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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

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      For 2022, LIV Golf Was the Story

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      The Saudi-backed tour, which has used big payments to attract players, has upended the gentlemen’s game.Golf is an individual sport, so any year-end reflection is going to be about the people who stood out.But this year many of the top names who defined the year in golf are past their prime or don’t play professionally.Pride of place goes to Greg Norman, the former world No. 1 and two-time major champion whose last PGA Tour win came 25 years ago at the 1997 NEC World Series of Golf. In that victory, Norman beat a young Phil Mickelson, who was just at the start of his career that would include six major championships and more than double the PGA Tour victories of Norman.Now the pair are linked in the creation of the Saudi-backed LIV Golf and roiling the established PGA and DP World Tours. LIV made headlines as much for paying golfers tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to join the league as it did for the source of the support, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.Add to that a rollout and public relations campaign that was bumpy — including one golfer who took $200 million to join LIV, while saying their move was to grow the game — and it made for a very unexpected year.“Golf was puttering along in its normal boring sport way, and then everything exploded,” said Alan Shipnuck, whose book “Phil: The Rip-Roaring (and Unauthorized!) Biography of Golf’s Most Colorful Superstar” and subsequent reporting for The Fire Pit Collective, a golf news site, was at the center of the story. “This was the most fascinating and chaotic season in golf history. The gentlemen’s game has never seen this kind” of news conference sniping.The league brought fresh attention to the human rights records of Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince. It also held several events at golf courses owned by former President Donald J. Trump, who didn’t shy away from criticizing the PGA Tour.Phil Mickelson was paid a reported $200 million to join LIV Golf.Patrick Smith/Getty ImagesWhile a rival golf league had been talked about for years, just as LIV was set to start at the beginning of the year, Shipnuck published an interview with Mickelson on The Fire Pit Collective that criticized the Saudi government over its human rights record.“Knowing all of this, why would I even consider it?” Mickelson said. “Because this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reshape how the PGA Tour operates.” He joined LIV in June.From that moment, the story on the men’s and women’s game has been Saudi money and LIV Golf.It overshadowed Rory McIlroy becoming only the second player to win both season-long events on the PGA and DP World Tours in the same year. Henrik Stenson, who now plays on LIV, was the first in 2013.It put the game’s administrators, Jay Monahan, commissioner of the PGA Tour; Keith Pelley, chief executive of the DP World Tour; and Peter Dawson, chairman of the Official World Golf Ranking, front and center.It spilled over to women’s golf, where talk focused on what might happen if the Saudis took a similar interest in top L.P.G.A. players. (The consensus has been Saudi money would decimate a tour that doesn’t have the financial reserves or lucrative television rights to fend off a rival league buying up players the way the PGA Tour has.)And it got young professional and amateur players thinking about their future in professional golf after a few unproven players — namely the 2019 and 2021 U.S. Amateur Champions Andy Ogletree and James Piot and a top-ranked college player Eugenio Chacarra — took LIV money and bypassed the traditional route of trying to make their way on the PGA or DP World Tours.“I spoke to some friends and coaches who said if LIV contacts you go there,” said Filippo Celli, who won the silver medal as the low amateur at this year’s British Open and is trying to play his way onto the DP World Tour.“You go there and even if you finish last in the tournament you can earn $150,000, which is a lot of money, especially at 22 years old,” he said. “When you’re young you’re thinking about the money. It’s normal. My dream is to play on the DP World Tour and then the PGA Tour.”But the threat of a rival league forced changes on both of the main men’s tours. Many of those changes were announced after an August meeting of PGA Tour players in Delaware before the BMW Championship.The increased money was the main issue, more prize money for the top players and also guaranteed minimum pay for golfers still making their way. That helped defer six-figure costs just to compete, and the money was a carrot to the elite players.Of course, plenty of good players have not been asked to go to LIV and have said they are not interested. Sam Ryder, who has played on the PGA Tour for six seasons, is one of them.