Fortunately for Cantlay, the discourse died down a bit this past weekend, mainly because the Zurich Classic didn’t have nearly the amount of eyeballs on it as both the Masters and the RBC Heritage did. It helped, too, that the slow-play attention shifted to the LPGA Tour, where rookie Lucy Li incurred a slow-play fine during the third round of the Chevron Championship.

But soon enough (our guess: the Wells Fargo at Quail Hollow), Cantlay will reclaim his spot as public enemy No. 1 no matter how many excuses he, his buddies on tour or the tour itself makes for him. As fellow pro Michael Kim put it on Sunday evening, though, Cantlay is far from the only slow one out there and arguably not even close to being the slowest:

Y’all think Cantlay is slow… you should see some others… ??‍ I think there should be a monthly report of the slowest players on @PGATOUR. Public shaming won’t work on Cantlay but might work on others.

— Michael S. Kim (@Mike_kim714) April 24, 2023

While they’re all fine points, the point about public shaming not working on Cantlay is as bang-on as it gets. Could it work on others? Unless it’s actually put into action, it’s hard to say.

In 2019, DP World Tour player Edoardo Molinari, brother of Francesco, tweeted out a slow-play report, one that featured names like Tiger Woods, Patrick Reed and Bryson DeChambeau (it featured Francesco’s name, too). This was in response to a five-and-half-hour round that Molinari had played on the DP World Tour on a course “without rough”. There were nearly 150 names on the list Molinari sent out, but only three of them were fined, each $3,000.

Therein lies the problem. You can tweet out lists and public shame and fine financially well-off pros small sums of money all you want, but unless there’s a penalty that truly hurts a player’s score or his wallet, nothing will really change. All you have to do is listen to the way some players talk about the slow-play outrage to know that there is minimal interest in fixing the issue.

“All the things that have happened as of late have all been within the guidelines of the tour and what’s supposed to happen,” Xander Schauffele said this past Wednesday. “No one’s been penalised for slow play or anything of that nature. So we’re all operating within the framework of what the tour gives us. If enough people complain or if enough tour pros complain, that’s something the tour needs to address to either make it faster or change the time par. Without any context, it gets tricky because when you set up golf courses with Stimp 13 or 14 greens, tees in interesting positions, and pins in tough spots, it’s just going to take longer.

“We’re not playing like the local muni that sort of the average Joe compares our time par to,” he added. “We’re playing for a couple million — you know, $3.6 million. If you’re going to spend an extra minute to make sure you put yourself in the right spot, we’re going to do it.”

Cantlay more or less agreed, referring to the pace-of-play numbers not changing much over the last decade-plus.

“Trying to speed it up, I’d be curious to know how they’d want to do that,” Cantlay said. “I played the last two tournaments, and my group hasn’t been warned at all. So we’ve been in position the entire time. I don’t know how you would want even the groups that I’ve been in to play faster when our groups are in position and can’t go faster because the group in front of us is right in front of us.”

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A slow day during the third round of the Chevron Championship at Carlton Woods turned into an expensive one for LPGA Tour rookie Lucy Li. Following her round on Saturday, the LPGA confirmed to Golf Digest that Li received a fine due to slow play on the seventh hole. The tour did not disclose the amount of the fine.

“The group received a warning and was timed, as is our policy, before the fine,” an LPGA spokesperson said in a text.

The official explained that Li’s group received a warning “several” holes before it was determined a fine would be instituted. According to the tour, Gaby Lopez and Pavarisa Yokutan — the others in the group with Li that teed off at 10:06 a.m. local time on Saturday — were not fined. Li did not receive a penalty for slow play, which could have cost her two strokes. She shot four-over-par 76 in the third round and stood at three over, tied for 52nd place.

Li is best known for holding the current records as the youngest qualifier for both the US Women’s Open and US Amateur. She skipped college and turned pro in 2019 and played on the developmental Epson Tour until graduating in 2022 on the strength of a season that included two victories.

Per tour policy, which Golf Digest obtained and reviewed, groups first receive an official warning. Afterward, their pace of play must meet the average expected times to complete a certain number of strokes. The tour allows 30 seconds per shot for average expected times.

