The post Jeeno Thitikul’s record-setting Tour Championship win came with a message appeared first on Golf.

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NAPLES, Fla. — When the final putt of the 2025 LPGA season dropped, the player who defined the campaign lifted her arms and smiled. Jeeno Thitikul had just defended her CME Group Tour Championship title and put herself in the LPGA record books in the process.

The World No. 1 entered the final round at Tiburon Golf Club with a six-shot lead over Nelly Korda and Pajaree Anannarukarn. Thitikul’s victory on Sunday felt inevitable. Even when Anannarukarn got within two at the turn, it was never felt in doubt. When Thitikul birdied No. 10 and Annanarukarn bogeyed No. 12 up ahead, the lead was back to four, and the only battle was between Thitikul and history. She entered the day just decimal points behind Annika Sorenstam for the best single-season scoring average in LPGA history, needing to shoot a three-under 69 or better in the final round to eclipse a mark that has stood for 23 years.

She birdied No. 13 to get to three under on the round and then poured in a 10-footer on the final hole for good measure, finishing with a scoring average of 68.681 to top Sorenstam’s 2002 mark of 68.897.

“It just such an honor,” Thitikul said of breaking Sorenstam’s record. “I mean, like I never ever dream of having that record at all. I mean, like that’s really amazing [record] that I am going to have.”

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The win was Thitikul’s third of the season and seventh of her career. While the wins don’t tell a story of dominance, Thitikul was undoubtedly the player who levitated above this LPGA season. She finished the year ranked first in wins, runner-ups, top 10s, Strokes Gained: Total, Birdie or Better Percentage, Bogey Avoidance, Par 3 scoring and Par 4 scoring. She won the Player of the Year Trophy and the Vare Trophy for top scoring average.

Thitikul has been great, but the 2025 season, which culminated with a $4 million winner’s check on Sunday, had its share of ups and downs. She overtook Korda as World No. 1 and won three times. But she also lost to Grace Kim in a playoff at the Evian, had a costly late bogey to lose the FM Championship and four-putted on the 72nd hole at the Kroger Queen City Championship to lose to Charley Hull.

It was that loss in Cincinnati that defined Thitikul’s season — in the pain it brought, the resolve it revealed and the message it, and the season at large, delivered to the 22-year-old star.

“I remember the day that I came to Dallas after the Kroger,” Thitikul said Sunday when asked what she’d remember about 2025. “I have the ice pack put in my eyes because I cried so bad. That’s what I’ll remember.”

She took a picture of herself with the icepack on her eyes so that a rock-bottom moment won’t get lost when the highs of professional golf arrive.

“I just want to remind myself that the day that you reach there or the day that you — like the happiness in your life, this day will come definitely. Like the sadness will come. So just kind of like whatever you had in your career doesn’t define who you are and doesn’t define like who I am.”

Thitikul bounced back from the devastation in Cincinnati a few weeks later when she pulled off an improbable Sunday comeback to win the Buick LPGA Shanghai, becoming the LPGA’s first repeat winner of the season. One month later, she arrived at Tiburon Golf Club ready for the long, grueling season to be over.

Then, she went out and torched the Greg Norman design to become the second player to win back-to-back CME Group Tour Championships and put an exclamation point on a season that has been about more than birdies and bogeys for the World No. 1.

“This year had taught me to be more humble, to be honest,” Thitikul said before the tournament. “You know, like you’re there and definitely one day you’re not going to be. [It won’t] last forever in my career for sure.”

Nothing lasts forever. But Jeeno Thitikul’s 2025, one she punctuated on Sunday in Naples, will be remembered for quite some time.

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The post Why a significant sponsor is calling an LPGA TV decision ‘bulls**t’ appeared first on Golf.

The post Why a significant sponsor is calling an LPGA TV decision ‘bulls**t’ appeared first on Golf.

NAPLES, Fla. — Terry Duffy, whose company sponsors the LPGA’s season-ending event and is responsible for its record prize fund, says should other businesses be thinking about a similar move, no, he wouldn’t tell them anything. 

He’d show them. 

The CEO of the CME Group said he’s even done so before.

“I’d been asked when Mike Whan was still the commissioner of the LPGA — and I talked to Mike yesterday; he’s a great friend — he asked me, he had a sponsor that was thinking about dipping their toes in,” Duffy said. “And he said, will you talk to them? And I said, no, but I’ll tell you what I’ll do: I’ll host them. And I brought them here and I showed them what we had. 

