By Kent Paisley
Nasa Hataoka didn’t sleep well Saturday night despite holding a six-shot lead entering the final round of the Marathon LPGA Classic. It wasn’t from worry about the pressure of closing out her fourth career LPGA Tour victory or anxiousness about the momentum a win could give her ahead of representing Japan at the Tokyo Olympics in just under a month.

Instead, Hataoka slept poorly thanks to the dreary Sunday weather forecast. A soaking rain was predicted for Highland Meadows Golf Club in Sylvania, Ohio, and sure enough it came, with Hataoka hitting only two shots Sunday before officials suspended play. Hataoka’s concern was that the rain would create distractions that might be the only things that could truly get in the way of the 22-year-old claiming victory.

“I was more thinking about it during [my] sleep,” Hataoka said. “I don’t know if I really slept well or not with the rain and all the suspension and everything, I was just not ready for this.”

Turns out, however, the soaking was so fierce that it made Hataoka’s fears moot. After waited 6½ hours hoping conditions would lessen and the grounds crew could get the course playable—Hataoka biding her time by napping in her car and listening to Japanese pop music—neither turned out to be the case. Officials eventually cancelled the final round, and Hataoka was named winner with her 54-hole score of 19-under 197.

“Unfortunately, at about 9:40 [a.m.], with the amount of rain we had, we started losing the greens,” said Donna Mummert, LPGA senior manager of rules and competitions. “That’s what took us down early this morning. Rain just continued, and here we are. We went back out a couple of times thinking we’d catch a break, [the] fairways were what ultimately made the decision for us.”

Hataoka’s victory will appear to be a runaway, but she and Mina Harigae were locked in a duel in the final group for much of Saturday’s third round. The Japanese star began the day with a two-shot edge only for Harigae, a 12-year LPGA veteran still searching for her first win, to overtake Hataoka on the sixth hole with her fourth birdie of the round.

Hataoka regained the advantage with two birdies over her next three holes, getting to 15 under heading to the back nine. Harigae’s last chance to catch Hataoka was a birdie putt on the 10th, which turned into a three-putt bogey. Hataoka capitalized, pulling away with four birdies over the final five holes on Saturday.

NurPhoto
An Olympic Club ball-marker and a pink ribbon in support of Jane Park’s hospitalised daughter served as inspiration for Hataoka on the week.

Throughout the week, Hataoka used a ballmarker from Olympic Club, where she lost in a playoff at the U.S. Women’s Open in June, to serve as extra motivation as she continued to build on her lead.

“Every time I look at it, it reminds me to just keep going and go for a win,” Hataoka said. “That’s what I use it for.”

Hataoka showcased superb ball-striking all week, hitting 89 percent of greens in regulation. It’s a 22 percent jump from her season average. After missing the cut two weeks ago at the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, Hataoka spent time at Lake Nona Golf Club in Orlando working with her coach on controlling her iron’s distance. It paid off when she scared a 59 on Thursday, en route to a career-low 61, and a shot a 64 Saturday to close out the win.

“I wasn’t really expecting it [improved ball-striking] to come this early, but this is the result that I got,” Hataoka said.

Next to her Olympic Club ball marker was another recent addition to her Srixon hat, a pink ribbon with “Grace” written in black sharpie. Hataoka, like many on tour, wore the ribbon this week to support Jane Park and her husband, LPGA caddie Pete Godfrey. Their daughter Grace is in the ICU in Dallas, suffering from seizures due to swelling in her brain.

“I know Jane and I also know Pete very well, so it was really, really sad to hear the condition of her little baby,” Hataoka said. “I’m just going to wish them the best for them and hope that we can meet up again.”

Hataoka takes the two-hour drive to Midland, Mich. for the Dow Great Lakes Bay Invitational to play alongside Lexi Thompson. It’s her final start on the LPGA before the Tokyo Olympics, as the four-time winner opted out of playing the Amundi Evian Championship to focus on her biggest goal.

“It was really hard decision for me whether to play Evian or not,” Hataoka said. “Because Olympics was my dream to be able to play in it, I decided to go back early and get ready for the Olympics.”

The post How a ballmarker helped Nasa Hataoka run away with the title at the rain-shortened Marathon LPGA Classic appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Kent Paisley
Eleven months ago, the LPGA Tour returned to northwest Ohio in its first steps back from the COVID-19 schedule break. It created the LPGA Drive On Championship at Inverness Club in Toledo, and then played the Marathon LPGA Classic in Sylvania. As the tour makes its first trip back to the Marathon since returning to play, it provided a mirror for players to reflect on the coronavirus era and how far they’ve come over the last year.

