Marina Alex Archives - Golf Digest Middle East

Marina Alex’s relationship with competitive golf got complicated. Now, she’s an LPGA winner again

Golf Digest Middle East — Wed, 04 May 2022 07:07:15 +0000

By Keely Levins

Marina Alex wasn’t sure how much competitive golf she had left in her. The 31-year-old from New Jersey has been on the LPGA Tour since 2013. In 2018, she secured her first win. But on Sunday in Los Angeles, after enjoying a celebration for winning the Palos Verdes Championship by a shot over World No. 1 Jin Young Ko, Alex admitted that a lot has changed since that first win nearly four years ago.

The COVID-19 pandemic made 2020 a difficult season for everyone. While waiting for tournaments to start up again, Alex’s usual schedule of practice and conditioning changed. To fill her time, she added more workouts. When competition began again, her back wasn’t right. She tried to play through it, but after the ANA Inspiration in September 2020, she knew she had to take some time away. Her plan was to get healthy for the U.S. Women’s Open and the CME Group Tour Championship at the end of the year. But physical therapy and cortisone shots into her back weren’t enough. She didn’t return to competition until March 2021.

She’s open about the struggle.

“If you had talked to me last year or the beginning of even this year, I didn’t think it was even a remote possibility that I was going to win ever again,” said Alex, who was three back at the start of the final round Sunday before shooting a closing five-under 66 to win with a 10-under 274 total. “I didn’t know how much longer I really wanted to be golfing ever again.”

Part of the issue was the geographic location of her coach. At the time she was working with Ian Triggs, who lives in Australia. With the travel restrictions put in place, she wasn’t able to see him in person.

“You could only do so much with FaceTime,” Alex said.

Her injury added to the stress. Though her back was feeling good enough to compete, the thought of hurting it again scared her.

“I was so nervous about re-injuring myself, and so I just really was very, very protective of my body last year,” Alex said.

But outside of the mechanics of the swing and the physical realities of recovering from an injury, Alex felt a mental shift, too.

“My priority of being home and kind of just spending more time in one place and feeling a sense of community has been important to me. It’s tough. Like the tour life takes you away from that, so I’ve had a lot of struggle I think internally with what I want, the direction I want to go, what my next steps are in my life,” Alex said. “It’s definitely made me a bit more realistic of my future. I went into this year and I was like, ‘I don’t know how many more years I’m going to play if I’m being perfectly honest.’ ”

Alex says that when she pictures a life after competitive golf, she sees herself advocating for the women’s game. She wants to be involved in events, to try to get more attention on women’s golf. She wants to see tournaments where men and women compete together.

Though she knows there’s a life after competitive golf, she decided that as long as she chose to compete, she’d give it everything she had. She found a new coach stateside, Claude Harmon. Physically, she wasn’t in pain anymore. That combined with working on some new things with her swing gave her energy.

“I felt really just like re-inspired I guess coming out here,” Alex said. “It’s just amazing, like the hard work has paid off. I wasn’t sure if this would ever happen again if I’m being perfectly honest.”

Alex’s five-under 66 on Sunday at Palos Verdes Golf Club secured her second LPGA Tour win. And though it’s been a difficult road getting here, those closest to her knew this is exactly where she wanted to be.

“It was a goal this year if I’m being honest,” Alex said. “It was a goal amongst like my family and people close to me. I was like, I really want to win this year no matter what I decide to do with continuing to play or the rest of my career. I would love to be in contention and win another tournament.”

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How Justin Leonard and Brad Faxon put together the Bahamas Strong Pro-Am to assist Hurricane Dorian victims

Golf Digest Middle East — Tue, 24 Sep 2019 23:59:48 +0000

Locals push shopping carts past debris in the “Mudd” neighbourhood in Marsh Harbor, Great Abaco, on September 7, 2019, in the aftermath of Hurricane Dorian. The historically powerful storm left at least 43 people dead with officials fearing a “significantly” higher toll. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski / AFP/ Getty Images).

By Brian Wacker
It has been more than three weeks since the Bahamas were ravaged by Hurricane Dorian, the Category 5 storm with wind gusts as high as 220 mph that levelled Great Abaco, Grand Bahama and elsewhere in the archipelago. The road to recovery has been an arduous one, laden with bureaucratic red tape and the inherent challenges that follow a catastrophic disaster.

Golf and the courses on the islands are low on the priority list, but the game has a deep connection in that part of the world with the Bahamas a popular destination for everyone from the casual fan to PGA Tour player. Which is why those in the golf community are trying to do what they can to get the people there, several hundred of whom work at Baker’s Bay, The Abaco Club and other courses, back on their feet.

