NAPLES, Fla. — Eavesdropping on Angel Yin, you overhear thoughts on…Teslas. She’d eyed a luxury car passing by, and she brings up the subject.
She also has questions about…Roger Clemens. Her caddie has looped for the former pitcher, and Yin was curious.
And then there’s conversation on drivers. But that’s a given. Yin is one of the best players on the planet, and this week, she’s among the 60 who’ve made it to the CME Group Tour Championship, the LPGA’s season finale.
She’s also a lively thinker, too. And a personality, arguably the brightest on tour. You’ve maybe seen her channel Deion Sanders. You’ve perhaps heard her session with reporters last year at the CME, where she discussed, well, a little of everything. So it’s worth catching up to her this year, if only to hear, well, a little bit more.
The author’s questions are in italics. Though you could probably guess who’s who.
First subject? Her thoughts on the Tour Championship’s record prize.
What would $4 million mean to you if you won?
“A lot of cash, a lot of taxes, but a lot of cushion for my career, for the year and for the year after, so I can have more freedom of who I want to hire and what I want on my team. It creates a lot of financial freedom. We want sponsorships because we want them to support our career, and we do need it at times because our profession is such a gamble from time to time. Just gives us as a player and as a person more freedom.”
What would be the most fun thing you’d spend it on?
“I don’t know. Checking out stocks. I’ve been getting lately into stocks. Probably that would be more my fun thing. Invest it.”
I think this year, in pro golf in general, it seems like there are a lot of suggestions, a lot of ideas on the table. There’s change. There are adjustments on the men’s tour, the women’s tour. If you were in charge of the LPGA, what’s a big-ticket item you would change?
“That’s a pretty loaded question because I don’t know if there’s a big-ticket item I would change because I think the direction we’re in right now is good. We have a big wave of women’s sports that’s on the rise. Probably my main focus on all of it is not getting more sponsors but getting us known. As women’s sports are on the rise, if you don’t surf it, it just dies out and you need to catch that wave.”
Did LPGA capitalize on women’s sports boom? Or did it fall short?
Have you thought about a way that can happen?
“Oh, I don’t know. I think stuff like that, to go into detail, to be able to give an honest answer, is someone being able to look at all the numbers and all the strategies in the last five, six years and see where we can progress and compare to what other organizations are doing. If I had to give an answer right now, it would be investing into players. For example, Nelly [Korda]. Nelly’s doing a lot. Nelly won her seventh tournament, she got her Sports Illustrated swimsuit, she went to the Met Gala — she’s doing a lot. And she’s putting her name out there. Whether she knows, she’s also representing all of us and so we appreciate what she does a lot and she’s doing good. And so yeah, just invest in players.”
What’s a real small thing you would change? To give you help with the answer, I asked this question last year to Jon Rahm, and he said on the men’s tour, he’d like to see more bathrooms on the course. So it could be something as minor as that. But what would you change low-key?
“Man, I really haven’t thought about it because — let’s think about it. More bathrooms? No, I think we have enough bathrooms. And because you know why bathrooms aren’t a big issue? Because as girls, we cannot just go anywhere to go pee. And so it’s been an issue we’ve tackled, and I think we’ve seen the results on that. Honestly right now, we’re doing OK. … But overall, our tour is pretty good for accommodating us.”
Along those lines, and you’ve kind of mentioned, with Nelly, with women’s sports in general, the Caitlin Clark rise in women’s basketball, that this has been an opportunity for the LPGA to capture that moment. Do you think they’ve done a good job of that?
“No.”
Why do you say that?
My nephew is looking to break 80. So I asked Nelly Korda for 1 tip
“Gosh, it just doesn’t feel like it. It’s an opinion. Caitlin Clark coming over to our tournament created a crowd, created a buzz — didn’t feel like it got out there enough. Went out to a certain amount of people. But I don’t know, like I said, to give a detailed answer, I have to like — I want to be more responsible with my answers so I just don’t want to speak. But if you have to ask how I feel about that, I don’t really think we’ve capitalized that much. Just riding the wave that other people are doing and we’re just associated with women. Unfortunately, I don’t think we have done enough.”
One golf instruction question I had. So my 16-year-old nephew is trying to break 80 and get onto his high school varsity team next year. What’s one tip you’d give him?
“Hit through the ball and not at the ball. It’s simple. I think a lot of people try to hit at the ball because it’s the one ballgame you play that the ball is really stationary and you have to go after it. In football, they’re throwing it at you; tennis, the ball is coming at you — you’re reacting. Where this one, you have to, I don’t know, go after the ball. It’s a little bit different. You have to make the ball move.”
One last question. Is slow play an issue on the LPGA tour?
“So, I have my opinions. I know Charley [Hull] gave an answer.”
I’m going to ask for your solution after.
“I just found out about it this morning. It was pretty funny and I joked about it on the golf course today. But if I have to really say, over the years I’ve been on tour, I think it was worse before. It was worse before, we were waiting more, and I think now we have a good mixture of fast players and then that’s when the slow players really start showing up. Because the majority of the girls are playing much faster, where you cannot be really too slow or then you start getting behind. Although we are having more delays on the tees this year. But that could be course setup this year, the spacing and everything. Our pro-ams are slower. That could also be a spacing issue. So I don’t really think it’s specifically the players.”
Like last week and the lack of daylight.
How to finally solve slow play? Oh, do Nelly Korda, other pros have thoughts
“Yes. I think it’s just a spacing issue because we get up to the tee box and we’re already delayed and we’re in a morning tee time. So how can that fall onto a player? And that’s also going back to where I think we can improve as a tour, a small issue. I can’t point fingers too much, but there are certain types of people who I feel like they should be able to manage that better. I think the easiest way to point fingers without thinking too deep into it is players slow-play, but it takes a lot for the schedules to fit, and if the schedules don’t fit, then we’re just sitting on a hole. And I think that’s where it’s showing up. At the U.S. Open, we had a slow hole where there was like four groups stacked up there. But that’s also because the pin was in a really ridiculous …”
The par-3.
“Yeah. Nelly got a 10, I think. So stuff like that. It has nothing to do with the player. I’m pretty sure Nelly is going really fast. When you’re taking drops and you’re doing this and that, there’s nothing we can do about it. Or for example, last week on 18, there’s a rules official sitting on that hole, waiting for us. If a player makes a seven, they’re going to take seven shots and seven shots of time. So that accumulates. So I think that’s where it’s happening. And so my solution is better scheduling, better placement. It should be tough. It shouldn’t be stupid. But yeah, I think there are slow players out there, but I definitely don’t think it’s as bad as before. Because when I first came out on tour, I could take a nap. It was terrible. And they were really just getting warnings. So they’re much harsher now. They’re doing the right steps. But I think it’s just always easy for everybody to point fingers at the players.”
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