“And sometimes when you look at it and see it and have a touchy-feely versus just someone telling you, this is really good, your client is going to love it, and you go, it sounds like I’m being pitched by everyone else. That’s not what this is all about. I think this is one of these events that you have to experience.”

Should anyone, though, be interested in watching Saturday’s third round of the CME Group Tour Championship on live television, they can’t. Coverage will be shown only on tape delay, from 4-7 p.m. ET on Golf Channel — and when the decision was brought up by a reporter, Duffy’s first thought was both unsurprising and four words long.

“That’s bulls**t, isn’t it?”

Talking to a small group on Wednesday, a day before the start of the tournament, Duffy then continued for about five minutes. He said he voiced his frustration to the LPGA’s commissioner, Mollie Marcoux Samaan, and hoped that she would “make that not be the case.” He also said he understood deals long in place (in 2020, the PGA Tour and LPGA agreed to let the men’s tour negotiate their domestic TV contracts jointly) and admitted he’s not “overly exercised” about the move and — but “I would hope that people would recognize that if you’re going to continue to build women’s sports, you have to give them the same billing as men and stop — stop — the nonsense of saying that, well, we have to show a men’s tournament because they’re the men.”

So what does Saturday afternoon’s live TV schedule look like? From 1-4 p.m. ET, Golf Channel will show the PGA Tour’s RSM Classic, while on NBC, a Golf Channel partner, there is a Premier League Soccer match from 12:30-2:30 p.m., followed by a post-match show and two women’s college basketball documentaries that are running as part of a preview for a 4 p.m. game. On Sunday, the tournament will receive three hours of broadcast time, from 1-4 p.m. on NBC. (Notably, Saturday’s play can be seen from 8 a.m.-4 p.m. on ESPN+ and from 2-5 p.m. on nbcsports.com.)  

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For clarity, below is most of the back-and-forth between Duffy and a reporter, with the reporter’s questions in italics. 

“The third round here is on tape delay.” 

“That’s bulls**t, isn’t it?” Duffy said. 

“Could more have been done? Was time spent with that? Was there — could it have been …”

“I can do a lot of things and money can cure a lot, but it can’t cure illness, it can’t cure certain things,” Duffy said. “I looked at that tape delay and I don’t like it. I agree with you. I think that that’s inappropriate for a tournament of this magnitude to be on a tape delay. I have told Mollie that I don’t like that. I will leave it in her hands where that ultimately ends up and hopefully she can work with the folks at the Golf Channel and others to make that not be the case. 

“What’s important to me, I don’t know anybody that watches four days of golf, to start with, except the Masters, maybe the U.S. Open and the British. I don’t know anybody that watches the PGA four days in a row. And I don’t mean to say that sarcastically, it’s just some people catch snippets of it or else they’ll watch it later. And the reason I’m not overly exercised is because of what I said earlier. I’m in 200 countries around the world. Golf Channel’s around the world. People can watch my event in their time zones, too. So that’s also helpful for the delays on certain things. I’m not a fan of it, because they can re-run it again obviously like they do. But at the same time, I would hope that people would recognize that if you’re going to continue to build women’s sports, you have to give them the same billing as men and stop — stop — the nonsense of saying that, well, we have to show a men’s tournament because they’re the men.

“And I know why they do it because of the relationship and the deal they have with the men. And I get it. So I’m not trying to have them violate an agreement they have and I’m not asking for the Golf Channel to be put in a bad spot. But there’s a lot of different ways for content to be distributed in the world that we live in today. I had my dear friend Vince Vaughn here yesterday at my conference. And we talked about the proliferation of artificial intelligence and the proliferation of streaming and what’s going on with the movie theaters versus streaming. There’s so many different ways to get content today. So I’m not suggesting we go a different route. But I don’t think Golf Channel is the only game in town anymore. There’s a lot of ways for people to get content. …

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Could you have … 

“I didn’t try to influence the process,” Duffy said. “I did not ask to influence the process.”

Notably, Duffy has previously voiced displeasure at the tournament. As reported in a story written by Golfweek’s Beth Ann Nichols — which you can read in full here — the CME Group had asked LPGA players to attend a dinner, but none came, leading Duffy to question LPGA leadership. 

