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      For Natalie Gulbis, the Thrill of Winning the Evian in 2007

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      It was her lone tournament win, and she remembers the relief of getting that first one.Like two other long-ago visitors to France, Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, who always had Paris in the 1942 movie “Casablanca,” Natalie Gulbis of the United States, a longtime member of the L.P.G.A. Tour, can say she will always have Evian.Gulbis, who three times played in the Solheim Cup, a biennial tournament in which a European team plays an American team, registered her lone tour victory at the Evian Masters in 2007, beating Jang Jeong of South Korea by two-putting from 25 feet for a birdie on the first playoff hole. Trailing Juli Inkster by four shots heading into the final round, she closed with a two-under 70.Gulbis, 40, who plays very few tournaments these days and has undergone multiple back surgeries, reflected recently on her victory in France.The conversation has been edited and condensed.What stands out about that week in 2007?The relief that I could win a tournament. I had worked so hard to become a tour professional, and I had finished second one too many times before. And that event is so incredibly special. I was paired with Annika [Sorenstam], who was one of my best friends on tour.What do you recall about the playoff hole?I remember trying to focus on hitting it [her second shot] solid and making sure that I carried the water and gave myself a chance. My caddie gave me less club. He knew that players who get in contention always have extra adrenaline.What’s so special about the Evian event?It’s in this most beautiful place up in the hills overlooking Lake Geneva, the golf course is incredible, and just the way they treat you from start to finish. It’s really the closest thing we have to the Masters.Any explanation for why it was your only tour victory?No. And I don’t even think about it unless somebody asks. I really don’t. When I look back at my career, the most fun and memorable events have been team events. It would be interesting to see how I would feel if I had won 10 [individual] events. I don’t know if I’d sit here feeling significantly different.“The opportunity to be a professional athlete is so special, and I just don’t take that for granted. To compete all over the world and play for an organization like the L.P.G.A. has far exceeded any expectation I could have ever imagined,” Gulbis said.Harry How/Getty ImagesSo you’re not disappointed?I think I’d feel guilty if I felt disappointed. The opportunity to be a professional athlete is so special, and I just don’t take that for granted. To compete all over the world and play for an organization like the L.P.G.A. has far exceeded any expectation I could have ever imagined.What’s the state of the tour these days?In 2023, we’re playing for $101 million, 33 events. Absolutely crazy if I would have thought 10 years ago that the L.P.G.A. would be playing for over $100 million in a season.What’s the most nervous you ever were in a Solheim Cup?In Sweden in 2007, I was the anchor match [in the final group]. And then, that morning, I thought, ‘What did I commit to?’ That means it could come down to my match. It didn’t, and I ended up winning my match anyway.Are you excited about being an assistant to captain Stacy Lewis at this fall’s Solheim Cup in Spain?I am excited. It is a very different experience being a captain than it is being a player, and I think I’m going be even more nervous as a captain. Stacy has worked so hard, and she is so committed to try to get that cup back, and I just want to help her in any way I can.Would you want to be a captain yourself some day?I’m not sure. I don’t like to say until I have completely seen what it’s like to be an assistant captain all the way through.What was the biggest impact your instructor, Butch Harmon, made on you?Everything. How much time do you have? I started working with him when I was 18, and what he has done for me, on and off the golf course, it’s amazing. He’s helped me in every aspect of being a professional golfer, and it’s so much more than competing. He is such a huge fan of women’s golf, and I’m so grateful I’ve had the opportunity to work with him for 20 years. More

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      Women’s Golf, and Its Players, Sees Rise in Money