On Oct. 8, Brad Faxon and Justin Leonard will co-host a pro-am at Old Marsh Golf Club in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. Among those already committed to play are Justin Thomas, Jack Nicklaus, Jessica Korda, Ernie Els, Greg Norman, Lucas Glover, Billy Horschel, Jaye Greene, Corey Conners, Brett Quigley, Marina Alex and Charl Schwartzel. Funds raised will go directly toward relief efforts.

“They need everything,” Faxon said. “There’s no fuel, no place to stay. People need necessities like food, water and underwear because this is going to take months.”

How the fundraiser came to be in the first place speaks to the connection between Floridians and the Bahamas.

A well-connected Ponte Vedra Beach woman named Beth Warren, a neighbour of PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan though she doesn’t know him, was on a group text of other like women who had frequented the Bahamas on countless vacations and wanted to help. Her family’s home just outside the gates of Baker’s Bay on Great Guana Cay was destroyed in the storm but that was secondary. There were more pressing needs amid the chaos for the people she’d gotten to know over the years.

Another of the women who was on the text chain: Leonard’s wife Amanda. The idea percolated from there, with her husband reaching out to Faxon as well as PGA of America CEO Seth Waugh, and the pro-am was born.

“We made friends with so many of the Bahamians that it was truly our second home,” said Warren, who isn’t a golfer but had spent more than a decade visiting Great Abaco, often spending weeks at a time there with her four children. “Our souls were there. That was the happy place.”

Warren’s efforts have extended beyond just flying a plane full of supplies there, too. In the wake of the disaster, she says she has fielded calls from dozens of people whose lives have been interrupted or destroyed and has put them up in homes or flown them to Miami, where they could stay with relatives or in a hotel.

But it will be months if not years before there is any level of normalcy, particularly in Marsh Harbour on Great Abaco, where shantytowns were flattened and countless buildings reduced to rubble. The death toll is currently at 52 but that is expected to rise significantly with more than 1,300 people still registered as missing with the Bahamas government.

“There’s so much they need before they can even think about rebuilding,” Warren said. “There is a lot of need and a lot of confusion down there.”

In the meantime, every little bit of goodwill helps.

For more on the Bahamas Strong Pro-Am and how to donate, click here.

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Final automatic qualifying spots filled for 2019 U.S. Solheim Cup team

Golf Digest Middle East — Mon, 26 Aug 2019 00:55:59 +0000

Harry How/Getty Images
Angel Yin of Team USA plays off the crowd as she makes her way to the 12th green during the final day singles matches of the 2017 Solheim Cup at the Des Moines Golf and Country Club.

By Keely Levins
Three automatic qualifying spots for the U.S. Solheim Cup team remained at the start of the CP Women’s Open, the final Solheim Cup qualifying event for the American women. In the end, Brittany Altomare qualified via the Solheim Cup points list, and Angel Yin and Annie Park made the squad off of World Ranking. Yin played in the 2017 Solheim Cup, but Park and Altomare will be rookies on captain Juli Inkster’s team that travels to Gleneagles in Scotland next month.

Altomare has had a strong season, finishing in the top 15 five times on the LPGA Tour in 2019. Park won her first LPGA title in 2018, the ShopRite Classic, and has had three top-10 finishes in 2019. Yin, one of the longest hitters on tour, will once again be the youngest player on Team USA at age 20.

While Altomare and Yin looked like they’d likely secured spots on the team as the tournament played out outside Toronto, the last position was more uncertain. Before the CP Women’s Open, Austin Ernst was ahead of Park. But after Ernst missed the cut in Canada, Park moved ahead of her on the World Ranking list by advancing to the weekend.

Seven golfers had already locked up places on the 2019 U.S. Solheim Cup team prior to the CP Women’s Open: Lexi Thompson, Danielle Kang, Nelly Korda, Jessica Korda, Lizette Salas, Marina Alex and Megan Khang.

Two spots on the U.S. team remain to be filled. Inkster will announce her captain’s picks on Monday. There are several veteran players for Inkster to choose from, notably Cristie Kerr, Stacy Lewis, Paula Creamer, Morgan Pressel and Gerina Piller. Arguments could be made for all of them.

“I am really happy with my 10 players right now,” Inkster said on Sunday. “The problem is I have more players who deserve to be on the team than I have spots available.”

The European Team has already been finalised. Captain Catriona Matthew will bring the following players to Gleneagles in Scotland:

Celine Boutier (rookie)
Carlota Ciganda
Georgia Hall
Caroline Hedwall
Charley Hull
Bronte Law (rookie)
Caroline Masson
Azahara Munoz
Anna Nordqvist
Suzann Pettersen
Jodi Ewart Shadoff
Anne Van Dam (rookie)

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