“I’m not on the players council of the PGA Tour,” he said. “I’ve been trying to stay in my lane and play good golf. I’ve not been concerning myself too much with all that’s been going on. I just know that everything will sort itself out.”His playing status on the PGA Tour has earned him a new multiyear sponsor this year: Ryder, the transportation company. “Both Ryder and Sam Ryder remain committed to the PGA Tour,” said J. Steve Sensing, president of supply chain solutions for Ryder System.Some of the top players have not been as politic in their rhetoric. McIlroy, who reclaimed the world No. 1 spot this year, became the de facto player-defender of the PGA Tour. He and Tiger Woods were at the center of the meeting in Delaware, and he’s spoken forcefully in defense of the tour. Recently, McIlroy and Woods called for Norman to step down as LIV commissioner as a necessary first step in negotiations.Dustin Johnson was reportedly paid up to $150 million to join LIV Golf.John David Mercer/USA Today Sports, via ReutersBut there are knock-on effects of losing older but well-known players, like the future of PGA Tour Champions. It is where many of the game’s greats go to play when they turn 50. Each year the tour gets marquee players who are suddenly relevant again. This year, it was Padraig Harrington, a three-time major winner and Ryder Cup captain, who won four times on the Champions Tour.Yet some of the first players who went to LIV were close to Champions Tour eligibility, including Lee Westwood, Henrik Stenson, and Ian Poulter, with players like Sergio Garcia and Paul Casey not too far behind them. It’s those big names that sell tickets.At a news conference in August for a Champions Tour event in Jacksonville, Fla., Jim Furyk, the 2003 U.S. Open champion and the tournament’s host, talked about the course and the fan experience. He even talked about Notah Begay III, a former player turned Golf Channel commentator who was returning to professional golf on his 50th birthday.What Furyk or anyone else at the event did not talk about was the previous year’s winner: Mickelson. That victory was his third win in four starts on the Champions Tour and augured well for his transition to the tour, and for the tour itself.But right now, the focus is on the main tours and seeing what LIV does next year. There has been little interest in actually watching LIV events. The league has no television contract and worldwide viewership numbers for streaming have declined with each event, particularly after the initial player announcements were made.Still, the PGA Tour, which had been slow to respond at first, seems to be taking no chances. It recently hired a lobbyist in Washington who is close to Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader who hopes to become speaker when Republicans take control of the chamber in January.“The tour has always been all powerful,” Shipnuck said. “Now there’s a competition.” More

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      The Players to Watch at the Evian

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      Five golfers who have a good chance to win the tournament, including the defending champion.The premier female golfers in the world will tee off this Thursday at the Evian Resort Golf Club in France for the Amundi Evian Championship, the fourth of the LPGA Tour’s five majors in 2022.The year’s major winners include: Jennifer Kupcho (Chevron Championship), Minjee Lee (U.S. Women’s Open), and In Gee Chun (KMPG Women’s P.G.A. Championship). The final major, the AIG Women’s Open, will be held in early August.In last year’s Evian Championship, Minjee Lee outdueled Jeongeun Lee6 on the first playoff hole to capture her first major. Minjee Lee fired a 64 in the final round, rallying from seven shots back to take the title.Here’s who to watch this week:The 2021 Olympic champion Nelly Korda has had a difficult season so far, placing 30th at the KPMG Women’s P.G.A. Championship golf tournament last month.Scott Taetsch/USA Today Sports, via ReutersNelly KordaKorda, the former No. 1 and 2021 Olympic champion, has had a year that she would surely like to forget.In January, she got Covid-19, which kept her on the sidelines for a while during the off-season.Then, in March, she had surgery to remove a blood clot from her left arm. Korda didn’t return to the LPGA Tour until the U.S. Women’s Open in early June, where she finished in a tie for eighth. A couple of months before, she hadn’t been sure she would make it back in time for that tournament.Two weeks later, Korda, 23, lost in a playoff to Kupcho at the Meijer L.P.G.A. Classic. In each of her first three rounds, Korda shot five under or lower, but she cooled off during the final round, firing an even-par 