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      Prize money has been growing, and players are landing sponsors. “Elevating purses continues to elevate everyone,” said the L.P.G.A. commissioner.When second-year L.P.G.A. player Allisen Corpuz tapped in her final putt on the 18th hole at Pebble Beach Golf Links this month, she won the United States Women’s Open with a memorable final round, overtaking the leader and holding off a surging challenger in Charley Hull.Corpuz also cashed a $2 million first-place check, which was more than double what Annika Sorenstam won for all three of her U.S. Women’s Open victories combined.Despite losing ProMedica, the health care company, as presenting sponsor for the Open, the United States Golf Association increased the total prize purse by $1 million to $11 million this year.It’s part of a broader move in women’s professional golf to increase sponsorship for tournaments as well as for individual golfers. Over the past few years, purses have risen at tournaments, new sponsors have sought out golfers and even players who are not at the top of their careers have reaped the benefits.“Elevating purses continues to elevate everyone,” said Mollie Marcoux Samaan, the L.P.G.A. commissioner.At the tour level, the L.P.G.A. has been increasing prize money for players up and down the tour ranking. This year, the total purse for 36 official events is more than $100 million. Ten years ago, that number was $49 million, but even in 2021 it was around $70 million.Charley Hull, who made a charge at this year’s U.S. Women’s Open, has cultivated support from a significant number of sponsors over the years.Harry How/Getty ImagesLast year, 27 L.P.G.A. players earned $1 million in prize money (up from 15 the year before). That number still pales in comparison with the men’s PGA Tour, where, last year, 126 players earned more than $1 million. (Only 125 players have fully exempt status on the PGA Tour, meaning even players who couldn’t play every event or who qualified for all of the majors earned more than the top L.P.G.A. players.)Yet Samaan and other leaders are also focused on the individual players. The L.P.G.A. said that from 2021 to 2022, the No. 1 player in the world earned 22 percent more, but the 50th ranked player saw her earnings rise 44 percent. The 100th ranked player got a 30 percent raise, to $167,000 from $128,000.While the top players in any sport will always be compensated well, golf is unique in that many of the players in each tournament get cut and sometimes don’t get paid anything for the week.“We’re also looking to our partners and not just how to grow the purses, but also for help on the expense side,” Samaan said. “Some of the challenges our players face is half of them don’t get to play on the weekend each week. Some sponsors include miss cut payments. Some offer stipends or travel bonus to cover basic expenses.” But not all of them.Another factor driving increased interest — and money — in women’s golf is the desire among companies to sponsor both men and women. Whereas a journeyman player on the PGA Tour has rarely wanted for a sponsor, women, even those just below the top ranks, have often struggled.Many companies, as part of broader efforts at diversity, equity and inclusion, are looking to add female players. Early to this was KPMG, which broke ground — and set a new standard — by continuing to pay Stacy Lewis under her sponsorship contract when she had her daughter in 2018.Stacy Lewis holding her daughter after finishing the Drive On Championship in March. She was among the first players to continue being paid under her sponsorship contract while out on maternity leave.Darryl Webb/Associated PressPreviously, golfers had to play a certain number of events in order to receive all of their sponsorship dollars. Instead, KPMG opted to do what it would have done for an employee who went on family leave. Many other sponsors have followed suit.Aon, the risk management consulting firm, now offers the same prize money to men and women for its yearlong Aon Risk Reward Challenge, which assesses a player’s overall score on a challenging hole at each week’s tournament.Lizette Salas, ranked 80th in the world and in her 12th year as a professional, is sponsored by Aon. She said the conversations she’s had with sponsors were radically different today from when she began.“In the beginning the conversations were short,” she said. “I was pretty much pitching myself, as opposed to an agent or manager doing it. Now as the investments become bigger, the conversation between player and sponsor has changed. It’s created a more personal relationship between the executives and the player. I’m a big person in diversity and inclusion. A lot of the companies I’m sponsored by have taken that big step in their companies, too. It’s refreshing.”Smaller companies have also gotten in on supporting L.P.G.A. players. Cozen O’Connor, a law firm based in Philadelphia, has sponsored players on the PGA Tour for several years. This year, it added Ally Ewing, who was the L.P.G.A. Rookie of the Year in 2016, finished 11th at this year’s U.S. Women’s Open and is ranked 36th in the world.“When we decided sponsoring players was part of our branding strategy, we wanted to make sure it was inclusive, said Michael Heller, executive chairman and chief executive of Cozen O’Connor. “We wanted it to represent our firm and our clients. It was important to add a female player.”The firm selected Ewing because of her story: battling through Type 1 diabetes, and succeeding at every level of the game.Law firms, like insurance and financial-service companies, are natural fits for the L.P.G.A., given the history in those industries of using golf for entertainment and marketing.Hull, the British golfer who made a charge at the U.S. Women’s Open, has a significant social media presence that has allowed her to cultivate support from a variety of sponsors, including traditional golf brands like TaylorMade, the financial adviser Hachiko Financial and a wellness supplement.“My early sponsors were brands that were already in golf and who were looking to activate their partnerships, like Ricoh around the Women’s British Open, or Omega around the Olympics,” Hull said. “Now I feel my sponsors are more personal to me, such as Drink Mojo which is a supplement I use, or Hachiko, who are helping to educate me on investment.”Hull said her sponsors have changed as she’s grown as a player, and she’s fine with that.“As I’ve grown up and matured, so have my sponsors, and that’s not always just on my behalf,” she said. “A sponsor might be looking for a specific type of person to fit their ambassador role, so as I get older I might grow out of the type of person they’re looking for.”Jessica Korda was the first female player to sign a deal with FootJoy to wear its apparel from head to toe.Mike Stobe/Getty ImagesThe top players — who have the ability to transcend the sport — have the most power in negotiating deals with their sponsors. Jessica Korda, who was ranked 14th in the world last year before a back injury, signed a deal with FootJoy to wear its apparel from head to toe. She was the first female player to sign such a deal with FootJoy.She particularly appreciates the sponsors who were with her when she started.“My rookie year [2011], I played in 14 or 15 events,” Korda said, and she made about $50,000. “So having a sponsor really, really helped to cover my cost. We don’t have health care. We have to pay a lot out of pocket. Expenses are quite high.”Korda, who has made $7.6 million on the golf course, said that she’s hopeful for players coming out of college now, in a different sponsorship environment.“It allows them to play with a bit less pressure and not go paycheck to paycheck. Having that comfort was huge for me back then. Now it’s aligning with brands I really enjoy.” More

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      Michelle Wie West Wants to Win the U.S. Women’s Open One More Time

