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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Starting in 2023, the former ANA Inspiration will be the Chevron Championship and will be played in the Houston area, where roughly 8,000 of the company’s employees live and work. Though the date and course have not been finalized, the event will still be the first major of the year. The tour said it will be played later than the usual date of the last week of March, with the goal being to have the event aired on network television (NBC).

The 2022 tournament will be played next March for the final time at the tournament’s home since its inception in 1972—Mission Hills Country Club in Rancho Mirage, Calif. The new name will be in place with the overall purse jumping from $3.1 million to $5 million.

Originally called the Colgate-Dinah Shore Winner’s Circle, named in honour of the Hollywood celebrity who helped create the event along with then Colgate-Palmolive chairman David Foster to help promote women’s golf, the tournament celebrated its 50th anniversary in March. Previously it’s been one of two LPGA majors played at the same course annually. With that history at one venue comes plenty of traditions; among the most memorable is the tournament winner jumping into Poppie’s Pond beside the 18th hole, begun in 1988 by Amy Alcott.

The winners of the event include a large number of LPGA or World Golf Hall of Fame members: Kathy Whitworth, Annika Sorenstam, Mickey Wright, Juli Inkster, Nancy Lopez, Sandra Palmer, Judy Rankin, Donna Caponi, Karrie Webb, Patty Sheehan, Betsy King, Inbee Park, and Lorena Ochoa.

The tradition of the Mission Hills winner jumping into Poppie’s Pond, as So Yeon Ryu and family did in 2017, will be repeated one last time in 2022. Kelly Kline

It was Alcott who began the tradition of jumping into the lake next to the 18th green to celebrate her 1988 win, the second of her three wins at the event. King and Sorenstam also won the event three times.

Before moving away from the tournament’s long-time home, event organizers enlisted the support of Dinah Shore’s daughter, Melissa Montgomery, and established a Players Advisory Board make the transition as smooth as possible and help promote the championship moving forward.

LPGA Commissioner Mollie Marcoux Samaan, in making her the biggest announcement since taking the job in May, says that the decision to move the event was not taken lightly.

“The response that we received so far [from players] has been very positive,” Marcoux Samaan said. “Obviously, the history and the traditions at Mission Hills and the partnership there are very important to all of us and to everyone. So we have talked through that and again, overall, the response has been extremely positive.

“I think people know that this is an opportunity for us to sustain this major moving into the future, build new traditions, still honour the past and honour the great work that’s been done. But again, I think everyone realizes that this takes us to a whole different level.”

• • •

Given the big news regarding the LPGA’s first major, we asked Golf Digest staff to give their thoughts on the changes that are being made.

What are your initial reaction to the changes?

Nicole Rae: I’m sad to see the tournament move locations. The LPGA Tour has built such a strong fan base at Mission Hills, and I know it’s a huge event for the community. The residents and members really enjoy welcoming players and fans each year.

Hally Leadbetter: When I heard all of the changes being made to the Dinah, it made me really sad, too. I’ve heard so many of the pros call it “their Masters,” and I think a lot of that had to do with coming back to the same iconic venue again and again.

Keely Levins: Leaving Mission Hills after more than half a century is going to be tough, but the timing of this is right. The Augusta National Women’s Amateur occurs now at the same time, and it won’t be moving its date, as it aligns with the Masters. The ANWA gets network coverage, which the LPGA major did not. Moving the event to Houston gives the tournament the ability to shift to a date where it can pursue network coverage, and both the ANWA and the first major of the year can have their own spot on the golf calendar. I think it’ll boost viewership for both events, which is definitely a good thing.

Ariya Jutanugarn trades high fives with the fans during the 2016 ANA Inspiration. Sean M. Haffey

Does the increase in prize money and exposure on TV outweigh moving the event from its 50-year home?

KL: When I heard another name change was coming, I didn’t think it would necessarily be a good thing for the event. But when you look at what comes with this name change—namely the purse increase of more than 60 percent—I think change in this case is good.

Tod Leonard: Emphatically, no! As Hally mentioned, moving the Dinah (and we’ll call it that because most fans, thankfully, still refer to it as such) is akin to taking the Masters to—oh, let’s pick a random place—Idaho. There is no LPGA event that is more tied to time and place than the tour’s first major of the year. The sunshine in April, the palm trees, the perfectly manicured Mission Hills course—they all have defined the very best in the women’s game. And let’s not forget the scroll of champions, which includes most of the greatest players in each era. Yes, the increased purse and TV exposure are welcomed for a circuit that desperately needs both in the U.S., but this really does smack of a sellout by the LPGA of one of its prized traditions. Chevron could have chosen to gracefully up the purse and keep the venue.

HL: I do think the huge increase in purse and exposure for the event does outweigh the changes, but that doesn’t make it any less heart-wrenching. I hope they hold another LPGA event at the course so fans in the area will still have an event to rally behind.

What’s the biggest tradition at Mission Hills that you’ll miss?

HL: The biggest tradition I’ll miss is the jump into Poppie’s Pond and the robes that the players get to put on after. Going back to comparing it to the Masters, it’s similar to the green jacket ceremony in that sense. It’s sad that tradition will come to an end.

NR: I’ll definitely miss the leap into Poppie’s Pond! It’s disappointing that players who always dreamed of that moment won’t be able to see that through anymore. Hopefully, they can begin a new tradition with the move-in locations!

TL: It’s easy to say Poppie’s Pond, but I’ll remember two things about the 18th hole. First, it was a great par-5 finisher with so many possible outcomes—tremendous or heartbreaking—for the leaders coming down the stretch. And then there was the walk past the packed, cheering grandstands, where the players happily high-fived and connected with their people. Not another scene like it in golf, and that’s soon gone forever. You can try to do the same in Houston, but you can’t recreate the vibe at Mission HIlls.

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