The “fineable plus time” is 1 to 10 seconds greater than the tour’s average allotted time to complete a certain number of strokes a hole. Beyond 11 seconds is where a rules official can enforce stroke penalties.

As witnessed by Golf Digest, shortly after Li, 20, signed for her 76, a tournament rules official approached Li near the scoring tent and asked to talk. After walking away from the media flash interview area to near the shuttle area, they had a five-minute conversation.

After the end of the discussion, Li and her caddie walked through the autograph area and went towards the clubhouse. She met with her agent and appeared to express frustration, taking her visor off before the group walked away to the clubhouse.

The tour did not disclose if Li, as she’s allowed, appealed the fine. She can appeal up until the conclusion of the Chevron.

The fine follows a challenging third round in which Li posted a double bogey on the third, and then back-to-back bogeys on Nos. 13 and 14. The Californian has been up and down at the first major of the year. She opened with a 74, but bounced back with a 69 on Friday to have a chance for her third straight top-25 finish.

Li is making the seventh major start of her career and second at the Chevron. She finished T-70 at Mission Hills in 2017 as a 14-year-old.

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“I feel like it’s been really long time since I played my first LPGA event. But I’m just super excited,” Li said on Tuesday at Superstition Mountain Golf Club in Gold Canyon, Arizona. “This has been my goal for such a long time. To be finally out here, I’m just soaking in the moment and really excited to get going.”

Li made her first LPGA start on the major stage of the 2014 US Women’s Open in Pinehurst. At 11, she was the youngest player to ever qualifier for the championship, leaving a memorable impression as she ate ice cream during her pre-tournament press conference. Now, the 20-year-old San Francisco native rolls into her rookie season after an impressive third-place showing on the 2022 Epson Tour money list, alongside four top-25 finishes in eight starts on the LPGA.

While Li hasn’t played in a pro event since the Mediheal Championship last October — she’s simultaneously taking a course toward her soon-to-be-declared double major in data analytics and psychology as a junior at the University of Pennsylvania — her success in 2022 serves as the bedrock of Li’s confidence entering this year. Discussing her approach to her maiden season, she sounded like a multiple-year veteran.

“I know that my game is really good, so as long as I stay patient, the results will take care of themselves,” Li said.

Pano’s emergence also started at Pinehurst in 2013 when she was only seven and one a handful of golfers competing at the US Kids World Golf Championship who were showcased in the Netflix documentary “The Short Game.” Ten years later, the 18-year-old Lake Forest, Florida, native is anxious to make her first official LPGA start after earning a card via Q-Series at the end of 2022.

“It kind of feels like I’ve been working towards this for a really long time, so been a very long time coming,” she said.

Alexa Pano (front left) and Lucy Li (front right) were teammates on the 2019 Junior Solheim Cup team that competed in Scotland. Andrew Redington/WME IMG

Indeed, the past decade featured multiple appearances as an amateur on professional tours. Pano made her first start on the Japan LPGA Tour at 11 in the 2016 Yonex Ladies Open. Two years later she played her first LPGA event at the 2018 Thornberry Creek Classic. She turned pro last April following her third appearance at the Augusta National Women’s Amateur, having earned a card on the LPGA’s developmental Epson Tour.

Despite having missed the first four events on the 2022 Epson schedule, Pano almost eked out LPGA status via the tour’s money list. Needing to finish in the top 10, she came in 13th, piling up five top-10s over 18 starts. But she made up for that with her T-21 performance at Q-Series last December.

Pano brings a constant throughout her golf career to her LPGA rookie debut: her father, Rick, will be caddieing for her this week. They’ve worked together in two starts events already this year on the Epson Tour, most recently missing the cut at the Carlisle Arizona Women’s Golf Classic last week.

That result might rattle some as they begin their first year on the LPGA Tour, but Pano’s time on the developmental tour taught her patience. It’s a key virtue she wants to bring into her LPGA approach starting this week in the Arizona desert.

“I think staying focused week to week on what I can control, and a little bit of what Lucy said is not being too hard on yourself and being really patient is a big deal out here,” she said.

The potential for Li and Pano to break out early in the 2023 season is real, and something that others are watching for, notably US Solheim Cup captain Stacy Lewis. Li and Pano shared that they have had conversations with Lewis about their potential prospects toward making the American team that will compete in Spain in September.