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      You could see the head tilts and darting glances when people peered around Pebble Beach’s Gallery Cafe, or as visitors sat on the patio that looks toward the cypress-guarded 18th green by Stillwater Cove. They surfaced at a luncheon with Brandi Chastain and Kristi Yamaguchi, and during a climb up a flight of stairs, and a stroll through a lobby.That’s Michelle Wie West, that 6-foot fixture of collective memory and modern golf history.She did not win as much as she wanted to, and certainly not as much as many people thought she would or should have. But after close to a quarter of a century in the spotlight, she is still one of the savviest stars women’s golf has ever had, a player plenty of people outside of golf know as a star even if they do not know golf.The competitive golf part of Wie’s life will most likely be done by dusk on Sunday, when the U.S. Women’s Open is scheduled to finish at Pebble Beach. If things don’t go well, and they might not since Wie West’s husband will be her caddie for the first time and she has barely played lately, it could be over by dusk on Friday. After the Open, she has no plans to return to elite competition, though she dodges the word “retirement” in public (and confesses to sometimes using it in private).She is 33.That went fast, didn’t it?Wie West on No. 18 at Lake Merced Golf Course during the Mediheal Championship last year.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesIn 2000, when she was 10 and Bill Clinton was president, she played the U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links Championship. She won the event when she was 13, the same age she made an L.P.G.A. tournament cut and had a turn in third place on a major tournament’s weekend leaderboard. She played a PGA Tour event at 14, turned professional at 15, rattled off three top-five finishes in her first three majors as a pro, battled wrist trouble, won the Open at 24 and then spent years with more injuries, cuts and withdrawals than strong showings.So it was not that fast, after all. Soon, though, it will apparently be finished. Barring a victory this weekend or a surprise in the years ahead, Wie West will finish with five L.P.G.A. Tour wins, including the 2014 Open at Pinehurst, tied for 69th on the career victory list. It adds up to a far better career than most players, though short of the mighty expectations that followed Wie West from the start and flowed from a blend of internet-age youth, talent, celebrity and marketability. (By way of comparison, Inbee Park, a 34-year-old player from South Korea, has won seven majors but has long drawn a fraction of the public attention that Wie West commanded.)“What’s the right word for this?” Wie West said in an interview in a sun-splashed lounge, well out of earshot of any aides.“I feel very — confident that I had the career that I wanted to,” she continued eventually. “Obviously, I wish I could have done more as well. I think anyone and everyone thinks that.”But, she said, “the what-ifs and the regrets and the ‘I wish I could have done this better’ can drive you truly insane.”Even last year’s announcement of a transition, to use her publicly preferred term, got derailed when her husband came down with Covid-19 and Wie West’s parents stayed back to help with child care. Ready to detail the wind-down she had rolled out on Instagram the previous week, Wie West wound up nearly alone at the 2022 Open in North Carolina.Wie West during the second round of last year’s U.S. Open.Geoff Burke/USA Today Sports, via ReutersShe had been mulling for years whether it was time to stop playing, frustrated by injuries and, more recently, torn by the notion of her family of three having only so much time together. In 2021, vulgar comments about Wie West by Rudolph W. Giuliani, a former mayor of New York City, jolted her into a fresh sense of purpose.But there eventually came a point, she said, when she realized the game’s toll was ultimately too high, when she feared her body would be so broken down she would not even be able to play a round for pleasure with her daughter. Her clubs have been in her bag almost exclusively ever since.“It’s hard,” she said, “it’s hard to know when the right time is to walk away.”That is assuredly in part because, for an athlete in any sport, stepping back from competition means the statistics are done and that the résumé is, with few exceptions, frozen. For Wie West, retiring or transitioning or whatever you want to call it meant firing up the inevitable debate about whether she had been a squandered or overhyped talent.She hears it, of course. She also gets it.“People love to chirp and have their own feeling and whatnot, and they totally have the right to it: They have been invested in my career,” she said. “I know I haven’t won as many as I, quote-unquote, should have.”At the same time, she seems to wonder how fair it is. She earned a degree from Stanford and won a U.S. Open, and those two feats, she figures, are what she wanted to do anyway.And yet she can still run through all of the ways her career could have been different: if she had held onto a share of the lead at the 2005 Open at Cherry Hills, if her quest that year to earn a spot in the Masters had worked out, if she had made the cut at her first PGA Tour event instead of missing it by a stroke.She is entering this week’s 156-woman Open with measured expectations against a deep field.The reigning champion, Minjee Lee, has won two majors since 2021 and is not ranked in the top-five in the world. And there is Rose Zhang, the 20-year-old Stanford student who last month won her debut tournament as a professional. Wie West’s group, which will tee off at 8:28 a.m. Pacific time on Thursday, includes the three-time major winner In Gee Chun and Annika Sorenstam, who logged 10 major victories in her career and received a special exemption into this week’s field.Wie West celebrated after winning the U.S. Open in 2014.Streeter Lecka/Getty ImagesThis spring, Wie West was musing about how she needed to get her stamina up for the rigors of a major, how she needed to hone her iron and wedge play before returning to one of golf’s biggest stages, especially since it will be played this year on one of the sport’s most beloved courses.“Just have to believe in myself, just get to a point where I feel confident that I can execute the shots and make the putts,” she said. “And I’m hoping that it all comes very quickly.”She plans to remain closely connected to the sport — she recently hosted the L.P.G.A. tournament that Zhang won — but insisted that she does not think much about how she transformed perceptions of the game that she said still enchants her.Even now, she said, she will play with her husband and become persuaded that, like every other golfer who has won, lost or never actually contested a major, she has unlocked the sport’s mysteries.“You get that one feeling and it feels really good, and you’re like, ‘I think I’ve figured out the game. I’ve figured it out!” she said. “I still catch myself saying that almost every time I play, so I know there’s an itch to want to get better.”Soon enough, after all of this time, it will be happening away from the spotlight. More

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      Minjee Lee Looks to Defend Her U.S. Women’s Open Title at Pebble Beach

