United States of America
It’s Thursday morning and golf is on.
There is always a golf one can wear these days. DP World was on the Golf Channel early this morning, radiating from Denmark. The PGA Tour was a few hours after that, with cameras in Illinois streaming the action to your iPads via ESPN+ and eventually on The Golf Channel as well. Tomorrow you can add LIV Golf to your rosters, on the CW. There’s more to golf than you can shake a titanium club with.
Each week, inevitably, there is a hierarchy of events. You may be building it up subconsciously but you are building it up nonetheless, arranging tournaments informally, first and foremost, by the amount that matters. Your hierarchy may be different than mine (happy 4th, let’s celebrate our liberties) but this week I’m clearly #1, because I’ve been eager to watch the US Women’s Open at Pebble Beach since the day it was announced. . The women’s game’s biggest event just got bigger with this week’s venue, which has never hosted a women’s major but has hosted men’s teams seven times (plus the PGA Tour each winter). Should it have taken this long for the pros to compete here? of course not! But it’s good to have it now anyway.
The event is made greater by the golf course, which – like Nelly Korda – I learned about from TV and from the 2005 Tiger Woods PGA Tour. It’s made greater by the money, too. Cash isn’t the only thing that signifies importance or importance in professional golf, but it certainly seems like the latter follows the former, so it’s significant that the USGA set aside $11 million this year, up from $10 million last year.
The 2022 champion, Minjee Lee, said at the Champions Dinner on Tuesday night that attendees were comparing notes on checks for first place. Fifty years ago, the first check exceeded $5,000 for the first time. Forty years ago, the winner received $25,000. Thirty years ago, it jumped to over $100,000. The first time Annika Sorenstam (who was in this week’s field) won was in 1995; I earned $175,000. Carrie Webb, the last Australian to win, took home $500,000 for her first win in 2000. Me? She earned $1.8 million last summer.
For me, it’s the music. Significance, ie – it begins with the music. “Celebrating Human Being,” the bright and regal theme of USGA events on NBC properties, made a comeback in 2020 when the USGA returned to NBC after half a decade of eventing under the Fox umbrella. The topic originated with Yanni, the nameless Greek composer, and when the coverage begins I feel in my soul the importance of this. Horns told me so. The theme connects me to the US Opens, the TV intros I watched from my grandparents’ living room floor, childhood mornings spent tiptoeing in the basement to flip the Open Championship at 6am, I’m pretty sure the theme of Yanni wasn’t even on The open intro then, but when I look back on that scene in my mind, that’s the music that’s playing. I’m fond of both the trademarks and the nostalgia, so I hear the music and the memories come back and the simple joys do too.
Peacock didn’t exist at the time, nor did the Fire TV stick. But the latter now has brought the former to my TV in remarkably high definition. Yanni is there too, ushering in the signature morning band. It’s a proud production. But golfers struggle.
Jin Young Koo is No. 1 in the world and among the favorites in the tournament. But she just blew out No. 10, No. 12, No. 14 and No. 16, a neat pattern for every other on her scorecard but a disappointing set of numbers that certainly must be recorded. The double cross leads to a double bogey at 17, destroying the pattern and worsening the numbers as well. The announcers keep saying things like, “Jin Young Koo is hitting just now One player.” That’s surprising and not good.
Nelly Korda is the world No. 2, also among the favorites who is also struggling. She’s a Florida girl by upbringing and nature and admittedly hates the cold. It was chilly this morning and I started to cool down, missing wide with the tee shot on number 10 and opening with a double bogey. She makes her way down the individual holes – 13th, 15th, 17th – looking cooler with each missed stroke. An impressive up-and-down jumper for No. 18 stopped the bleeding and saved the top nine with four runs. The next nine are going better, which means the extra four is also where you’ll finish the day, just inside the top 100.
The best of the bunch is the one with the least ad: Lexi Thompson. Odd to refer to it as The least promising Because for many years she has been front and center in this event and many others. But she has yet to break out of the top 20 out of five players in the LPGA this season, which means the sports books aren’t giving much thought to her chances. She’s not inexperienced, though: Thompson is only 28 but somehow this is 17 of those. In those first 16, it scored eight top 10s and twice finished on the podium—only not winning yet.
