She did so again on Sunday, the day the LPGA bid adieu to its grandest stage for the better part of 51 years, the Dinah Shore Tournament Course at Mission Hills Country Club. Kupcho, 24, made her first LPGA victory a major one, winning the Chevron Championship by two shots, then taking the victor’s obligatory plunge into Poppie’s Pond, the last to do so in a tradition that Amy Alcott began in 1988.

“I think it’s surreal to be a major winner,” she said, “and to be the last person to jump into Poppie’s Pond, it’s all really special.”

Winning wasn’t easy. It usually isn’t. But she made it look harder than it might have been after staking herself to a six-stroke lead through 54 holes and increasing it to seven at one point in the final round. She squandered much of it before regaining her equilibrium with a tap-in birdie at the 15th hole to go four ahead with three to play.

It mattered not that she bogeyed two of the final three holes or that her score of two-over-par 74 was the highest of her four rounds by four shots. She gave herself a cushion with the 64 she posted in the third round, and completed 72 holes in 14-under-par 274, two ahead of Jessica Korda.

A Coloradoan who mastered a warm-weather game in snow country before heading off to Wake Forest, Kupcho became a star, No. 1 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking and an NCAA individual champion. Three years ago, she won the inaugural Augusta National Women’s Amateur.

“I don’t know if you can teach it, but the bigger the moment, the better she plays and the brighter she shines,” Wake Forest assistant head coach Ryan Potter told Colorado Avid Golfer. “The moment doesn’t bother her, and not many people are like that.”

She wasn’t necessarily sure of that, having gone without a victory in three-plus seasons as a professional. She admitted to doubting that the first would come.

“Yeah, for sure,” she said. “I have been so close a couple of times. It’s just really hard sometimes. But here I am.

“I think once I started putting myself in contention and not succeeding, I really worked with my swing coach. He’s also really good with the mental game. So just talking to him a lot about what’s going through my mind all the time and trying to figure out how to process my way through that.”

She won with a club that also was a cause for concern, the putter. She made two putts greater than 10 feet on Thursday, three on Friday and five on Saturday, and made several key putts on Sunday with her lead slipping away.

“It’s actually something she’s been working on for a little while now,” Jay Monahan, her husband of little more than a month, said. “It’s just something that’s stroke related. For a while her through stroke was getting a little too far on the side, and so I honestly just set up a drill for her to kind of try and work through that, get the stroke a little more straight back, all more straight through, and she’s been doing such a good job working on it. It’s nice to see it pay off.”

Monahan caddies for Sarah Schmelzel and was still working when Kupcho began playing. “I was paying attention. I was thinking about it this morning, whether or not I was going to look, and it was too hard not to. I think I looked after hole number nine and then I had to look again after 16 just to hope that she was still in the same position she was when she started the day, if not better.”

She had adequately protected her lead, enabling her to enjoy the walk up 18, followed by the champagne shower she received from friend and eventually the leap into Poppie’s Pond. She was followed into the water by past champions Patty Sheehan, Patricia Meunier-Lebouc, Sandra Palmer and Amy Alcott—a wet farewell nod to a tournament heading to Houston.

“It’s surreal,” Kupcho said, “to be able to say that I was the last person [to win] here and first person at Augusta.”

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By John Strege
The 18th green on the Dinah Shore Tournament Course that unexpectedly took a starring turn in the 2020 ANA Inspiration will again garner attention this week, but this time for reasons that aren’t likely to invite controversy.

For the second straight year, the ANA Inspiration that begins on Thursday will be played without spectators and thus without the grandstand that, pre-pandemic, was always erected behind the 18th green. Last September, a structure, dubbed by Golfweek’s Beth Ann Nichols “the Great Wall of Dinah,” was put there to replicate the grandstand.

Several players, including the winner Mirim Lee, used the structure as a backstop for their second shots on the par 5 to prevent their golf balls from running through the green and into the water behind it.

The structure is not there this year, which will force longer hitters, at least, to decide between laying up short of the water or going for the green in two and running the risk of the ball reaching the penalty area.

MORE: How the ‘Great Wall of Dinah’ played a controversial role in the outcome of the ANA Inspiration

“When they have the tee back, I won’t be going for it, especially with this wind, with it being into,” Lexi Thompson, a past champion here, said on Tuesday. “But once they move the tee up, if I get a good number, I hit 4-iron in today and just placed the ball there and it stopped. It has to be a really good number for me to go for it.”

Sponsor signage that appears to be immovable has been erected behind the 485-yard tee box at 18, and word is that the hole will play at that length of shorter all four rounds. Wherever the LPGA decides to place the tees, they are likely to create even more interest on a hole that already historically proved interesting.