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      Minjee Lee has spent these past few years feeling golf’s glories and agonies more than most.She won her first major tournament at the 2021 Evian Championship, a come-from-behind playoff victory, and followed it less than a year later with a record-setting win at the 2022 U.S. Women’s Open. Then came a tie for 43rd when she tried to defend her Evian title, worries about exhaustion and a pair of frustrating finishes in the first two majors of this year.Now ranked sixth in the world after reaching No. 2 last summer, Lee, a 27-year-old Australian, will have to conquer Pebble Beach Golf Links — the renowned course on the California coast — if she is to defend her Open title. The tournament begins Thursday.In a springtime interview at T.P.C. Harding Park in San Francisco, Lee discussed her masterful iron play, the hazards of Pebble Beach, the evolution of the women’s game and why winning a major once, never mind twice, is so difficult.This interview has been edited for length and clarity.You haven’t missed a cut at a major since 2019.I didn’t even know.How much of that represents a progression of your athletic talent versus your mind-set?You’re always trying to get a little bit better each day. So for me, for my progression and not having missed a cut over that period of time, I feel like I’ve put in a lot of hours and effort into my game and improving each day. It just shows my consistency over X amount of time.How did winning the Evian Championship in 2021 shape the subsequent years?It was a bit of a relief because there was a lot of talk: “When is she going to win her first major?” I heard a lot of things, but they were never to my face. They were always in passing or social media or a lot of things here and there. So it was kind of a relief, a monkey off my back. I knew I had it in me, but it finally happened — like, to actually get a win in a major is really, really hard.You always work toward winning majors, and your goals are very specific, so for that to be my first one, it led into my next year, as well.And as you learned last year at Evian, defending a championship is hard to do.Oh, yeah. It’s really hard.Going into Pebble Beach, how do you approach trying to defend a major?The hardest thing is to do your normal thing. Usually when you’re defending, you’re pulled in a lot of different directions: media, your practice rounds, you put in a lot of work because it’s a new venue and you have to do all of your prep starting from scratch.It’s not like Evian, where I already knew the golf course and had played it for years. [This year], it will be a little bit different. The U.S. Open has always meant a lot to me and to be able to win it was a dream come true for me. I don’t know how it will feel driving in there as a defending champion.The wind will be a factor at Pebble Beach. You grew up in Australia and dealt with the wind. You live in Texas and deal with the wind. Does it feel like an advantage this year?I like playing in the wind — I like a tough test of golf. I just feel like you can really use your creativity when it’s windy. Low shots are key, but it’s not always just the low shots. Are you going to use the wind? Are you going to fight the wind? It’s just a lot of different ways that you can play in the wind. I find it more fun when it’s harder, and because it really separates who is a good ball-striker and who isn’t as good, it really separates the field. I’ve always played in wind, so it doesn’t really feel that different for me.“I just feel like you can really use your creativity when it’s windy,” said Lee, using grass to gauge the gusts at the Mizuho Americas Open last month.Elsa/Getty ImagesThere are not many better iron players on the planet. Do you find yourself still emphasizing irons when you practice and prepare, or can you afford to spend more time on other things?I never really felt like I was better in that aspect until I saw the stat. Yeah, sure, my stats were better than the men, but I never really specifically worked on my irons — like, I always worked on my technique or how I move a certain way for a certain shot. But last year, it just happened to be better than any other year, and I’m not sure what really changed. It just kind of happened. You just work on something for so long, and then at one point, it just clicks. I probably don’t work on my swing as much right now; I’m working on other parts of my game, but only because those other areas are where I’d benefit the most.You’ve said you don’t pay attention to stats, but you set the Open scoring record last year, earning the highest payout in history ($1.8 million) for women’s golf. Do you think about those kinds of superlatives?I feel like I don’t — not as much as I should. I probably should look at it and think, “Oh, you did really well,” and then compliment myself. I just do my work, and when I’m away from the golf course, I don’t think about golf.There’s a moment in the Netflix documentary series “Full Swing” when Brooks Koepka talks about how golf is a game where, when things are going well, you think you’re never going to lose it, and when it’s not going well, you think you’ll never find your way back. This year hasn’t been a glide path for you. Where are you on that continuum?I had an off-season, like I always would in that period of time, and then played Asia and didn’t have that good of results. I was like, I’m just going to take a few weeks more at home, and I missed three events and that happened to be six weeks.Time went so quickly, and I was like, I’ve spent eight years going full-throttle, I’m allowed to take that time for myself. So I did, and I feel good. I feel quite refreshed. First week was Chevron — a major coming back for the first week — and I’m slowly working back into playing rhythms.You changed caddies recently. How has it affected you on the course?I’ve actually learned a lot about myself. When you’re younger, you rely a lot on your caddie, and I think I did that for quite a long time, just because I was young and didn’t know what I wanted as much. Now I know myself a bit better and I’ve matured a lot more.It just feels like I know what I want in a caddie and all that I need from my caddie. I don’t need the reassurance; I know what I’m doing. I just need somebody who knows me well, who is going to be a good companion out on the golf course. We spend so much time with them on the golf course, it’s like if you don’t like that person, it’s just not going to work.This is the first U.S. Women’s Open at Pebble Beach, somewhere that looms large in golf’s imagination. What’s the bigger milestone for women’s golf: that the Open is being played at Pebble Beach, or that last year’s British Open was at Muirfield, where women couldn’t even be members until 2017?I’m a little bit mixed in that aspect. I’m really happy and grateful that we were able to play at Muirfield and have access to the golf course, and being at Pebble for the first time. I know that a lot of work goes into having those championships there. It’s not easy — nothing is easy, right? — but I am a little bit bittersweet that it took this much time to get the women on these golf courses. I’m very appreciative of the tours and the U.S. Golf Association and all of our sponsors for really pushing the women’s game and the L.P.G.A. to go to all of these great venues now, and I know it’s only going to get better.But I feel like it was a long time coming.“I just need somebody who knows me well, who is going to be a good companion out on the golf course,” Lee said of her caddie Rance De Grussa, a fellow Australian who began working with her earlier this year.John Minchillo/Associated PressIn February, you said one of your goals was not to be totally exhausted by the end of 2023. We’ve seen more and more elite athletes talk about burnout, mental illness, depression and exhaustion. How much of that weighs on your mind as you’re trying to sort out when to play?I’ve always had quite a full year. I’ve played a lot of events, and that’s what I really wanted to do. I wanted to play. But now I want to play less — like, I don’t want to be as tired coming down to some really important events at the end of the year.Now my priorities are different. I don’t need to spend all of my time playing every single event, trying to keep my card as a rookie. I’m getting older, so I want to look after my body, look after my mind. That’s what’s going to help me perform my best, so I think that’s why a lot of athletes are now talking about taking care of your well-being, taking care of your mind, where you are in your life. Just to be healthy inside and out I think is really important, and if nobody talks about it, nobody will really know about it either, so you can’t get the proper help if you need it.Does having won two majors help you feel liberated that you can take the breaks and take the pauses — that there’s maybe a little less to prove?Not really. I’ve never really thought about it in that way. Obviously, I am hungry for more: I want to win the other majors, and I don’t think that will ever change. And I’ve been close to world No. 1 a couple of times but not quite got over the line. So I still have a lot to show. I have a lot of fight left in me. I still have a lot of drive.You played for the first time when you were about 10. Looking back, do you wish you had started earlier? Started later?It was a good age for me. I swam and I played golf. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, and I just tried a bunch of things: different sports, dance, music, everything. I was fortunate that my parents let me try everything. I just found it in golf, and I really enjoyed practicing and going and seeing my friends at the golf course. I used to hit these squishy golf balls around on the chipping green, and it was just fun. The way I got into it, I think it was the right way.Was golf your best sport?Well, I have pretty good hand-eye coordination, but I think because we were really a golfy family — my parents and my brother and my grandparents, they all loved playing golf, so we were just always around it.As a two-time Olympian, do you want to play in Paris next year?That’s pretty high on my list. I think Paris will be a pretty amazing turnout. The Olympics are probably the greatest honor you can have of representing your country, so I think that is going to be one of my bigger goals for next year.But Pebble Beach comes first. When do you start playing it in your head?I’m not really a look-up-the-golf-course-beforehand kind of girl. I’ve seen some holes on TV but nothing too much in detail.I like seeing the course and really visualizing it when I get there. I wouldn’t be able to tell if I did it on the map. I just like to internalize it when I get there.“You just work on something for so long, and then at one point, it just clicks, and that’s kind of what it did for me,” Lee said of how she hits her irons.Matt Rourke/Associated Press More