“I am exceptionally disappointed with the leadership of the LPGA,” Duffy said in Nichols’ story. “They better get their act together because they’re going to lose people like me over stuff like this.”

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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.” 

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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?

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My nephew is looking to break 80. So I asked Nelly Korda for 1 tip

By: Nick Piastowski

“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. 

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“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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This week’s CME Group Tour Championship will not only be the last tournament of the season for LPGA Tour player Ally Ewing, it will also be the last of her career.

Like Lexi Thompson and Brittany Lincicome, who also announced retirement plans this year, on Sunday at Tiburon in Naples, Fla., 32-year-old Ewing is ready to call it a career.

Ewing has three career LPGA Tour wins and is currently No. 18 in the Rolex Ranking. Despite posting the highest earnings total of her career, with $1.9 million thus far this season — and six top-10 finishes (another career high) — Ewing said her recent play has only reinforced her decision to step away from pro golf.

“If anything, it gave me more and more peace,” Ewing said on Tuesday. “The better I played, and really, too, like Solheim was high up on that list, being on this team. Then I knew that was my last Solheim. Being able to finally win one, that was really special, too. So I never looked at my family or my husband at any point in the year and said, I don’t know. They kind of would poke at me a little bit. Yeah, I knew and I’ve had peace all through the year. That’s even more solidified my decision.”

Ewing has been playing on the LPGA Tour since 2016 and says in addition to hoping to start a family with her husband, she’s ready to embrace the normalcy of life at home.

“I think I am excited just for the next chapter,” she said. “You know, I can’t really tell you specifics of what that looks like, but I’m just looking forward to the small things. You know, I do love being home. I joke that my husband, he might get sick of me being home so much he might tell me to go do something else.

“Yeah, just the small things,” she continued. “There are just things that I miss, like I miss my bed. Just the little things like that. Making my own coffee at home. There are tons of things I’ll miss about this Tour. I’ll miss the people. I’ve always been a homebody though so the travel gets pretty tough on me.”

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Ewing said health considerations also factored into her decision.

“As a Type I diabetic the routine of being at home will make management a little bit easier for me,” she said. “And then there is the part if we’re blessed to have kids down the road, starting a family, that’s something we’re definitely looking forward to.

“I had a pretty good idea two years ago that I was going to have two to three more years in me,” she said. “Down the road if we are blessed with kids, that will be a high-risk pregnancy for me; I’m 32 now. I’m not the youngest player on Tour anymore either. So you just put a lot of things into the equation and this was just the right timing for me.”

When Ewing plays her final hole on Sunday, she said she’ll try to remain focused on the task at hand.

“I’ll try to avoid eye contact with the family until after I finish hole 18 for sure,” she said.

Ultimately, though, Ewing is grateful to end her career on a high note, regardless of how this week plays out.

“When I looked at my career I wanted to play good golf as I finished my career,” she said. “I didn’t want to just fizzle out. Fortunately, knowing this year was my last year I’ve played some of my best golf. So I think that’s just how I drew it up. I know that doesn’t make a lot of sense to people, to stop playing when you’re playing good golf, but that’s just how I wanted to do it.”

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The post My nephew is looking to break 80. So I asked Nelly Korda for 1 tip appeared first on Golf.

NAPLES, Fla. — Sorry, Mason. I was just trying to help. 

If I embarrassed you in front of Nelly Korda, I apologize. 

Wait, what? Wild, right? I’ll try to explain. Mason is my 16-year-old nephew, and, in his uncle’s estimation, has true golf hall of fame potential. But first he has to break 80 consistently. 

Korda, of course, you know. Seven-time winner this year on the LPGA. Fifteen-time winner overall. By all measures, she’s great at golf. She’s also at this week’s CME Group Tour Championship, the LPGA’s season-ending event. 

And so am I. 

So I thought: Why not? I asked Korda and other LPGA pros this:

My 16-year-old is looking to break 80. He shoots in the mid-to-high 80s now. What’s one tip you’d give him?

It was a bit frivolous. But the benefit, I think, was three-fold. The players talk shop. Mason gets a tip. Maybe you do, too. 

Except now Mason is worried that Korda thinks he isn’t that great. Whatever. The kid will live. 

Maybe break 80 consistently, too. 