The greens here this time of year play firm and fast, adding to the challenge.

“It’s pretty firm,” Canada’s Brooke Henderson said of the 18th green, “so I think 3-wood is definitely out. If I can hit maybe a high 7-wood into the wind it will hold and a hybrid will hold for sure.”

Nelly Korda, who had a chance to win last September but fell to Lee in extra holes, summed up the dilemma based on her practise rounds this week.

“You’re definitely going to think about going for it,” Korda said. “I hit a 6-iron just short of the green and it rolled up to the middle and then I also tried to hit like a little 5 yesterday to land it in the middle of the green and it went over. So it definitely is going to be very hard to hold.”

Last September, Lee used the backboard to stop her second shot there on the 72nd hole of the tournament, then chipped in for eagle to erase a two-stroke deficit. In a playoff with Korda and Henderson, Lee again used the backboard, leading to a winning birdie.

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By Keely Levins
It was huge. It was blue. It was controversial. It was… a backstop on the 18th green at a major? At the 2020 ANA Inspiration, the hospitality tent that usually sits behind the 18th green wasn’t there. With no fans on-site, there was no need for any sort of stands. The 18th is a par 5, reachable in two if you have enough firepower. The hospitality tent historically prevented balls that were coming in too hot from running off the back of the green, into the water. To keep that from happening in 2020, an enormous blue wall was built. It became known as the “Great Wall of Dinah” in a nod to the previous name of the tournament and the name of the course, the Dinah Shore Tournament Course. The large fence behind the green kept—among others—eventual winner Mirim Lee’s ball from going into the water. Players spoke openly about using the wall as a backstop during the event. Those displeased with the wall’s involvement in the tournament didn’t hold back.

But good news for all those who didn’t like the wall: Even though there won’t be any fans at the 2021 ANA Inspiration in order to follow COVID-19 protocols, the wall also won’t be there.

A statement from the tournament explained that in this 50th anniversary of the major, the 18th green will be played the same way it was in 1972: as an island green. As the final groups come down 18, they’ll have to strategize differently, no more confidently ripping a fairway wood onto the green knowing the wall will keep it in play.

One player who is certainly happy is Nelly Korda, who lost to Lee in a playoff. She said early in the week in 2020 that she didn’t like the wall. “Honestly, I wish they didn’t have that wall there because I think it would play really cool as like an island green,” Korda said.

The ANA was moved in 2020 to September because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but in 2021 it returns to its early-season slot in the first week of April.

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By John Strege
There are plots and subplots in every story, though it doesn’t necessarily hold that the same individual is the principal in both. Danielle Kang was the exception here on Thursday.

Kang, 27, opened the ANA Inspiration with a four-under par 68 on the Dinah Shore Tournament Course at Mission Hills CC, to share the first-round lead after the morning half of the field was finished.

Obviously it’s early in the proceedings, but should Kang win on Sunday, it is projected that she will ascend to No. 1 in the Rolex Rankings and would become the first American to occupy that position since Stacy Lewis was No. 1 at the end of October, 2014.

South Korean Jin Young Ko currently is ranked No. 1, but she elected not to travel to the U.S. to play here, and she is not playing this week in Asia.

Kang has been a dominant player since the LPGA resumed its season last month. She won the first two events and tied for fifth in a third.

Confidence feeds on itself, and Kang has been mining hers for more than three years now. This is her ninth year on the LPGA, but all five of her victories, one of them the Women’s PGA Championship in 2017, have come in the last three-plus years.

“I think that’s something that I’ve gotten better at over the years, trying not to dwell on the previous mistakes,” Kang said. “Just try and focus on execution and knowing that I could still execute even if I made a mistake. Just telling myself it’s okay that I made a mistake. I think that’s kind of giving me a sense of just confidence.

“I’m trying not to be so result-based anymore. I definitely mis-hit some shots today, but I don’t let that affect the next shot, and it happens. Golf is a game of misses.”

Kang made three bogeys, but she covered his mistakes with seven birdies. In the morning session, Canadian Brooke Henderson, Kelly Tan of Malaysia and Yu Liu of China also shot 68s to share the lead.

“It feels pretty good to post a lower score in the first round,” Kang said. “I definitely made some mistakes out there but kept trusting my putting and trusting my speed, and then I made some good birdies coming down the line.”

Kang, now a Las Vegas resident, needs no further motivation, given that this is a major championship, but this Southern California native has some nonetheless.

“I think it’s more so than for a major for me, to win this specific tournament, the ANA Inspiration just because it’s in California,” Kang said. “It’s Palm Springs and it’s a tournament I’ve been playing since I was an amateur and I was invited here. I think it would just be a little bit different than winning different majors.”