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      Stanford Golf Star Rose Zhang Is Ready for Her Professional Debut

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      Zhang’s career is likely to become a case study in athletic development, long-range planning and skillful marketing, now that college athletes are allowed to make money.Not long before Rose Zhang clutched a microphone on Tuesday, Michelle Wie West laughingly made an observation: Zhang might have logged more weeks as the world’s No. 1 amateur women’s golfer than Wie West spent as an amateur, period.It was an exaggeration — even though Wie West became a professional at 15 years old and Zhang spent more than 140 weeks in the top spot — but it also wryly underscored how Zhang’s rise in women’s golf is playing out differently from how other ascending stars built their careers.In Zhang, who will make her professional debut this week at the Americas Open in Jersey City, N.J., women’s golf is getting the rare prodigy who has played for an American college. And Zhang’s career, however long it lasts and whatever victories it yields, is essentially certain to become a case study in athletic development, long-range planning and skillful marketing, especially now that college athletes are allowed to make money in ways that were forbidden as recently as two years ago.“I believe that if you’re not able to conquer one stage, then you won’t be able to go on to the next one and say it’s time for the next step,” Zhang, 20, said on Tuesday. “So I wanted to see how I fared in college golf, and it turned out well.”To put it mildly.Zhang’s victory in April at the Augusta National Women’s Amateur, where she posted a tournament-record score one day and broke it the next, let her complete women’s amateur golf’s version of the career Grand Slam since she had already won the U.S. Women’s Amateur, the U.S. Girls’ Junior and an individual N.C.A.A. title for Stanford.Zhang after winning the Augusta National Women’s Amateur tournament.Doug Mills/The New York TimesAnother Stanford golfer, Tiger Woods, achieved a similar feat in the 1990s. But this month, Zhang added a second individual championship in N.C.A.A. play.Woods competed for Stanford in a wholly different time for college sports, a time when N.C.A.A. athletes were barred from selling their autographs or cutting endorsement deals. When Woods turned pro in 1996, the sponsorships promptly rained down on him. Zhang’s timeline has moved even faster: Wednesday is the first anniversary of the announcement that Adidas had signed her.The economic possibilities in college sports have lately enticed top athletes to pursue degrees and cultivate their talents while earning money and curbing the immediate allures of turning pro. Those possibilities had less of an effect on Zhang, who is from Irvine, Calif., and who chose to attend college before a wave of state laws pressured the N.C.A.A. to loosen its rules in 2021.But they could help shape women’s golf going forward, particularly if Zhang proves that the American college game is far from an athletic dead-end and that pre-prom professionalism is not the surest path to stardom. For some time, it has often seemed that way: Of the women ranked in the top 10 on Tuesday, only one, Lilia Vu, played N.C.A.A. golf (at U.C.L.A.).Representing Stanford, Zhang walked the course at the N.C.A.A. Division I women’s golf championships at Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, Ariz., this month.Christian Petersen/Getty ImagesZhang, who plans to continue her Stanford studies but will no longer be eligible to play N.C.A.A. golf, believes that her stint on campus has hardly been time wasted. She said in April that her tenure as a college athlete had been “such an important stage for me” because she craved figuring “out who I really was and my independence.”She added: “It really allowed me to get my own space and really understand what I’m about, and that allows me to improve on my golf game because I realize that a profession is a profession but yourself is also something that you need to work on.”Her professional prospects had not been far from mind, though. She recalled Tuesday that she told her Stanford coach from the beginning that she was aiming to become a professional, even if her schedule for doing so was hazy.In her first season at Stanford, she said, she did not consider professional golf at all. As her sophomore year progressed, she said, it “felt like it was time for the next stage.”“I feel like right now the mind-set is also very simple: try to adjust as much as possible to tour life and figure out what it means to be a professional, what I want to do out here,” said Zhang, already adorned with the logos of Adidas, Callaway, Delta Air Lines and East West Bank. “I feel like I have a lot of time to experiment what I want to do, so that’s kind of the mind-set that I have going throughout my career and even going forward.”Zhang hitting from the fairway during the final round of the N.C.A.A. women’s golf championships.Matt York/Associated PressZhang is entering the professional ranks while women’s golf has no shortage of elite players. Nelly Korda, the Olympic gold medalist from the Tokyo Games, has routinely lurked around the top of leaderboards. Lydia Ko, who in 2015 became the youngest person to reach the world’s No. 1 ranking in professional golf, remains such a dependable power and brilliant player that she was the L.P.G.A.’s money leader in 2022. Minjee Lee has won a major in each of the last two years, and Jin Young Ko returned to the top of the women’s golf ranking this month when she edged Lee in a playoff at the Founders Cup.Zhang, though, may be the player facing the greatest public pressure since Wie West became a professional almost two decades ago. (Wie West will step back from competitive golf after this summer’s U.S. Women’s Open.) Zhang insisted Tuesday that she did not feel particularly vulnerable to expectations, which she tries to perceive as more of a compliment — “They think I have the ability to go out there and win every single time” — than a demand.“Growing up, my family and the people around me have given me high expectations for what I should do as a person, not just as a competitor or a golf player, so I kind of fall back toward those morals and who I am as an individual,” she said. “That allows me to go out there on the golf course and think: ‘OK, today is another round of golf. I’m going to need to do what I need to do on the golf course. If it doesn’t work out, I still have a lot of things going for me in life.’”Zhang celebrated with her Stanford teammates after winning the NCAA women’s golf championships.Christian Petersen/Getty ImagesAfter the inaugural Americas Open, which will be contested at Liberty National Golf Club, Zhang is expected to compete in the events that make up the rest of the year’s majors circuit for women’s golf. The Women’s P.G.A. Championship will be played at Baltusrol in June, followed by the U.S. Women’s Open at Pebble Beach in July, when the Evian Championship will also be held. The Women’s British Open, scheduled for August at Walton Heath, rounds out the majors.Zhang played in three majors last year, with her best finish a tie for 28th at the Women’s British Open. (She did not enter this year’s Chevron Championship, where she tied for 11th in 2020, and instead played for, and won, the Pac-12 Conference’s individual championship.)She does not, she said, have any short-term expectations for performance. This year is about finding her way — and then letting the world watch to see if her way can work. More