The full exchanges are below. 

What’s one tip you would give my nephew on his journey to break 80?

Nelly Korda 

Nelly, kind of a lighthearted question. My 16-year-old nephew is trying to break 80 for the first time. He shoots in the mid-80s, high 80s. What’s one tip you would give him?

“One tip I would give him? Well, two,” Korda said. “A lot of the people that I see who are ams never have a stick down on the range. If you don’t know where you’re aiming, there is a high chance you don’t know where you’re aiming on the golf course.

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“Tip two, I see a lot of people stand on the range and just drilling golf balls or just practicing a lot instead of going out and visualizing.

“At the end of the day, golf is a game of creativity and you’re never going to have your A-game. One day the wind will be off the left and one day off the right. The hole will play completely different. It’s all about creativity.

“So going out and playing a lot.”

Lexi Thompson 

My 16-year-old nephew is trying to break 80 for the first time and shoots in the mid-80s right now. What’s one quick tip you would give him?

“That I would give him to break 80?” Lexi Thompson asked. “How long has he been playing?”

Been playing about four years.

“Oh, that’s pretty good then,” she said. “He’s going in the right direction. I always say the biggest tip that helped out the most when I went out and practiced was always have a goal in mind. Always have something you want to improve on. It could be the smallest or biggest of things, the mental side. As we know, golf is such a mental sport. Could be working on the mental side and visualizing shots.

“So going out there with a purpose. Don’t just go out to the golf course and be like I’m just going to hit some balls today or play. Have a goal, something you want to improve on. That way, you’re not wasting any time and it’s always productive practice.

“Even if you struggle a little bit, you had a goal, you committed, and you’re striving to be better.”

Lydia Ko 

This is an easy one. It’s instruction-based. My nephew is trying to break 80 for the first time. He shoots like mid-80s, high 80s. What’s one tip you would give him?

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“One tip. I would say try and nail down what is the consistent reason — I think when you shoot in the 80s or high 70s, it’s always not because you consistently make a bogey, but it’s more like one hole where you made a double,” Lydia Ko said. “And most of the time, those mistakes are very repetitive. And even for me, I play and have — it’s kind of the same reason why I make those mistakes. Try and nail down what that key dominator is and that way you’ll be able to work on that and I think that slowly fixes itself without you trying to break everything down and try and make everything better.” 

Ally Ewing 

My 16-year-old nephew is trying to break 80 for the first time. What’s one tip you would give him?

“My tip would be go to a tee box that makes that realistic,” Ally Ewing said, “and then when you break 80 on that tee box, move back a box. So I would move up to a tee — like probably some people would say that’s not good. I think scoring is scoring and you have to learn to score.

“You know, shooting 61 from the forward tees is still really hard. You still have to golf your ball. I would encourage him to go to a tee box where he feels like he can attain that and steadily move back and keep challenging yourself that way.”

Ruoning Yin 

My 16-year-old nephew is trying to break 80 for the first time. What’s one tip you would give him?

“Break 80? Practice your short game and putting,” Ruoning Yin said, “because that’s what you spend most of the time on the golf course. Let’s say 62-stroke course. You’re probably going to spend half on putting.

“If you want to break 80, I would say spend time on your putting.”

Angel Yin 

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?

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“Hit through the ball and not at the ball. It’s simple,” Angel Yin said. “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.” 

Jenno Thitikul 

(Editor’s note: Jeeno Thitikul was this year’s winner of the Aon Risk-Reward Challenge — so I asked her a risk-reward question.) 

If you were talking to a higher handicap player, how would you advise them about going for a risk or playing it safe?

“Well, for me it’s hard,” Thitikul said. “I know golf is so hard. It’s like a really — there’s the ball and the club is like this big. I think sometimes it needs confidence. You need confidence and not afraid to make a mistake if you’re going to go to a risk. I think that’s the big key, when you have a really challenging hole, a really risk hole, water or something that you have to carry. I think confidence is the most important.”

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NAPLES, Fla. — Angel Yin, one of professional golf’s most perky souls, says she felt like she was being put to sleep, though the sedative most certainly wasn’t her golf, nor the golf course she was playing. 

It was the effort being put forth by some other folks, whose names she safely kept hidden, but it’s OK to say they made viewing blades of grass sprouting up beneath her a more lively game. 