A first step to accomplishing that would be playing their way into the first major, the Chevron Championship, in late April. While they both acknowledge that’s a goal for them, Pano and Li are instead each preaching a long-horizon view of the season developed from their lengthy tenure under the spotlight.

“I’m here to compete and want to do my best, and I have big goals in that aspect, but still just want to learn something every week and learn about myself more and experience things like I did last year,” Pano said.

The post Former teen prodigies Lucy Li, Alexa Pano start their LPGA rookie seasons with surprisingly modest ambitions appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

Eight years ago, at nearby Pinehurst, she narrowly broke Michelle Wie’s record as the youngest player to ever qualify for a US Women’s Open. Li was 11 then, and she missed the cut, but at one of her press conferences, she wore pigtails and chewed on a pink ice cream bar. That image served to highlight her youth, and became an indelible part of the Lucy Li experience, to the extent that the outfit she wore that day is now in a USGA museum.

This week, eight years later, as Li prepares for the 2022 US Women’s Open at Pine Needles, ice cream seems to be referenced everywhere, and the clip itself appeared on the Golf Channel ahead of her press conference on Wednesday afternoon.

There was no ice cream this time, but Li, now 19, didn’t have to wait long before it came up.

“First question’s a tough one,” a journalist began. “Do you still eat ice cream?”

Lucy Li was 11 years old when she played in the 2014 US Women’s Open at Pinehurst. Raleigh News & Observer

She answered in the affirmative — “Who doesn’t eat ice cream?” — but this seemed to be about more than just food. Ice cream, as it relates to Li, is a useful metonym hearkening back to that moment at Pinehurst but may also unintentionally box her in as that same child who briefly emerged on the golf scene in 2014.

At 19, Li is not quite a seasoned vet, but she’s also no longer the same person she was at Pinehurst; less novelty, and far more seasoned. After turning professional in 2019, she excelled on the Epson Tour in 2020, finishing eighth, but was unlucky to make her debut during COVID-19, when fewer LPGA Tour cards were available. She struggled in 2021, but currently sits second in this year’s Epson Tour standings (the top 10 players on the money list at season’s end qualify for the LPGA Tour), and playing on a sponsor exemption at the Honda LPGA Thailand in March, she finished 12th. As she prepares for another US Open — she finished T-16 last year at The Olympic Club — she’s also on the verge of fulfilling a lifelong dream of making the LPGA Tour.

“That’s been my goal since I’ve turned pro,” she said at Pine Needles, though she wouldn’t engage in further speculation about her future. “I think it’s really important to just take every shot, every week at a time.”

Those shots, and those weeks, have been going very well for Li lately. She has yet to finish outside the top 25 on the Epson Tour and hit her stride at the end of March, when she turned in three top-five performances in three weeks. She’s bullish about her chances at Pine Needles, too.

“I’ve been hitting my irons really good, which is, I think, really good for this golf course,” she said. “It’s another Donald Ross course, so it’s kind of similar [to Pinehurst No. 2] in the sense that there’s a lot of kind of runout areas and false shoulders, false fronts, false backs. But it’s not quite as intense as No. 2 around the greens.”

While fielding questions about 2014, she acknowledged the influence of that coming-out part — “That’s why I’m standing here, I guess; it was a big confidence boost for me” — but was also careful to emphasise that she’s changed … and not just in the sense that she hits the ball 50 yards farther.

“I feel like I’ve done a lot in my amateur and pro career since then that’s gotten me to this point,” she said. “What you learn as a junior and amateur and pro, but it just becomes a lot more emphasised as a pro is the importance of being patient. I think that’s something you keep learning over and over and over again.”

She’ll put that to the test on Thursday in a group that features two other young players in 19-year-old former US Amateur champion Rose Zhang and Anna Davis, winner of this year’s Augusta National Women’s Amateur. And while the keen-eyed fans will remember the name from 2014, the game and the maturity will be unrecognisable.