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By John Strege
Eighties (27 degrees Celsius) and sunny, the Weather Channel says, forecasting a typically gorgeous spring week in the California desert community of Rancho Mirage. Its sparkling crown jewel, the Dinah Shore Tournament Course at Mission Hills Country Club, is pristine, as green as green can be, set off by a sky as blue as blue can be, as blue, alas, as the mood. Cue the soundtrack, Dinah herself, singing “My Melancholy Baby.”

It is an atypical week in this desert, notwithstanding the weather. It is the week on which the first major championship of the year, the LPGA’s ANA Inspiration, was to have been played. But of course there is no golf, no sun-kissed crowd, no celebratory leap into Poppie’s Pond in the gloaming at the end of another memorable week.

On March 12, as the COVID-19 pandemic intensified, LPGA Commissioner Mike Whan announced that the ANA Inspiration had been postponed, a crushing blow to a tour that already had been rocked by cancellations of three of its Asian events.

A golf course without golf is, what, a good walk unspoiled? Mission Hills’ three courses, like others in the state, are closed. The only foot traffic is from residents of the community walking and enjoying the tranquillity, sometimes with their dogs, occasionally with a single golf club and a ball.

“The golf course couldn’t have been in better condition and more ready for a major championship,” Michael Walker, Mission Hills Country Club general manager, said via telephone last week. “It’s just in phenomenal shape, the best condition it has been in in years.”

High praise for a course that this time of year generally is manicured as well as any this side of Augusta National. Meanwhile, the infrastructure—the grandstands around the 18th green and the corporate tents—was in place. The Dinah Course was all dressed up with nowhere to go.

“We stayed very positive all the way through,” Walker said. “There was a sense that they would do everything possible to make sure the tournament happened, until the point it became clearly obvious that there was no way we’d be able to do it from both a travel standpoint or a gallery or fan standpoint. Several other events around the valley had already cancelled, too.”

Among those was the renowned Coachella Music Festival, scheduled to begin five days after the ANA Inspiration ended. It was postponed two days before the LPGA made its decision.

“It felt like the normal buildup to the major,” Larry Bohannan, the golf writer for the Desert Sun, said, recalling the mood in early March. Bohannan has covered the tournament every year since 1987. “It felt like everybody was excited about getting this played.

“Then within a day or two, I thought, This isn’t going to happen, is it? I know talking to people at the tournament and at Mission Hills, they thought about every option, even up until the end, when I thought they probably were going to play with no gallery.”

Bohannan said there was at least something positive when Whan’s decision became public. “I thought it was key when the LPGA announced that the Founders Cup, the Kia Classic and the ANA were postponed,” Bohannan said. “They didn’t want a year without this particular tournament. It has more history and tradition than the rest of the LPGA tournaments combined, between the course and the great list of Hall of Fame winners.”

There’s also good news in the fact that the major championship already has been rescheduled for Sept. 10-13. The date has its own challenges, notably the fact that many of the snowbirds, those who winter in the desert and summer at home in northern states or Canada, will not yet have returned. The volunteer pool likely won’t be as deep and the crowds surely will be smaller.

No matter, the show will (hopefully) go on on a stage that won’t remotely resemble what it is in early April, save for the course routing.

“You’re changing surfaces from a winter grass [rye] surface to a summer grass [Bermuda],” Walker said. “We start our prep for the tournament in November when it comes out of over-seeding, and it takes five to six months to get it ready for a major championship. It’s the same this way. We’ve already started. We’ll primarily have a Bermuda surface. But I’m confident we can get it into major championship condition.”

As for the heat, well, there’s always the heat, a popular topic in the desert. On Sept. 10, 2018, the temperature reached 108 degrees. Two years before that, 109. The record is 115, while the historic average high is 104 degrees.

But it’s a dry heat, the locals would say, teeing up a familiar rejoinder: So is an oven. Look at the bright side. A dip in Poppie’s Pond will be a refreshing one. And whether the temperature is 90 degrees or 110, either way, given the circumstances, it promises to be the best tournament under the sun.

The post The LPGA is missing its first major, but will give the ANA Inspiration a (very) warm welcome when it returns appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By John Strege
Jin Young Ko arrives at the first tee of every round with a singular goal, and it isn’t winning. She sets out to always play happy, she says. It is an unreasonable expectation for most in a maddening game, but for Ko, these days, ranking her happiness playing golf on a scale of one to 10, she is a 12.

Consistently great golf is a realm occupied only by the elite, and her record this year argues strongly that she has joined the club. The latest evidence is her victory in the ANA Inspiration on Sunday, and though she did take the customary winner’s leap into Poppie’s Pond by the 18th green of the Dinah Shore Tournament Course here, it was unnecessary. She has been making a considerable splash for a while now.