“When I first came out on tour, I could take a nap,” Yin said.  

“It was terrible.”

Yes, the subject here is slow play, whose name mostly tells you everything: Play is slow — and that can frustrate. It came to light last weekend, at the LPGA’s Annika tournament, where the golf bogged down, rounds stretched well past five hours, pros battled darkness — and Charley Hull, a victim and not a perpetrator, went viral with some of her thoughts on the matter. 

“It was crazy,” she began. “I’m quite ruthless, but I said, listen, if you get three bad timings, — every time it’s a two-shot penalty — if you have three of them, you lose your tour card instantly; go back to Q-School. I’m sure that would hurry a lot of people up and they won’t want to lose their tour card.

“That would kill the slow play, but they would never do that.”

When asked if it was in issue, Hull continued on. 

“It’s ridiculous and I feel sorry for the fans how slow it is out there,” she said. “We were out there for five hours and 40 minutes yesterday. We play a four-ball at home, on a hard golf course, and we’re round in three and a half, four hours. 

“It is pretty crazy.”

Of course, this is nothing new. You’ve read about this before. It’s raised on both the women’s tours and the men’s tours. There are fines and stroke penalties, too, but here we are. At this point, you could maybe call it just SP and people would know what you were inferring. So you then wonder: How, again, hasn’t this been solved?

Helluva question. 

Ahead of this week’s season-ending CME Group Tour Championship, some of the LPGA’s best and brightest dug more into Hull’s thoughts. They were asked whether slow play is an issue, and how they’d solve it if they thought it was. 

Opposingly to the subject, the responses came quickly. 

Is slow play an issue?

“So I have my opinions,” Yin said when asked. As did Nelly Korda, Lexi Thompson, Lydia Ko and others. And clearly, Hull. 

We’ll try to start positively. To Yin, there’s been some progress, though perhaps that was a (s)low bar to clear. After last week, the memory is also fresh, so you expect the answers to sound more dramatic. Time hasn’t healed the wound, so to speak.  

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Then again, as noted above, here we are again, and players weren’t blind to that. Ruoning Yin said last week was “pretty rough.” Jeeno Thitikul said last week’s five-and-a-half-hour rounds were “a little too much.” Thompson expressed that rounds shouldn’t extend past four and a half hours — and argued the problem has actually worsened. 

Korda said if she were a fan, she’d be annoyed. 

Notably, she’s also one of the tour’s speediest players — and it’s here where maybe we can find some solutions. 

“Jason actually has to slow me down sometimes,” the world No. 1 said of her caddie, Jason McDede. “I don’t know. Just always like my first instinct is just the best instinct. You see it, you hit it. 

“Today with Charley — Charley and I played together today again, three rounds in a row, practice round. She was talking, and it’s like either a 5 [iron] or a 6 [iron], like you got two options. It’s either wind is off your right or wind is off your left, wind is into, wind is down. You can’t — it’s just people just try to overcomplicate it.

“I just always say your first instinct is your best instinct, I would say. Just be ready when it’s your turn.”

Then there’s Ko.

One of the tour’s more thoughtful minds, she said the issue has its layers. 

“Nobody, I mean, even if you’re the biggest golfing fan, nobody wants to be out there for as long as possible,” Ko said. “Sometimes like last week, it was a really difficult golf course with fast greens and undulating greens.

“Even if you’re playing well, but you hit one shot out of position, it’s going to take a lot more time than the person hitting it in the middle of the green and two-putt. And even two-putts around a golf course like Pelican didn’t come easy.

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“Yes, it depends on the situation. U.S. Women’s Opens tend to take longer because we have a bigger field. It is really one of the toughest tournaments we play all year.

“So just is case by case.”

Most certainly. But could that be solved?

The last word here is for Ewing. This week is her last. She’s retiring.  

And next year at this time?

“I’m going to be hopping in a golf cart zipping around in my retirement,” she said. 

She then continued. 

“You know, it’s always been a topic of conversation since I’ve been on Tour. I do think with some players it’s an issue. You have your fast players and we all know who those are.

“I don’t have any answers, but it definitely is hard to play with at times, and I’m sure it’s super hard for the rules officials. Every year at the end of the year, they’re like, how are we going to make this better?

“You know, people are playing for their livelihood so I get it why people take their time. I think there is a line we have to draw.”