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The post Eight years after her record-setting US Women’s Open debut, Lucy Li is on the verge of a big-league breakthrough appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Kent Paisley
SAN FRANCISCO — With four holes to play in the late afternoon last Friday at the U.S. Women’s Open, Lucy Li was five over par and flirting with the cut line. To her credit, the 18-year-old understood the situation, how she was in danger of squandering the opportunity she’d earned by qualifying for the major as a Symetra Tour pro. At the risk of hyperbole, making the weekend could be a key moment in her young career.

In the moment, Li came to rely on a newfound skill: patience. “I feel like going into this year, especially mentally I feel like I learned a lot from last year,” Li said. “A lot of those kind of virtues, like patience and stuff like that, something I learned last year, definitely came into use last week at the Open.”

Indeed, the Bay Area native went on to birdie three of the last four holes to easily make the cut. Rounds of 71-73 on the weekend left her at four over for the championship and in tie for 16th, her best career finish in an LPGA event.

Carrying some momentum, Li is set to play in her second straight event at home, competing in this week’s LPGA Mediheal Championship. Lake Merced Golf Club is only 30 minutes from where Li lives. She’s maintained a relationship with the GM and became a member at the course. It made Li a natural fit for a sponsor’s exemption, the first of six she can take on tour in 2021.

The opportunities Li gets to compete in events can potentially lead to her earning LPGA status for 2022. Put back into place for this year after being removed during the 2020 season, non-LPGA members finishing in the top 40 of CME points list can earn a tour card for the following year. Li pocketed 68.9 points from her finish at Olympic, putting her 247 points behind Lizette Salas in 40th place. Moreover, a solid finish this week could open up the possibility of more sponsor invites this summer (she has no other exemptions currently lined up).

Sean M. Haffey
Lucy Li lines up her putt on the 12th hole during the second round last week at The Olympic Club.

Li knows patience will be critical in the process toward getting to the LPGA Tour. “I obviously did pretty well last week,” Li said. “I think it’s important to play each tournament as they come. If I play well, then I play well. If I don’t, I don’t.”

If LPGA starts don’t come to pass, Li will go back to playing the Symetra Tour in hopes of moving up permanent to the LPGA. Li played five out of eight events before competing in the Women’s Open and sits 43rd on the Symetra money list, with the top 10 players earning LPGA status for the following season.

“That’s pretty expected if you’re going to miss that many tournaments,” Li said of her place on the Symetra money list. “I’m going to play quite a bit more later on, it’s really important there to be patient. You don’t have to jump up on that money list so quickly. I’m just really happy to have the opportunities I do.”

The post Lucy Li hopes to build on her success at the U.S. Women’s Open appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

But let us not forget the girl and her ice cream.

On June 19, 2014—the first day of the U.S. Women’s Open—Northern California native Lucy Li was 11 years, 8 months and 19 days old. By emerging the previous month from a qualifier at Half Moon Bay with scores of 74-68, she was the youngest player to ever qualify for the national championship, a distinction she still holds. She’d already made USGA history the previous August when she reached the 2013 U.S. Women’s Amateur at 10 years old. That’s also still the record.

Li was a prodigy, to be sure, but she hardly seemed burdened by the experience of competing against the best players in the world. She showed up for the first round at Pinehurst with her hair in pigtails and wore a red, white and blue blouse adorned with stars and stripes and matching skirt.

Then, after she’d shot a 78 (she’d miss the cut on Friday following another 78), Li locked up the championship’s popularity contest with one of the most endearing scenes in the history of majors. Li bounced up to the podium in front of a horde of cameras and reporters with a pink Starburst ice cream bar in her left hand. Asked what she planned to do the rest of the day, she quipped with a grin, “Eat some more ice cream.”

That did it. Even among those who possibly looked askance at such a young child being even allowed to play in such a prestigious event, hearts melted, just as the sticky stuff dripped down the girl’s fingers as she spoke.

Lucy Li brought an ice cream to her press conference after the first round of the 2014 U.S. Women’s Open.

People were going to remember Lucy Li.

The name will be recognizable again in the coming week when fans watch coverage of the 76th U.S. Women’s Open, which visits The Olympic Club’s Lake Course for the first time after the course has hosted five U.S. Opens. Once again emerging from a sectional qualifier at Half Moon Bay, Li will play in her third Women’s Open at the venue only 20 miles north of her home in Redwood Shores. She is 18 now, and after deciding not to pursue college golf and turning pro in November 2019, she competes on the LPGA’s second-level Symetra Tour.