72. She went on to tie for 30th at the KPMG Women’s P.G.A. Championship in late June. She is ranked No. 3.With two majors to go, Korda, whose older sister, Jessica, also plays on the LPGA Tour, still has a chance to make this year memorable in a different way.Minjee Lee, ranked no. 2, has been a force since making her professional debut in the Evian Championship in 2014. Terrance Williams/Associated PressMinjee LeeLee, ranked No. 2, seems to be a factor in just about every major these days.That was the case again at the KPMG last month, where she had a chance to nab her third major title in under a year.Trailing by six strokes going into the final round, she put pressure on the leaders. Lee, however, missed a pivotal 4-footer on 17, coming away with a bogey. She rebounded with a birdie at 18, but finished in a tie with Lexi Thompson, a shot behind In Gee Chun.Lee, 26, who made her professional debut at the Evian Championship in 2014 — she tied for 16th at that event — grew up in Perth, Australia. She took up the game at the age of 10, and, in 2012, she won the United States Girls’ Junior championship. Just two years later, she had risen to become the No. 1 amateur in the world.Lydia Ko struggled recently at the KPMG, but she’s still in top form. The New Zealander has finished fifth or better in four of her past five appearances.Matt Rourke/Associated PressLydia KoIt’s true: Ko had a disappointing showing recently at the KPMG, where she recorded rounds of 76 and 79 on the weekend to finish in a tie for 46th. But beyond that, Ko, a former No. 1, has been playing extremely well this season.Before the KMPG, the New Zealander had finished fifth or better in four of her past five appearances. In 12 starts, the KPMG was the only event in which she ended up placing lower than 25th.Ko, who won the Gainbridge L.P.G.A. in late January — edging Danielle Kang by a stroke — is still only 25 years old. That seems difficult to imagine, given how long she’s been around. Ko was the tour’s rookie of the year in 2014 and player of the year in 2015, the youngest ever in both cases. That 2015 season was capped by a win in the Evian Championship, her first major title.Like many top players, she’s had her struggles. After compiling 15 career victories through 2018, Ko didn’t win again until the 2021 Lotte Championship. During that dry spell, she fell to as low as 55th in the world rankings; she has now climbed to No. 4.A 19 year-old rookie, Thitikul captured her first tour victory at the JTBC Classic in March. Elsa/Getty ImagesAtthaya ThitikulFor Thitikul, a rookie this year, the future may arrive sooner than she thinks. It might even be here already.Only 19 years old, Thitikul of Thailand is now ranked No. 5 in the world. At the KPMG, she finished fourth, just two shots behind Chun. Earlier this year, Thitikul picked up her first tour victory at the JTBC Classic. It probably didn’t happen in quite the way she would have imagined — she made a bogey on the second playoff hole to defeat Nanna Koerstz Madsen — but a win is a win. With that victory, Thitikul became the youngest winner on the LPGA Tour since Brooke Henderson in 2016.“It’s just crazy in my mind right now,” Thitikul said afterward. “I cannot believe that I became an LPGA winner.”In 2017, when she captured the Ladies European Thailand Championship, Thitikul became the youngest to win on the Ladies European Tour. She was 14 years, four months and 19 days old at the time.Jennifer Kupcho went pro after a stellar run as an amateur. This year, she scored her first career victory at the Chevron Championship.Elsa/Getty ImagesJennifer KupchoIn June, Kupcho prevailed in a three-way playoff with Nelly Korda and Leona Maguire in the Meijer LPGA Classic.Kupcho, ranked No. 9, almost blew it that day, missing a short eagle putt on the first playoff hole that would have ended the competition right there. Some players might have been flustered after a failure like that. Not Kupcho. On the second playoff hole, she made another birdie, then pulled out the victory when Maguire missed a short putt that would have extended the match.Kupcho, who teamed with Lizette Salas to capture last week’s Dow Great Lakes Bay Invitational, collected her first career win in April at the Chevron Championship. She had trouble on the back nine, but had started the day with a six-stroke advantage.Over the next two months, she clearly did not play her best, failing to break into the top 15 in any of her six events.Kupcho had a stellar career as an amateur, winning both the N.C.A.A. Player of the Year award in 2018 and the first Augusta National Women’s Amateur in 2019. She went pro later that year and, in 2021, joined the United States players as they faced off against the Europeans in the Solheim Cup. More

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      Around the World, Golf Prodigies Get National Support, but Not in the U.S.