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      Marlene Bauer Hagge, Last of the L.P.G.A.’s Founders, Dies at 89

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      Emerging on the national scene at 13, she went on to win 26 pro tournaments, including the 1956 L.P.G.A. Championship. She and 12 other women started the league.Marlene Bauer Hagge, the last surviving founder of the Ladies Professional Golf Association and a member of its Hall of Fame, died on Tuesday in Rancho Mirage, Calif. She was 89. Her death was announced by the L.P.G.A.Hagge and her sister, Alice Bauer, who was six years older, were among the 13 golfers who created the L.P.G.A. in 1950, at a time when women’s golf received little attention in the sports pages.The L.P.G.A. Tour would eventually yield significant prize money. But in its early years, the Bauer sisters and renowned players like Babe Didrikson Zaharias, Patty Berg, Louise Suggs, Betty Jameson and Marilynn Smith competed for slim purses and were forced to crowd together in cars on their travels to tournaments.Hagge became the last living L.P.G.A. founder when Shirley Spork, who was known especially for teaching women golfers, died in April 2022.Hagge, who was a slender 5 feet 2 inches but possessed a powerful swing, won 26 pro tournaments, including the 1956 L.P.G.A. Championship, one of the tour’s majors, and her career extended through its first five decades.She was inducted into the L.P.G.A. Hall of Fame in the veterans category and the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2002. Her sister, Alice, finished in the top 10 of L.P.G.A. tournaments several times, most notably at No. 4 in the 1958 Women’s Open.Eschewing the staid long skirts that were then a staple of women golfers’ uniforms, Hagge opted for shorts. She was viewed as a glamorous figure of the women’s game, often appearing on the covers of magazines, with many admirers more fixated on her looks than her skills. (In a reflection of the time, a 1973 issue of Golf Digest included a picture of her chipping onto a green with the caption “Marlene Hagge — good and sexy.”)Recalling the golf clinics hosted by the L.P.G.A. before its tournaments, Hagge told Sports Illustrated in 2002 that Berg, as the M.C., would say to the participants, “Look at these girls.”“She would point at Alice and me,” Hagge recalled, “and say, ‘Isn’t it grand to be pretty and be able to hit it, too?’”Eight of the 13 founders of the L.P.G.A. in October 1999 during a celebration in New York City of the league’s 50th anniversary. Standing, from left, were Marilyn Smith, Marlene Bauer Hagge, Alice Bauer, Louise Suggs and Betty Jameson. Sitting, from left, were Bettye Danoff, Shirley Spork and Patty Berg. Marlene Bauer Hagge, who died on Tuesday, was the last surviving founder. Stuart Ramson/Associated PressMarlene Bauer was born in Eureka, S.D., on Feb. 16, 1934, to Dave and Madeline Bauer. Her father, an avid golfer, leased the town’s golf course, about an hour southeast in Aberdeen. When Marlene was 3 years old, he cut down the shaft of a golf club and began giving her lessons. He tutored Alice as well.The family moved to La Quinta, Calif., when Marlene was 10, seeking a warm climate where golf could be played year-round. She won the Long Beach City boys’ junior championship just after the family arrived in California, there being no comparable event for girls. By age 13, she had won several tournaments in California.She emerged on the national scene in 1947 — still at only 13 — when she finished eighth in the United States Women’s Open Championship. She won the United States girls’ junior championship in 1949 and received the Glenna Collett Vare Trophy, named in honor of one of the most prominent figures in women’s golf. Lincoln Werden, a longtime golf writer for The New York Times, described her at the time as “a cool little player who can make every kind of shot.”A few weeks later, she achieved a stunning second-round match-play victory in the national amateur women’s championship, besting Vare, the tournament’s six-time titleholder, and making it to the semifinals.The Associated Press named her Athlete of the Year and Golfer of the Year for 1949.Hagge captured her first professional title at the 1952 Sarasota Open at age 18. She was at her best in 1956, when she defeated Berg on the first extra hole of the L.P.G.A. Championship at Forest Lake Country Club in Detroit. Her victory was worth all of $1,350 (about $15,000 in today’s money). She won eight tournaments that year, finished second nine times and led the women’s tour in earnings, garnering more than $20,000.In 1971, she set a nine-hole L.P.G.A. scoring record of 29 at the Buick Open in Columbus, Ohio, a mark unequaled for 13 years.She played on the tour through 1996, when she competed in four events. She had career earnings of $481,023.Hagge’s second husband, Ernie Vossler, a PGA Tour player and course designer, died in 2013. Her first marriage, to Bob Hagge, also a PGA Tour player, who had previously been married to her sister, ended in divorce. Alice Bauer died of complications of colon cancer in 2002 at 74. Information on survivors was not immediately available.For all her accomplishments, Hagge wasn’t exactly a familiar face to the public. In 1958, she appeared on the CBS TV program “To Tell the Truth,” in which four celebrity panelists quizzed three people claiming to be the person whose biography had just been described. The actor Don Ameche disqualified himself because he had met her. Only the actress Polly Bergen correctly identified her. More

