton of balls” to prepare, she said. “You’re just trying to understand the golf course. Is there any insight on how to play this course the best way?”For others, though, they try to block out the magnitude of the event and play the week like any other tournament.“You just have to go into it thinking it’s just another event,” said Jessica Korda, who has missed the cut three times at the Evian, “because that’s exactly what it is at the end of the day.” More