The victory was Ko’s second in three weeks, with a tie for second in between. She has finished worse than third only once in six starts in 2019. She began the week fifth on the Rolex Rankings and with this victory is projected to move to No. 1 in the Rolex Rankings.

Ko, 23 and a South Korean took a one-stroke lead into the final round, shot a two-under par 70 and won by three. M.H. Lee, who closed to within a stroke at one point, finished second, while Lexi Thompson, on the strength of a closing five-under par 67 finished third. I.K. Kim, who began the day one back of Ko, shot a 74 and tied for fourth.

“I still can’t believe it,” she said. “I had a really great round today and this week. I’m really happy. I can’t believe it.”

It was a textbook-closing round for a leader. She hit 12 of 14 fairways and 14 of 18 greens in regulation and encountered very little stress along the way. Not that she ever stresses much. An even keel is a 15th club in her arsenal.

She revealed nothing of an emotional nature until she holed a 15-foot birdie putt for emphasis on the 18th green, then immediately broke down crying. She tearfully thanked God, her parents and grandfather.

It was not a surprise, this victory. She learned to win on the Korean LPGA Tour, amassing 10 victories, the last of them the LPGA KEB-Hana Bank Championship in 2017, which also doubled as a first victory on the LPGA, earning her LPGA membership.

She was the LPGA’s rookie of the year in 2018 when she won the ISPS Handa Women’s Australian Open and finished in the top 10 13 times.

She has a swing suitable for framing, but more importantly one that has no trouble repeating, whatever the situation. This explains why she ranked 13th in driving accuracy entering this tournament and fourth in greens in regulation. Throw in a reliable putter and you have a prescription for success.

It might have helped, too, that she had a caddie, David Brooker, who is comfortable when his boss is centre stage in the cauldron of a Sunday afternoon, notably in this tournament. Brooker caddied for Grace Park when she won here in 2004 and for Lorena Ochoa when she won in 2008.

Ko, meanwhile, became the 15th South Korean to win a major championship in a lineage that began with Se-Re Pak and her victory in the McDonald’s LPGA Championship in 1998.

“It’s a really great honour for me,” she said. “So many Korean players made a great job in this tournament. So really honoured to be here.”

Incidentally, Ko has a dog whose name reportedly translates to Awesome, though one Internet translation produced Great.

Awesome or Great, either would adequately describe the dog’s master these days.

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By John Strege
However one crunched the numbers at one point on Saturday, they invariably added to a Sunday victory for Jin Young Ko in the ANA Inspiration.

Take a lead of five with 26 holes left and factor in a final-round scoring average of 66.2 this year and go ahead and affix her name to the Walk of Champions adjacent to the 18th green of the Dinah Shore Tournament Course at Mission Hills Country Club.

Or not yet. Ko stumbled en route to her Sunday victory lap by making a double-bogey when she hit her tee shot into the water on 14, followed by a bogey on 15. She’ll take only a one-stroke lead over 36-hole leader I.K. Kim into the final round.

Still, she made up five strokes on Kim, who began the final round with a three-stroke lead, four ahead of Ko. A four-under par 68 from Ko still equalled the second-best score of the day (Alena Sharp had a 67). Kim had her own issues on the front nine, including a double-bogey on the par-5 ninth hole resulting in a five-stroke deficit heading to the back nine. But she played the final nine in two under and posted a one-over 73.

“It’s okay,” she said of the tee shot at 14. “I’m not a robot. I’m human. Don’t think about bad things. Just looking for good things. I had a great round still. Yeah, sometimes it happens on number 14 and 15 also, but I had birdie on 17. It was really pressure. Doesn’t matter. I’m not afraid of everything, so I’m just looking forward to Sunday.”

The numbers still are working in Ko’s favour, given her ownership of final rounds this season: 65, 65, 69, 68 and 64. Any of those numbers likely would assure a victory for the 23-year-old South Korean, who already has won three times in her short LPGA career.

Ko, fifth in the Rolex Rankings, has been on a remarkable roll. She has finished second, tied for 29th, tied for third, won the Founders Cup two weeks ago, and tied for second in the Kia Classic last week.

She is seeking to become the fourth Korean to win here, following So-Yeon Ryu in 2017, Inbee Park in 2013, Sun-Young Yoo in 2012, and Grace Park in 2004. But so is Kim, who also wants to settle a score with the tournament. Recall that in 2012, she missed a one-foot putt to win here and lost to Yoo in a playoff.

The two will be in the final pairing on Sunday. “We have a really great relationship,” Ko said. “She’s amazing. So I will really enjoy with I.K. tomorrow.”

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