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      USGA and R&A Propose Changes to Golf Balls to Limit Driving Distance

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      Driving distance has been steadily increasing, and a proposal on Tuesday by the U.S. Golf Association and the R&A could affect elite players within three years.Elite golfers, who have increasingly used head-turning distances on their drives to conquer courses, should be forced to start using new balls within three years, the sport’s top regulators said Tuesday, inflaming a debate that has been gathering force in recent decades.The U.S. Golf Association and the R&A, which together write golf’s rule book, estimated that their technical proposal could trim top golfers’ tee shots by an average of about 15 yards. Although golf’s rules usually apply broadly, the governing bodies are pursuing the change in a way that makes it improbable that it will affect recreational golfers, whose talent and power are generally well outpaced by many collegiate and top amateur players.But the measure, which would generally ban balls that travel more than 317 yards when struck at 127 miles per hour, among other testing conditions, could have far-reaching consequences on the men’s professional game. Dozens of balls that are currently used could become illegal on circuits such as the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour, as the European Tour is now marketed, if they ultimately embrace the proposed policy change.That outcome is not guaranteed — on Tuesday, the PGA Tour stopped well short of a formal endorsement of the proposal — but the forces behind the recommendation insisted that the golf industry needed to act.“I believe very strongly that doing nothing is not an option,” Martin Slumbers, the chief executive of the R&A, said in an interview. “We want the game to be more athletic. We want it to be more of an elite sport. I think it’s terrific that top players are stronger, better trained, more physically capable, so doing nothing is something that to me would be, if I was really honest, completely irresponsible for the future of the game.”The U.S.G.A.’s chief executive, Mike Whan, sounded a similar note in a statement: “Predictable, continued increases will become a significant issue for the next generation if not addressed soon.”In the 2003 season, PGA Tour players recorded an average driving distance of about 286 yards, with nine golfers typically hitting at least 300 yards off the tee. In the current season, drives are averaging 297.2 yards, and 83 players’ averages exceed 300 yards. The typical club head speed — how fast the club is traveling when it connects with the ball — for Rory McIlroy, the tour’s current driving distance leader at almost 327 yards, has been about 122.5 m.p.h, about 7 m.p.h. above this season’s tour average. Some of his counterparts, though, have logged speeds of at least 130 m.p.h.At the sport’s most recent major tournament, the British Open last July, every player who made the cut had an average driving distance of at least 299.8 yards on the Old Course in St. Andrews, Scotland. When the Open, an R&A-administered tournament, had last been played at St. Andrews in 2015, only 29 of the 80 men who played on the weekend met that threshold.Jordan Spieth during a practice round at the Players Championship earlier this month. Dozens of golf balls currently in use could become illegal on the PGA Tour and other circuits.Cliff Hawkins/Getty ImagesThe yearslong escalation, spurred by advanced equipment and an intensifying focus among professional players on physical fitness, has unnerved the sport’s executives and course architects, who have found themselves redesigning holes while also sometimes fretting over the game’s potential environmental consequences.When the Masters Tournament is contested at Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia next month, for instance, the par-5 13th hole will be 35 yards longer than it was last year. The hole, lined with azaleas and historically the course’s easiest, will now measure 545 yards; the full course will run 7,545 yards, up 110 yards from a decade ago.Faced with the distance scourge well beyond Augusta, golf’s rule makers considered a policy targeting club design. They concluded, though, that such a reworked standard would cause too many ripples, with multiple clubs potentially requiring changes if drivers had to conform to new guidelines.“If you don’t, you’ll end up with a 3-wood that could go further than a driver, and that was a very good point, and that could have affected three or four clubs in the bag,” Slumbers said. Instead, after years of study and debate, the U.S.G.A. and R&A settled on trying to urge changes to the balls that players hit.The rules currently permit balls that travel 317 yards, with a tolerance of an additional 3 yards, when they are struck at 120 m.p.h., among other testing conditions. The existing formula has been in place since 2004, and Whan has said it is not “representative of today’s game.”The proposal announced Tuesday is not final, and its authors will gather feedback about it into the summer. Although some members of the game’s old guard have openly complained about modern equipment and the governing bodies’ response to it — the nine-time major champion Gary Player fumed last year that “our leaders have allowed the ball to go too far” and predicted top players would drive balls 500 yards within 40 years — the executives are bracing for resistance that could prove pointed.“We have spoken to a lot of players, and as you can imagine, half of the world doesn’t want to do anything and half of the world thinks we need to do more,” Slumbers said.The PGA Tour, filled with figures who believe that fans are dazzled by gaudy statistics and remarkable displays of athleticism, did not immediately support the proposal. In a statement on Tuesday, the tour said it would “continue our own extensive independent analysis of the topic” and eventually submit feedback.The tour added that it was “committed to ensuring any future solutions identified benefit the game as a whole, without negatively impacting the tour, its fans or our fans’ enjoyment of our sport.”The debate may be more muted in some quarters than others, but the surges in distance have not been confined to the PGA Tour. Between 2003 and 2022, the R&A and the U.S.G.A. said Tuesday, there was a 4 percent increase in hitting distances across seven professional tours. Only two of the scrutinized circuits, the Japan Golf Tour and the L.P.G.A. Tour, posted year-over-year declines in driving distance in 2022. More