Thompson doesn’t seem entirely comfortable with long drives nor with short putts, but her golf streak is still so high that she hangs hard, succumbing to a bogey but bounces back with a birdie and so on. Dead-end lying leads to vulnerability in number 1. Ag. An exciting second five-foot lead to the Eagles in the sixth. Oh. She misses it, to acquire the jumper. Ag, again. I shot double digits over 74, a number that will still be better than the field average.
The greens look solid. It also looks green, but it is undoubtedly still. As a result, it’s hard to hold, so some of the world’s best golfers continue to hit the routes that land on them but come off. Even the wedges from the fairway skip ahead and then roll to a stop; There is very little sign of the balls stopping working, the way it might happen anywhere else. This makes some of the smaller greens play smaller. Miss the boardwalk? Good luck carrying anything. Even par seems like it will be a good result all week.
Elsewhere on the field is Xiyu “Janet” Lin posting a 68, even with a bogey on her last hole. Irish abyss Áine Donegan is right behind her at the age of 69, thanks to five birdies and an eagle. USA Network captures the action that requires a simple press of a button on a Fire Stick. I’m up for the challenge.
Broadcasting is a mixture of beginnings and endings. It is a celebration of what was and what could be. There’s Sorenstam, whose 80 was just a shot behind the world number one but in front of fewer golfers than she’d hoped for. Michelle Wei West is playing her final event and celebrating the ninth anniversary of her only major win. But a snowman 8 in a par-5 18 spoils it; I shot 79 with “really rusty stupid ghosts”. She admits that she was looking for a lot of gems in practice. Putting them outside is definitely unpleasant. She hits it well, by her description, and shoots a 79. On the outside, the upset is to die for.
It’s afternoon now, and golf is on. I just mentioned some endings but there are beginnings too, not just for Donegan but for Rose Zhang, who is playing her first Women’s Open as a professional. Expectations are high after she wins and a top-ten grand slam in her first two professional matches; It’s my favorite bet. Maybe she should – she does have the course history here, after all.
Zhang Birdies No. 3 and then No. 4 as well, and things start to look very simple. They suddenly looked a lot more complicated for her play partner Lydia Ko, who was No. 1 in the world just a few months ago but hasn’t been herself lately. It’s one under rank 4, but suddenly it’s in a railroad rank 5 – like, 40 or 50 yards Left – and struggling her way into a quadruple bogey 7. She flies out the next day, normally.
Hyo Joo Kim is on screen and it looks like her golf swing can never produce a T-stroke off the line, yet she does, because that’s what golf swings do. Zhang also proved fallible, missing a ball down the cliff at No. 8 on the way to a double.
There’s a fist pump, all of a sudden, from Emilia Miliccio, who can hit 20-footers for an 11th-ranked birdie. She’s a Wake Forest grad doing improbable double-duty this week; She walked with the morning trio of Coe, Korda, and Thompson and cycled right after their rounds ended. Good job if you can get it.
Throwing on an Airpod, Aussie Hannah Green slips seamlessly into interview mode while walking down the par-4 9 and chatting to the broadcast crew. She’ll make a bogey there, which is a reasonable feat considering she plays the second hardest hole of the day, averaging over 4.4 strokes. Such remote rallies and talks would have been unthinkable a few years ago. It’s standard fare now. Firesticks are too.
I was planning to be there in person to cover the event live to see Pebble and these golfers. Earlier this year I spoke with League Commissioner Molly Marco Semaan about her vision of women’s events. I talked about how they feel big. What would that look and feel like? I got sick; I could not go. So here I am, watching from my couch. I realize it’s not a bad place.
We’re in prime time watching again on the East Coast now. The stream cuts to a scenic aerial photo and then a look at the blue on green background leaderboard. In celebration of the human being, trumpets blare through the television speakers. It’s a good night to play golf.
It feels great.
The author (cautiously) welcomes your feedback at dylan_dethier@golf.com.