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      Country after country helps young men and women pay their way, but those players go it alone in America.Mone Inami, a professional golfer from Japan, won a silver medal for her country in last year’s Summer Olympics. Inami beat Lydia Ko, who has won 17 times on tour, including the Evian Championship in 2015.Both were golf prodigies, with Ko turning pro at age 17 in 2014. They were also products of national golf academies. (New Zealand in Ko’s case.)“I became a member of the Japanese national team” at age 15, Inami said through an interpreter. “I was then able to compete in golf matches overseas, which I hadn’t done before.”“One of my goals in my amateur days was to become a member of the national team,” she said. “After I was selected as a member of Team Japan and started to compete as a member, I developed a sense of being part of a team.”Inami is part of something many countries have developed that is supercharging their women’s golf programs and getting more players onto the professional circuit, and into events like the Amundi Evian Championship, which starts on Thursday in France.South Korea took the lead on this a decade ago, and many other countries have followed suit, including England, Scotland, Canada, most of Europe, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.One notable exception to this list is the United States, which lacks any national program for women’s — or men’s — golf. It’s something Mike Whan, the new chief executive of the United States Golf Association, hopes to change.“As commissioner of the L.P.G.A., I was floored that every player came out of a team program except in the U.S.,” Whan said in an interview before the Curtis Cup, which pits the best United States women amateurs against their British and Irish counterparts.“When Lydia Ko was 11 in New Zealand, she joined Team New Zealand,” he said. “They taught her stretching, nutrition, how to work with caddies. I love the global part of this game, but as the head of the U.S.G.A., if we don’t create a better pipeline for American golf, we’re not going to be able to compete.”Lydia Ko, shown in June at the Women’s PGA Championship golf tournament in Maryland, learned stretching, nutrition and how to work with caddies, among other skills, as a member of New Zealand’s national team.Terrance Williams/Associated PressHe pointed to the world rankings. South Korea has 33 players in the top 100, and 148 golfers in the top 500. The United States, with over six times the population, ranks third for top-rated female players. (Japan is in second place.)Whan said he would like to change this.“Imagine if I take the best 500 young golfers and set up a $40-million grant program to carry them through a national program,” he said. “When I think about advancing the game, this is part of it.”Whan announced ahead of the United States Open in June that the U.S.G.A. had hired Heather Daly-Donofrio, a former professional golfer who ran tour operations and communications for the L.P.G.A., to run the USA Development Program, which will aim to create a quasi-national team for boys and girls from 12 to 17. While there is no firm plan in place, the mere mention of national support is music to the ears of junior players, coaches and parents.“The No. 1 complaint I get from parents and players is why isn’t there a U.S. team?” said Spencer Graham III, founder and head coach at the Junior Golf Performance Academy in Naples, Fla. “Every other country has a federation supporting their best 12 or 20 players. But America can’t put one together? I don’t really understand it.”Graham coaches many highly ranked junior golfers from the United States, but also coaches the top female golfers from Canada and Morocco, who are supported by their national federations.“Some of these parents pay $100,000 to $150,000 a year to travel,” he said of his American students. “And then you have the Korean or Canadian teams putting up that money for their players. I coach Sofia Essakali, who’s 13. She gets financial support from Morocco so her parents don’t have to play thousands of dollars for her to travel around.”Athletes like Ko, who turned pro at 17, gain access to better training and more chances to compete as members of a national golf team. They also have their expenses paid.Darren Carroll/PGA of America, via Getty ImagesThe support can come in several forms. Rebecca Hembrough, performance manager for the female program at England Golf, said that expenses like private coaching and competition travel were covered for team members. But the benefits extend beyond money. For an individual sport like golf, having a team matters.“When I played for Japan in the Olympic Games, it was like playing for Team Japan,” Inami said. “I wasn’t fazed by any of that. I was able to enjoy the matches. I was prepared.”Ryan Potter, associate head coach of Wake Forest University’s women’s golf team, said national teams allow training and preparation to start earlier, long before golfers get to college.