“I don’t know how many [COVID-19] tests we’ve done by now,” Sophia Popov said at her press conference Wednesday. “I just think we’re lucky enough to have been able to continue playing last year with everything that was going on, so I think we’re all just very grateful for that opportunity.”

The LPGA bubble developed to ensure the safety of everyone involved with the tour included everything from rules guiding where players could eat to when they needed to take COVID-19 tests. There were unforeseen issues, of course.

So Yeon Ryu delayed her return from South Korea to the United States until December because of the pandemic, and she needed to study up on what the protocols were before coming back to play. “(I) felt like I just became a rookie all of a sudden,” Ryu said. She pushed through with reading books and watching Netflix, a common theme with the additional hotel room downtime over the last year.

Stacy Lewis, who won for the first time as a mom at the 2020 Ladies Scottish Open last August, faced her own challenges of corralling her 2-year-old daughter Chesnee throughout the bubble. Lewis explained Chesnee would ask to eat inside at restaurants, but she had to tell her that they couldn’t. “We started going to the park and eating at the park,” Lewis said Wednesday. “It has picnic tables. You get creative, and we got through it, but I’m glad we’re on the other side of it.”

Getting creative was a requirement for pushing through the strictest bubble the LPGA had—during its opening Asia swing this year. The tour’s policy of only allowing travel to and from the hotel to the course—necessary for the LPGA to return after missing the fall Asia swing in 2020—made socializing and getting away from the game challenging. “[The bubble in Asia] made you think about golf way too much,” Popov said. “That’s been the hardest part of it, relying on yourself and try to find ways to entertain yourself for six, seven hours before you go to bed.”

Sam Greenwood
Danielle Kang plays a shot on the seventh hole during the final round of the 2021 Diamond Resorts Tournament of Champions.

Defending Marathon Classic champion Danielle Kang’s lowest moments over the last year also came during the isolation from the tour’s stops in Singapore and Thailand. “Asia was tough for me this year because I’m very needy,” Kang said. “I need people around me, and I bother a lot of people. I call my agent for an hour if I need to. I don’t know, I like having people around me. Not being able to go to their rooms, not being able to eat with them, that was tough on me.”

As the tour slowly returns to full-capacity events with no restrictions, it’s looking ahead to the event that serves as the finish line and probably the biggest party of the year. Inverness is set to host the Solheim Cup matches against Europe over Labor Day weekend. Kang played Inverness on Tuesday, and she heard all about where the grandstands are being built. The planned crowds will be immense.

“That’s going to be awesome,” Kang said.

The post In return to Ohio, LPGA players reflect on COVID-19’s effect on their lives and careers appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Keely Levins
Momentum, no matter how steady it seems, can shift quickly on the golf course. Lydia Ko appeared to be in control of the Marathon LPGA Classic, but a couple bogeys in conjunction with Danielle Kang’s birdies, and the momentum moved on the back nine at Highland Meadows Golf Club in Sylvania, Ohio.

What was at times a five-shot lead for Ko during the final round suddenly became a one-shot margin with two to play. The momentum shift was complete when Ko’s short-game troubles led to a double-bogey 7 on the 18th, and Kang mustered a par from a difficult bunker lie to win the tournament by one. It marks her second win in two weeks on the LPGA Tour.

While watching Kang go back-to-back was exciting, seeing Ko lose had a gut-wrenching quality to it. It even hurt Kang. “It was a bit rough watching how it ended for Lydia as well, to be honest,” she said. “You know, just as a competitor and as a friend, you just want it to be a bit—I don’t know. That ending was—I wished for more for her for that one.”

The tournament felt like Ko’s since the second round, when she started off with four birdies in a row. She led by a shot going into the weekend and was comfortably four strokes ahead when Sunday’s round began. The former World No. 1 hasn’t won on the tour since 2018, and the lead on Saturday hinted at a potential resurgence for Ko, who has returned from the break with a new coach, Sean Foley, and some muscle gained. She jokes she drinks protein shakes now, but not as many as the PGA Tour’s recently beefed up Bryson DeChambeau.

Ko’s short-game touch abandoned her on the 18th: A hot chip that ran across the green, a follow-up that rolled back into a bunker, and a two-putt for double. The former prodigy and 15-time tour winner lost her chance to hoist another trophy.

Ko showed resilience when talking after the round.