How do you solve slow play?

Let’s try. Let’s draw that line. 

What say you, Angel? The floor’s yours. 

Look at spacing, Yin said. 

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“Because we get up to the tee box and we’re already delayed and we’re in a morning tee time,” she said. “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 [position]. …

“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.”

Jeeno?

Thitikul mentioned a clock on every hole. 

Lexi? Ruoning?

Hull wasn’t totally misplaced, it appears. “I think Charley is better than me on this one,” Yin said.  

“Yeah, hers was a bit of an aggressive comment,” Thompson said. “I don’t disagree with it. It has to be done. Something has to be done to quicken up the play out there, whether it’s fines or whatever it is. Needs to be done because we need to play quicker. Fans aren’t enjoying being out there for five and a half hours in the heat.”

Nelly?

Penalties, for sure. But she wanted to go back to her original thought, on mentality. 

“To be standing over a putt for two to three minutes, that’s ridiculous,” Korda said. “When a group in front of me is on the green and I’m in the fairway, I’m already getting ready. I’m getting my numbers ready, talking about the shot, so by the time it’s my turn, I already have my game plan.

“Like I’m already — I’m hitting right after the person that just hit in front of me. I think people just need to be — people overanalyze, one, and I think people just need to be ready faster.

“People start their process a little too late and they stand over it too long. Again, I think we need more people on the ground to monitor pace of play. I don’t think we have enough people to monitor it.”

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Lydia?

In a word, some understanding. 

“I honestly think the biggest thing is just the situation,” Ko said. “If it did take longer last week, I think there are two factors. Golf course was tough, and the second thing is there were players trying to get their card or work their way into CME.

“So like all these kind of situations, I think, play a factor. It doesn’t mean that, oh, yes, then you should take longer or not be able to take longer. I just think those are the variables that you have to take into account when we have longer rounds than maybe usual.

“I don’t know how long we took exactly, but I was lucky enough to be able to serve on the LPGA board and be a player director for three years. Before that time, I would think things and say things. Why would they make that kind of decision? After serving on the board, I realize there is a lot more to it than what we see.

“I believe that everybody is doing their best, and as players, we’re always going to continuously do better to try and keep up with the pace of play. I don’t know if one strategy or one way is going to instantly make a round 30 minutes faster.”

So where do we stand now? 

Are things solved? Are they unsolvable? Perhaps someone’s listening. 

There is at least one other answer, of course. 

A nap. 

The post How to finally solve slow play? Oh, do Nelly Korda, other pros have thoughts appeared first on Golf.

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The post Lydia Ko’s CME win included a bizarre misstep. What happened next was something appeared first on Golf.

Lydia Ko, holding her club out to the left in an effort to will her ball that way, didn’t like it. Over the course of a few minutes, neither did two observers. 

“Wow, I was not expecting that,” said NBC analyst Karen Stupples, herself a longtime player.   

“There’s no reason to be over there,” said Morgan Pressel, also a commentator and veteran.

“To respond that way is so surprising,” Pressel added later. 

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“It’s one thing for Leona to hit it into the water — it was a poor shot — but I’m just completely floored at Lydia following her in there,” Stupples added later. 

Ko was up one Sunday during the CME Group Tour Championship’s final round. She had five holes to go at Tiburon Golf Club. She was in the middle of the fairway after her tee shot on the 527-yard par-5 14th. She had just watched Leona Maguire, her closest pursuer in the LPGA’s two-mil-to-the-winner season-ender, mishit one into a marsh. 

She dumped hers in, too. Ko didn’t go left, where you could put up a parking lot with all of the room on the dogleg right. Instead, Ko tried to parallel-park her ball into a tight window of water, bunkers and little grass on the right. And you and Karen Stupples and Morgan Pressel asked why.

And Ko said why not.  

Then she won. By two.

On the hole in question, Ko didn’t want to travel that far right. But she wasn’t going left. Or maybe more accurately, she didn’t need to. 

Everyone else be damned. 

Afterward on Sunday, Ko was reflective, as the victory glow tends to make one. The 2014 CME winner, she’s stamped her name on the event — though, Ko’s not the fondest of that tourney pic of 17-year-old her in glasses, thank you very much — and there was conversation earlier in the week over who was the better player: the teen phenom, or the 25-year-old who lost her way for a bit, but is now world No. 2. 