“In the U.S., it’s a crapshoot,” he said. “You’re being taught by who may be close to you. You’re also the product of how much money you have to spend or are willing to spend. Can you afford it?”Peer support is key. Katie Cranston, a member of Team Canada, won the World Junior Golf Championship this year.“The Canadian Team was there, all dressed the same,” Graham said. “You could hear the Canadian players cheering for their team. You have the whole national squad cheering versus one parent clapping. It’s almost a disadvantage.”There’s also the frequency and variety of competition.In professional tournaments, golfers play their own ball, and they alone are responsible for shooting the lowest score they can. In team events like the Curtis Cup or the Solheim Cup, its professional equivalent, players spend several training days playing different formats of golf, like alternately hitting each others’ shot into the hole.Those types of games are something national academies stress, said Kevin Craggs, who was the national coach of the Scottish Ladies Golfing Association and is now the director of golf at IMG Academy, a private sports school in Bradenton, Fla.“At the Scottish national level we played a lot of match play,” he said, a format that is based on holes won, not the number of strokes on a scorecard. “It trains you to be aggressive. If I took a 4 and you took a 10 on a hole, you’re only 1 down. The score doesn’t matter.”Working with young, elite golfers in the United States now, he tries to keep it fun to maintain the passion young golfers have for the game. “In the U.S., many players don’t get exposed to the fun parts of the game,” Craggs said. “We have to make sport fun and learning fun, and then specialize later.”Inami said she had great memories of being on Team Japan as a teenager.“We used to have fun but still compete with each other,” she said. “It’s helped me continue to compete at professional level, having had that fun.”There are downsides, namely the excessive pressure. Certain national federations are also trying to push hard to get the players they backed into the professional ranks, even at the expense of playing college golf, Graham of the Junior Golf Performance Academy said.Martin Blake, media manager of Golf Australia, said the federation offered team members two options.“We encourage young female players to go through the college system, which Gabi Ruffels (University of Southern California) and Katherine Kirk (Pepperdine University) did,” he said. “Our elite amateurs are a mix of college and stay-at-home. Those who stay at home are funded to travel to international events like the U.S. Amateur.”Success, though, is a great way to inspire players to reach for major championships like the Evian. Hembrough of England Golf pointed out that recent professionals from its program include the L.P.G.A. stars Charley Hull, Georgia Hall and Bronte Law.“It’s building a legacy of success,” she said. More

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      21 Under Par? Juli Inkster Did It at the Evian Championship.

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      She reflected on her dominant career, in which she won 31 tournaments and seven majors on the LPGA Tour.The Amundi Evian Championship in France, which starts on Thursday, wasn’t a major in 2003 when it was called the Evian Masters. It wouldn’t be awarded that distinction by the LPGA Tour until a full decade later, but was still an important victory for Juli Inkster, one of the best female golfers of all time.Inkster, 62, who won 31 tournaments on the tour, including seven majors, got off to a wonderful start that week with a six-under 66. After a 72 on the second day, she closed with rounds of 64 and 65, and finished 21 under par, establishing a tournament record at the time.She reflected recently on that triumph and her distinguished career. The following conversation has been edited and condensed.What are your memories of that week?I had the whole family and rented a house by the course. I got up early Monday and played a practice round, and then Tuesday we went river rafting.You went river rafting the day before the tournament?We all went. We had the best time. Brian, my husband, fell out of the boat and my caddie had to pick him up by the vest and throw him back in the boat. That was a little bit scary.What did you love about the Evian?They [Evian Resort Golf Club in Évian-les-Bains, France] do a really good job of hosting us. They put a lot of money in trying to make the golf course better. It’s on the side of a hill, so there’s not much you can do, but as far as beauty and scenery and things to do, we love it over there.Did you get the most out of your career?I definitely got the most out of it. I was never the best at anything. I was just good at a lot of things and I was a grinder. I pretty much had three careers: one before kids, one during kids and one when the kids were a little older and traveling with me. Between 1990 and 1995, my golf wasn’t very good because I was having kids, but after that, I really played well.What’s your No. 1 moment?Probably winning the United States Women’s