Thursday was a great day for tournament golf in general and for the LPGA in particular. The Korean golfer Haeran Ryu shot a flawless first-round 64 in a tournament named for Annika Sorenstam, played at a wide-open, good-looking bayfront course near Clearwater, Fla. One-shot behind her was Grace Kim of Australia.
This is the last full-field (108 players) event of the LPGA season, the last chance to qualify for the grand finale, the CME Group Tour Championship, where 60 players will compete for a $4 million winner’s check, the largest prize in women’s golf; the runner-up will pocket $1 million. Rose Zhang, the Stanford student and in her second full year on tour, is a bubble girl for the Tour Championship. Look out, people: Exploding Stories! Would you know these things if Kai Trump, 18-year-old high school golfer and granddaughter of Donald Trump, were not in the field as a sponsor’s exemption? Perhaps not. But she is, and many of us are taking notice where otherwise me might not.
Trump shot a first-round 83. Nobody shot higher.
And therein lies the real beauty in the day. Kai Trump got one of three special sponsor’s invitations to play in the Annika driven by Gainbridge at Pelican (hostess/sponsor/course). Would she have received the invitation if her paternal grandfather was not the president of the United States, and if she did not have more than 7 million followers on her various social-media platforms? No. Does her presence in this tournament bring the LPGA some added attention, as the tournament sponsors hoped it would? Yes. That’s not where the beauty lies. The beauty lies in the powerful reminder of what tournament golf is all about: the scores. The scores!
If Kai Trump is ever going to become an LPGA player, her stated goal, she’s going to have to do what every card-carrying LPGA player does, and that’s shoot the scores to earn — to earn! — her place. Full stop. That’s why millions of us are drawn to golf. There’s no place to hide. You can tell IG stories until you’re green in the face, but it really doesn’t matter. In tournament golf — most particularly the professional golf we watch in person and whatever screen is nearby — your day can always be summarized by a number. For Haeran Ryu on Thursday, that number was 64, six under par. For Kai Trump, that number was 83, 13 over par.
“I was definitely more nervous than I expected,” Trump told reporters shortly after her round concluded. Surely an honest assessment. “I hit a lot of good shots just to the wrong spots.” A comment you might expect to hear from a good high school golfer. Not one you’re likely to hear from a touring pro.
Trump goes to the Benjamin School in South Florida. Sam Woods, eldest child of Elin Nordegren and Tiger Woods, is in her class. Charlie Woods is on the boys’ team there. Kai Trump got pep-talk advice from her grandfather, from Tiger Woods (her mother’s boyfriend), from Annika Sorenstam. She has access to the best golf instructors, fitness experts, equipment fitters, manufacturers, courses, practice facilities and the rest. If Trump wants to make it in professional golf, she’s going to have to rise above all that. It won’t be easy.
“I feel sorry for rich kids now, I really do,” Ben Hogan said in 1983. “Because they’re never going to have the opportunity I had. I know tough things, and I had tough days all my life, and I can handle tough things. They can’t.”
The tournament organizers did not hide from the reason Trump was invited to play in this event. It wasn’t because of her off-the-charts talent. There are likely thousands of teenage golfers across the world who are better than Trump. It’s because of her bloodline, and the social-media reach that has come out of it.
“This is one of the most talked-about women’s golf tournaments that has probably ever existed,” Justin Sheehan, chief operating officer of the Pelican Golf Club, said shortly after Trump’s invitation became public late last month. “The numbers of social-media impressions are staggering. Love it or hate it, it’s getting people to talk about the event.”
This is a new day in golf’s long-standing custom of offering sponsor’s exemptions to golfers, amateur or professional, who can help at the gate and broadly improve the tournament. When Tony Romo, a break-par golfer played in PGA Tour events as an amateur playing as a sponsor’s invitation, the built-in question was, What is the difference between an elite former NFL quarterback who plays good golf and a PGA Tour player?
In other words, it was his athletic skill and the fame that came from it that got him a PGA Tour tee time. When Sorenstam played in a PGA Tour event, the same basic math: What can one of the greatest women golfers do when playing against the men? It was her athletic skill and the fame that came with it that earned her the invitation to the 2003 Colonial.
Kai Trump is not famous because of her athletic gifts (though she did make a most-impressive 20-foot back-of-the rim shot on the first tee of the Wednesday pro-am on her first and only shot). She is famous because of her DNA. It’s a different thing. It’s a different era.
When Trump was invited to play in this event, the invitation went not directly to Trump or to her mother or father or high school coach. It went to her agents. She is represented by GSE Worldwide, the same agency that represents many LIV Golf players. Her asking-price quote for a one-off Instagram video post is $125,000. She is developing her own merchandise line. Will her two days — there is a 36-hole cut in this 72-hole event — in the Annika driven by Gainbridge at Pelican hurt business no matter what scores she shoots? Not likely.
The levels of confluence here are staggering. Donald Trump, in his first term, gave Tiger Woods the Presidential Medal of Freedom shortly after Woods won the 2019 Masters. There’s also a Tiger Woods Villa at Trump Doral in Miami. When Trump was the host of an LPGA event at his course in West Palm Beach, he played in the pro-am with Sorenstam, then the best player in women’s golf. On Jan. 7, 2021, Sorenstam, alongside Gary Player, also received a Presidential Medal of Freedom from Trump. Woods, among others, met with Trump in the White House with hopes of resolving the ongoing dispute and tension between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf. Trump was an early supporter of the LIV Golf cause. One of his golf buddies is the LIV star and two-time U.S. Open winner Bryson DeChambeau, who is also represented by GSE Worldwide.
So much synergy!
But synergy cannot turn an 80-shooter into a 70-shooter. The golfer shoots what the golfer shoots. The rest is commentary.
Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com