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Ko’s mom knew that answer. 

“My mom does joke to me at times,” the younger Ko said Friday. “She’s, like, ‘You played so much better when you were, like, 15.’

“I was, like, ‘Thanks, Mom. OK, what am I meant to do with that information?’”

Good stuff. Is she right? Who’s to say? Jump ahead a few years, to 2015 and 2016, and Ko won a whopping nine times, including two majors. This year, she’s won three times. And you should take all of that into your own guess. 

This, too. The exchange is lengthy, but Ko is an excellent storyteller, and there is outstandingly a point. 

“I’m just curious, when you look back to that girl that year in 2014 maybe versus the woman you are now, how do you compare?” a reporter asked Sunday. 

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“Yeah, I think that week I actually flew from Mexico because we had Lorena’s [Ochoa] event the week prior,” Ko began. “I was coming into the week a little tired, and I remember I didn’t play that great. So that year was the first time that we had the million dollar for the Globe outside of the event. I think if you were a top nine coming into the race that you had the opportunity to win the Globe if you won the event. I ended up doing that.

“I think I played extra holes that day, and I was in the playoff with Carlota [Ciganda] and Julieta [Granada], and all three of us were very different style of players. I think there was a moment in the playoff where I actually thought I had lost because Carlota had hit a really close shot in there, but obviously she ended up missing the putt.

“You know, a lot of things have happened since then. I was 17 in 2014. I don’t feel 25 right now. There’s been a lot of ups and downs both on and off the golf course, but all of those moments have made moments like today. I think, yes, maybe when I was younger, I played maybe a little bit more freely because I was a little clueless at the same time. 

“But now, you know, I’ve gone through my share of ups and downs, and I think that’s helped me to realize that, hey, we’re going to have good days and we’re also going to have bad days. I think my perspective on how I treat the bad shots or the bad events is a lot better now than I did then.

“I hope that I’ve grown more as an individual since then, and I think golf is very relatable to life in general, and I think golf keeps you very humble as well. It’s a continuous learning journey, but I’m excited with where I am at in life and at the golf course. But, you know, I don’t miss the times of wearing the glasses and having to clean my lenses too. Yeah.”

At this point, Ko laughed. And remember, all of that above came after 72 holes at the tournament with the richest prize in LPGA history. Let’s continue. 

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“Just as a follow-up,” a reporter said, “so would you say you kind of recaptured the same kind of freedom that you were playing with back then, just in a different way?”

“I think so,” Ko said. “I think I’m freer now knowing that, hey, whatever is going to happen is going to happen. Sometimes I can put my 100 percent intention, and it does nothing like I intended it to.

“Then sometimes I don’t think it’s going to go great, and it goes great. So I think just all those kind of experiences help me to become more free because at the end of the day, it’s like a gamble. Yes, you kind of want that to go in your favor, but I can’t — like, just because I become more controlling, it’s not going to do any good for me.

“So I think just to let go, and I’ve said all year, you know, what’s meant to be is going to be. I want that to be, like, how I envision, but at the same time, I’m playing alongside the world’s best female golfers, and I know it’s not easy, so I just have got to focus on me. And if I do a good job of what I have in front of me, then that’s all I can really ask for.”

All of this is not to say this version of Ko is firing at flags and ramming putts 6 feet past. She’s still calculated. But you learn things.

Like the playbook for when your ball goes a little too far right. 

In short, Ko’s 14th on Sunday was surgical. Precise. No nerves. She fixed the damage, with nary a scar. 

After finding her ball in an unplayable spot, she dropped, hit her fourth shot to about 30 feet and two-putted for a bogey. Maguire bogeyed too, and Ko’s advantage held at one. 

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After a par on 15, she birdied 16. And 17. The leaderboard read this way: Ko, 17-under; Maguire, 15-under; Anna Nordqvist, 14-under.

After Ko parred 18, that’s how the leaderboard read at the end. She’ll head into next year a winner.   

And now we look ahead. We’ll do so with a question. 

What would happen if one of golf’s best-ever players became unafraid to take risks, because she can recover from whatever consequence?

While you think of the answer, we’ll end things with this line from Pressel, after Ko’s birdie on 16. 

“Look at how stoic and calm and settled she looks. Like, yup, that’s what I’m supposed to do.”

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