Open. I didn’t win it until I was 38, so it took me a long time. But I won at 38 and 42. That was one I always wanted to win but was having trouble doing it. So it was a big relief to do that.What’s the current state of the LPGA Tour?It’s great. These big corporations really get behind the L.P.G.A. and believe in what we’re doing. We’re getting to play these iconic golf courses that we were never able to play before. The purses are getting bigger.Were you happy to be in your era, or wish you could play now?I really enjoyed playing in my era just because all of us went to college. We all played in college against each other, and we all turned pro. There was a lot of camaraderie out there. Now it’s more of a business. They have their coaches and their parents and their agents. They still do stuff together, but not like we used to.Do you think you would have been a better golfer with a team?I don’t know. I like doing my own thing. I don’t like having a lot of people around. I did it the way I wanted to do it.How do you feel about the tour moving the Chevron Championship out of Palm Springs next year?I hated to leave that area, but I think Chevron is going to take it to the next level. They are going to make it major-worthy. The golf course [at the Club at Carlton Woods] we’re going to is a great course. It’s in a really good area in Houston.Will you play in the United States Senior Women’s Open in August?Yes. It’s one I haven’t won. I finished second twice. I would love to win it. I’m not getting any younger. I’ve just got to have one of those Evian moments where everything comes together. Maybe I should go river rafting before. More

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      In Gee Chun Wins Women’s P.G.A. Championship

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      Despite shooting three over par in the third and fourth rounds, Chun handled a charge from Lexi Thompson to win her third career major tournament.BETHESDA, Md. — In Gee Chun of South Korea rallied after losing the rest of her once-sizeable lead, overcoming a bogey-filled front nine to win the Women’s P.G.A. Championship on Sunday when Lexi Thompson faltered with her putter.Chun shot a three-over-par 75 for the second consecutive day at Congressional Country Club outside Washington, D.C., but that was enough for her to win her third career major title by a stroke over Thompson, an American, and Minjee Lee of Australia. Chun, after leading by six strokes at the tournament’s midway point, lost a three-shot advantage in the first three holes of the final round. Thompson led her by two strokes after the front nine, but Thompson’s putting problems were just beginning.Thompson, 27, botched a par putt from a couple of feet on No. 14, but a birdie on the 15th hole restored her lead to two strokes. Then she bogeyed the par-5 16th hole while Chun birdied, leaving the players tied with two holes remaining.Thompson three-putted for bogey on No. 17, and after an impressive approach from the rough on the 18th hole, her birdie putt wasn’t hit firmly enough.Chun’s approach on the par-4 18th bounced past the hole and just off the back of the green, but she putted to within about 5 feet and sank her par attempt for the win.Chun, 27, led by seven strokes after finishing her round with an eight-under-par 64 in wet conditions Thursday. Her lead was down to five at the end of that day — still equaling the largest 18-hole advantage in the history of women’s major tournaments.She was six strokes ahead at the halfway point and had a three-shot advantage coming into Sunday. She finished the tournament with a 283, five under par.Chun won her first major at the U.S. Women’s Open in 2015 and added the Evian Championship in France the following year.Thompson hasn’t won an L.P.G.A. Tour event since 2019, and her lone major victory came as a teenager at Mission Hills in the California desert in 2014. She has certainly had chances: She lost a five-stroke lead during the final round of last year’s U.S. Women’s Open at The Olympic Club in San Francisco.This year, she was 10 strokes back after the first round before steadily chasing down Chun. Thompson made birdies on Nos. 1 and 3 on Sunday. Chun bogeyed Nos. 2 and 4 to fall out of the lead.Thompson missed short birdie putts on the eighth and ninth holes — foreshadowing her problems later in the round — but Chun’s 40 on the front nine left her two back at the turn. Sei Young Kim, who had made it to six under at one point, bogeyed holes eight, 10, 11 and 12 and fell out of contention. She finished the tournament in a five-way tie for fifth.When Chun made her first birdie of the day at the par-5 11th, Thompson answered with a birdie of her own to remain two shots ahead at seven under. When Thompson bogeyed 12, so did Chun.The 16th hole, where Chun had to take an unplayable lie and made double bogey Saturday, was the turning point in her favor in the final round. Thompson was just short and right of the green in two shots but took four from there to make bogey, while Chun rolled in her birdie putt after a long wait. More