“From the time it was announced [in 2016] that they were going to Olympic Club, this has been on my radar as something I wanted to play in,” Li said on the phone this week.

Life is very different for Li, of course. Her amateur career ended a bit awkwardly when the USGA gave her a one-time warning in early 2019 for breaking amateur rules by participating in an Apple Watch ad (she received no payment). She’s playing for checks now and grinding away at giving her game the nuances she couldn’t possess as a grade-schooler. But anytime she sees a USGA flag flying, the memories are freshened.

“When I look back, it seems pretty crazy to me. It does seem a bit overwhelming,” Li said. “When I was eating that ice cream, I was carefree. I was genuinely having a good time. I don’t think I fully comprehended all of it.

“At the time we ended up turning down a ton of media,” she added, noting that when her parents asked her if she wanted to be flown to New York to appear on “Good Morning America,” she begged off, saying, “I’m too tired for all of this.

“My family just wanted to focus on me being a kid,” she recalled. “That experience was kind of on my own terms. I just remember it being really fun, and obviously it gave me a big confidence boost for my career.”

Morgan Pressel, the LPGA Tour player who is working the Women’s Open as a commentator for Golf Channel and NBC, recalled seeing Li during the week at Pinehurst and chuckling to herself.

“I just remember looking at her and thinking, Oh my gosh, was I that small when I was that young?” Pressel said this week on a call with reporters. “And it was cool to see her out there, and her spunk, and her passion, and all of the fun, youthful energy she brought to the Open then.”

Lucy Li hits a drive during the 2018 U.S. Women’s Open. Christian Petersen

More than most, Pressel could put herself in Li’s tiny golf shoes. In 2001, Pressel was then the youngest, at 12, to qualify for the Women’s Open.

Like Pressel, who skipped college, turned pro and has notched five LPGA wins (including a major at the ANA in 2007) over 16 years, Li has always been precocious. In addition to her USGA achievements, she won her age-group division in the inaugural National Drive, Chip & Putt at Augusta National in 2014, captured the 2016 PGA Junior Championship, earned low-amateur honors in the 2017 ANA Inspiration and, at 15, contributed heavily to the U.S. team’s rout in the 2018 Curtis Cup. Also in ’18, Li played in her second Women’s Open, finishing T-55 at Shoal Creek.

Most of the members of the Curtis Cup squad have moved on to professional golf, including Jennifer Kupcho, Andrea Lee and Lauren Stephenson. Fellow Californian Lilia Vu is a friend, and she and Li are on the Symetra together. They are certainly paying their dues. The COVID-19 pandemic wiped out much of the 2020 Symetra season and eliminated any opportunity to advance to the LPGA Tour though either the money list or LPGA Q-Series.

“It’s been disappointing for everyone,” Li said, “but I think I’m the type of person who just rolls with the punches. I just accepted it and moved on.”

Moved on—that phrase took on a new meaning in the last year, with Li and her family members—mom, dad and aunt—traveling around the country in a Mercedes SUV to Symetra events, for which her father, Warren, served as caddie. The car was packed to the headliner. “I’m a girl,” Lucy said. “I have a lot of stuff.”

At one point, Lucy recalled, they drove from Florida to pick up her brother in New York and then across the country to San Francisco with few stops other than to eat and go to the bathroom.

“It ended up being a fun experience,” Li said with a laugh, “but our car has too many miles on it.”

Li got off to a good start last fall, finishing T-11 in the Symetra Tour Championship and runner-up in the Symetra Classic. By the year’s end, she’d banked four top-10s and hadn’t missed a cut. But the new year has been more challenging. In five starts, her best finish is T-10 and she’s 33rd on the money list at $10,863. Only the top 10 money winners at season’s end earn an LPGA Tour card. Beyond that, there’s a return to the Q-Series.

When I look back, it seems pretty crazy to me. It does seem a bit overwhelming. When I was eating that ice cream, I was carefree. I was genuinely having a good time. I don’t think I fully comprehended all of it.
—Lucy Li recalling her start in the 2014 U.S. Women’s Open at age 11

“There’s definitely been an adjustment,” Li said. “When I was playing amateur and junior golf, it was different, and I realized that there’s probably some sort of internal pressure [now], or a sense of urgency. I’m not someone who plays well running hot.