“I think I have to see the positives,” she said. “I’m pretty sure I’m going to be disappointed and go, Oh, man, I should have done this over that. But when you look back at everything and you take everything apart, you’re going to have so many things to like think so negatively about.

“But I think there are so many positives from this week, and I feel overall more confident in my game. I think that’s really the goal I had coming into the this stretch after quarantine.”

The goal of confidence shows Ko’s vision is wider than winning or losing this one tournament. With confidence in her game, losing this tournament doesn’t matter as much, because she has hope these opportunities will continue to come.

The easy reaction from fans is that Ko was on her way to returning to her former, winning self—and then lost it. But what’s happening with Ko is a more complex than that. A week before the tour restarted play, Ko met with the media via Zoom and explained how she thinks about where she is with her golf with a maturity that far exceeds her 23 years. She recalled a conversation with Stacy Lewis, a player who also held the No. 1 spot.

Gregory Shamus
Danielle Kang hits a tee shot on the second hole during the final round of the Marathon LPGA Classic at Highland Meadows Golf Club.

“What she was at that time,” Ko said, “and she told me at one event, ‘Hey, you can’t try and be someone that you were. … All you can do is try your best from there.’ I think that really resonated with me, and that made me realize, you know what, I can’t try and be somebody who I was before, and I’ve just got to be the best possible person of me today.”

While we watch Ko in her pursuit of finding her golf game, we can’t expect her to revert back to the golfer she was. Instead, we are witnessing her create the golfer she is going to be. How successful that golfer will be is yet to be seen, but a four-shot lead heading into a Sunday, whether it was capitalized on or not, has to be a good sign.

Though it didn’t happen the way Kang exptected, it was her fifth win on tour. She had won once each year since 2017, and now has added the two victories in two weeks.

Andy Lyons
Danielle Kang waits to hit on the ninth hole during the final round of the Marathon LPGA Classic at Highland Meadows Golf Club.

There’s never been a question about Kang’s talent. She qualified for the U.S. Women’s Open as a 14-year-old who’d only been playing the game for about a year and a half. She won the U.S. Women’s Amateur in 2010 and successfully defended in 2011. That first win she recorded on the LPGA Tour was a major, the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship.

Kang is quick to credit her coach, Butch Harmon. In a time when Harmon was taking a step back from travelling with the PGA Tour and working with many of its stars, Kang found her way onto his roster at the end of 2018. The partnership was successful almost immediately: She won a month after they started working together. Since then, she’s gotten longer off the tee, and over the tour’s five-month break they tackled her 3-wood and started work on her wedges.

At the Marathon, she noted another member of her team, her caddie, as providing helpful insight on-course.

“My caddie looked at me [on 13] and said, ‘You’re still right in it.’ I said, ‘I’m 5-down, 5 back.’ He said, ‘Six holes to go, 5-down.’ [I] kind of liked that mentality. Went into match-play mentality,” Kang said.

She birdied the next hole, and parred her way in to secure the victory.

Kang will ride the momentum from the win straight to the airport, as the players from the LPGA get on a charter flight to Scotland for next week’s Aberdeen Standard Investments Ladies Scottish Open, followed by the AIG Women’s British Open.

The post Lydia Ko suffers late collapse and Danielle Kang wins for second straight week appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Keely Levins
With the LPGA’s second tournament week since the restart comes the tour’s second week of on-site COVID-19 testing. And one caddie has tested positive for COVID-19 ahead of the Marathon LPGA Classic presented by Dana.

The caddie, unnamed by the LPGA Tour in their statement, carries for Perrine Delacour. Because her caddie tested postitive, Delacour has withdrawn from the event and will begin quarantining.

“After learning that my caddie tested positive today despite not having any symptoms, I have withdrawn from this week’s event in order to self-isolate following CDC and LPGA guidelines,” the 26-year-old Frenchwoman said. “I feel perfectly normal and I wanted to do the right thing. I am looking forward to be back competing as soon as it is safe to do so.”

A similar situation arose on the PGA Tour at the Travelers Championship in Connecticut when Brooks Koepka’s caddie tested positive, resulting in both Koepka and his brother, Chase, who had Monday qualified, to withdraw from the event.

In the LPGA Tour’s first event back last week, the Drive On Championship, two players tested positive: Marina Alex before she travelled to the event and Gaby Lopez while onsite at Inverness. Alex has shared on Instagram that she has since tested negative for COVID-19.

The post LPGA Tour pro withdraws after caddie tests positive for COVID-19 appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.