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      Kathy Whitworth, Record-Holder for U.S. Golf Wins, Dies at 83

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      Whitworth was a hall of famer who became the first woman’s pro golfer to earn more than $1 million.Kathy Whitworth, who joined the Ladies Professional Golf Association tour in the late 1950s when it was a blip on the national sports scene and who went on to win 88 tournaments, a record for both women and men on the United States tours, died on Saturday. She was 83.Whitworth was at a neighborhood Christmas party in Flower Mound, Texas, where she lived, when she collapsed and died soon after, Christina Lance, an LPGA spokeswoman, said.Whitworth, who turned pro at 19, was the LPGA Tour’s leading money winner eight times and became the first women’s pro to win more than $1 million in prize money when she finished third in the 1981 Women’s Open, the only major tournament she didn’t win. She earned more than $1.7 million lifetime in an era when purses were modest.“I would have swapped being the first to make a million for winning the Open, but it was a consolation which took some of the sting out of not winning,” she said in a profile for the World Golf Hall of Fame.Tiger Woods, with 82 victories on the PGA Tour, is the only active golfer anywhere near Whitworth’s total. Sam Snead, who died in 2002, is also credited with 82 PGA victories, and Mickey Wright won 82 times on the LPGA Tour.Known especially for her outstanding putting and bunker game and a fine fade shot that kept her in the fairways, Whitworth was a seven-time LPGA Player of the Year and won the Vare Trophy for lowest stroke average in a season seven times.The Associated Press named Whitworth the Female Athlete of the Year in 1965 and 1966 and she was inducted into the LPGA Tour and World Golf halls of fame.She won six tournaments considered majors during her career, capturing the Women’s PGA Championship three times, the Titleholders Championship twice and the Western Open once.“She just had to win,” her contemporary and fellow Hall of Famer Betsy Rawls told Golf Digest in 2009. “She hated herself when she made a mistake. She was wonderful to play with — sweet as she could be, nice to everybody — but oh, man, she berated herself something awful. And that’s what drove her.”Whitworth after winning the Women’s Titleholder Golf Tournament in Augusta, Ga., in 1966.Associated PressKathrynne Ann Whitworth was born on Sept. 27, 1939, in the West Texas town of Monahans, but grew up in the southern New Mexico community of Jal (named for a local rancher, John A. Lynch). Jal was the headquarters of the El Paso Natural Gas Company, which drove the regional economy; Whitworth’s parents, Morris and Dama Whitworth, owned a hardware store for many years.Whitworth, the youngest of three sisters, enjoyed tennis as a youngster, then began playing golf at 15 under the tutelage of Hardy Loudermilk, the pro at a nine-hole course in Jal.“That was more than 10 years before open tennis tournaments were allowed,” she told The New York Times in 1981. “Golf was then the only pro sport for women so I decided to stick with golf.”Loudermilk viewed her as possessing exceptional potential and referred her to Harvey Penick, the head pro at the Austin Country Club, who became one of golf’s most prominent teachers, best known for his 1992 instructional, “Harvey Penick’s Little Red Book” (1992), written with Bud Shrake.“Early on, Harvey told me in a kind but firm way, ‘I think I can help you, but you have to do what I say,’” Whitworth recalled in “Kathy Whitworth’s Little Book of Golf Wisdom” (2007), written with Jay Golden. “I just said, ‘Yes sir.’ “If he told me I had to stand on my head, I would have stood on my head.”Penick stressed the need to adopt a grip that assured a square club face, something Whitworth never forgot. “Every time I got into a slump or started hitting the ball poorly, I had Harvey Penick to go to,” she wrote.Whitworth captured the New Mexico State Amateur title twice, briefly attended Odessa College in Texas and turned pro in December 1958.The LPGA was struggling at the time despite featuring brilliant golfers like Wright, Rawls and Louise Suggs. Galleries were relatively sparse and touring players sought out low-budget hotels and traveled by auto.Whitworth didn’t win a tournament until her fourth year on the tour, when she captured the Kelly Girl Open. She cited her second victory, later in 1962, at the Phoenix Thunderbird Open as giving her the confidence to withstand pressure.Whitworth was approaching the final hole at that event, dueling for the title with Wright, who was playing behind her. She didn’t know Wright’s score at the time since there was no leader board, but, “I made a decision to go at the hole,” she told Golf Digest, although “the pin was stuck behind a trap.”“I whipped it in there about 15 feet and made the birdie,” she recalled.She won by four strokes and established herself as a force on the tour with eight victories in 1963.Whitworth recorded her 88th LPGA victory in May 1985 at the United Virginia Bank tournament. She competed on the women’s senior circuit, the Legends Tour, then retired from competitive golf in 2005.In her later years, Whitworth lived in the Dallas suburb of Flower Mound, gave golf lessons, conducted clinics and organized a junior women’s tournament in Fort Worth. A wooden case at her home course, Trophy Club Country Club in Roanoke, Texas, houses numerous trophies and 88 nickel-plated plaques engraved with details of her victories.Whitworth is survived by her longtime partner, Bettye Odle.Whitworth was a sturdy 5 feet 9 inches but didn’t deliver awesome drives and wasn’t viewed as a charismatic figure.“Some people are never meant for stardom, even if they are the star type,” the Hall of Famer Judy Rankin told Sports Illustrated in 1983, reflecting on Whitworth’s unflashy persona.“It’s not necessary for people to know you,” Whitworth told the magazine. “The record itself speaks. That’s all that really matters.”Alex Traub More