“There are a lot of great players out there. You have to wait for your week to come, to be patient. And I remember getting really frustrated toward the end of tournaments last year. It’s something I’ve definitely learned and grown from. I don’t get quite as frustrated when I’m not playing well or putting well. I’m happy about that.”

Women’s pro golf has seen younger and younger players, particularly from other countries, attempt to make the top tours. That will always stir debate by those who weigh the value of experience and personal growth gained at a university versus both the courage and strain of competing against the best right away.

“When you’re talking about such a gifted player, I don’t think there’s a playbook. I don’t think there’s a path or the right way to do it,” said former LPGA player Paige Mackenzie, who is part of the Golf Channel broadcast team.

Kay Cockerill, a Northern California native and former pro who has mentored players on how to approach The Olympic Club for the championship, hasn’t played golf with Li, but did help her find a caddie for the week. She is well aware of Li’s story, and while she’s a “big proponent” of athletes attending college, she lauds Li’s intelligence and drive. There’s a twinge of concern, too.

“It’s a tough grind to jump to professional golf at a young age,” Cockerill said. “And I think even those that have won everything around them and then transition into professional golf, there’s no guarantee that they’re going to succeed.

“Who knows? Maybe she’s peaked at 14, 15. Maybe her peak days are up ahead. But she’s a nice young kid and she has a passion for the game. She’s choosing to follow it. I wish her the best, but it’s not going to be an easy road.”

Yet it’s one Li hopes she can navigate successfully, starting with some solid play in a championship where she’ll long be remembered as the ice cream girl.

MORE: Think an amateur can’t win the U.S. Women’s Open? Rachel Heck might change your mind

The post The ‘ice cream girl’ Lucy Li is all grown up for this U.S. Women’s Open appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Ryan Herrington
In golf, the prodigy label can be a weighty one to carry. After becoming the youngest ever U.S. Women’s Open qualifier as a 11-year-old in 2014, Lucy Li purposely kept a relatively low profile, competing in a handful of USGA and junior events while trying to live the life of a normal middle schooler.

Yet Li’s golf prowess continues to impress after the now 15-year-old from Redwood Shores, Calif., claimed victory last week in the AJGA’s oldest and arguably most prestigious event, the Rolex Tournament of Champions. It marked her second straight victory in an AJGA invitational in as many starts (joining the Ping Invitational title she won in October) and the third in 2017. Garrett Barber won the boys title

Li won by five strokes over over Aneka Seumanutafa at PGA National Resort in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., an accomplishment made all the more impressive given how it came about. The high school sophomore took control in the second round at PGA National Resort in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., shooting a 10-under 62 on the Champion Course, the same layout used at the PGA Tour’s Honda Classic. On course’s infamous “Bear Trap” holes, Nos. 15-17, she made two birdies and a par.

This girl is on fire.#RolexTOC pic.twitter.com/Rw99BAd1Ci

— AJGA (@AJGAGolf) November 21, 2017

“It means a lot to me,” Li said. “On this golf course and against this field, it really means a lot.”

Champions // #RolexTOC pic.twitter.com/2bsFNZbTZv

— AJGA (@AJGAGolf) November 23, 2017

Prior to this year, Li already had a host of record accomplishments, having been the youngest to make qualify for the U.S. Women’s Amateur (at age 10) in 2013, and the youngest to reach match play at the U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links (also at 10 in 2013). She continued to show her talent when she won the Junior PGA Championship in 2016, then made the cut at the LPGA’s ANA Inspiration earlier this year (after playing the opening two rounds with Michelle Wie). This summer she also reached the quarterfinals of the U.S. Women’s Amateur.

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The question now is whether she might compete in any regular LPGA events in the foreseeable future. Li has purposely held off on playing in any tournaments, trying to fend off the expectations that come with competing at such a young age in these premier tournaments. Save for the U.S. Women’s Amateur she has yet to even play in any elite national amateur events either. But the need for Li to test her game might cause her to change her mind in 2018.

The post The latest teen prodigy in golf, Lucy Li, remains a prodigy now that she’s become comfortably a teen appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.