By Kent Paisley
Most golfers can relate to the warmup Moriya Jutanugarn had Wednesday morning ahead of the first round of the Hugel Premia L.A. Open. Despite seemingly hitting the shots she wanted on the driving range at Wilshire Country Club, the 26-year-old Thai native walked off with a bad feeling, one that carried over into the start of her round. Through five holes, Jutanugarn was four over par.

MORE: There’s an intriguing race for World No. 1 brewing on LPGA

What most golfers can’t relate to was Jutanugarn’s response. She proceeded to birdie 10 of her next 13 holes to finish at six-under 66, the solo leader through the morning wave. Nelly Korda and Austin Ernst shot 67s.

Starting off the 10th tee, Jutanugarn stood on her sixth hole and asked herself if she would be proud at the end of the day. She then heard the encouragement she needed from caddie Justin Thompson to turn her round around. “He told me after I make the first birdie, all you have to do is get it back one at a time,” she said. “He kept saying that all day today.”

Jutanugarn, who won the inaugural playing of the tournament in 2018, her lone LPGA title, made the turn in even par, then played Wilshire’s first nine holes in six-under 29 on the front nine. For the day, she had only 26 putts.

The performance reinforced the recent advice she received from her coaches, Lynn Marriott and Pia Nilsson of Vision54. The duo connected in person with Jutanugarn for the first time in more than a year during the ANA Inspiration, where they attempted to fine-tune her process to make it simpler. “[We coached her] to be ‘nicer’ to herself in her reaction to her shots,” Marriott said on Wednesday when reached in Arizona via text.

Jutanguarn relied on that by being less outcome-oriented throughout the 10-under run. Instead, she recommitted to “making herself proud” at the end of the day.

“Well, of course, making birdies and putts is fun, but I really enjoyed myself out there … how I [was able to] control my emotions with so many things going on at the start,” Jutanugarn said.

Channelling those emotions into solid performances will be particularly important for Jutanugarn in trying to accomplish one of her goals for 2021: qualifying for the Olympics. When fellow Thai native Patty Tavatanakit won the ANA Inspiration, she jumped to 12th in the Rolex Ranking, leapfrogging Jutanugarn (currently 41st) and her younger sister Ariya (32nd). Only the top two will play in Japan.

Grabbing a second LPGA title is also something Jutanugarn would love to accomplish, an accomplishment that would be fitting if it came at Wilshire, which she considers one of her favourite courses on tour.

“Of course, I had a lot of good memories out here,” she said. “Just to come back is always great … I love this town. I like this place. … It’s just one of the golf courses that you just have to enjoy it and one of the weeks on tour I really [enjoy].”

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By Kent Paisley
The Hollywood sign looms large over Wilshire Country Club, where the LPGA’s Hugel-Air Premia LA Open begins on Wednesday. It’s apropos of the drama that could be playing out this week and throughout the spring and summer on the LPGA Tour.

Since July 2019, Jin Young Ko has held the No. 1 spot on the Rolex Women’s Rankings, the stretch including 82 weeks of active play and eight weeks when the rankings were frozen during the COVID-19 hiatus. Yet her nearest rival, World No. 2 Inbee Park, has been steadily creeping closer to Ko on the points list in recent weeks. Park, who won her 22nd career LPGA title at the Kia Classic last month, trails Ko by an average of .67 points after opening the season 2.51 points behind. In addition to her Kia win, Park was T-7 at the ANA Inspiration and tied for runner-up last week at the Lotte Championship.

It isn’t just Park who is putting heat on Ko. Sei Young Kim and Nelly Korda, Nos. 3 and 4 in the latest Rolex Ranking, have both gotten off to solid starts in 2021. Kim also finished T-2 at the Lotte and T-3 at the ANA, and has posted top-25s in 17 of her last 19 starts dating back to October 2019.

“Yeah, definitely that’s my biggest goal, and I keep push myself,” said Kim, a 13-time tour winner, of becoming World No. 1. “Yeah, I wish I could reach what I goal this year.”

Korda, also T-2 last week, won earlier this year at the Gainbridge LPGA, was T-3 at ANA and T-10 at Kia. She’s the trying to become the first U.S. player to reach No. 1 since Stacy Lewis in 2014.

“It’s a cool accomplishment to be the highest-ranked American, but definitely my No. 1 goal as a professional golfer is to be the No. 1 golfer in the world,” Korda said early last year.

All three golfers will be competing this week in Los Angeles, the tournament that started in 2018 but was cancelled last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic having 15 of the top 18 players in the world in the field.

Ko has been No. 1 in the Rolex Women’s Rankings since July 2019. Jed Jacobsohn

MORE: Lydia Ko ends winless drought with romp at Lotte Championship

While the race for No. 1 is tightening, it’s not as if Ko is making it easy for her rivals to continue their pursuit. The 25-year-old from South Korea has finished in the top seven in three of her four starts in 2021, with two solo fourth-place finishes at the Gainbridge LPGA and Kia Classic.

Ko did not return to the United States when the LPGA Tour initially resumed play last summer, competing on the KLPGA Tour until eventually making the trip from her home country in November. At that time, it was Kim who crept up on Ko’s lead at No. 1 by winning the KPMG Women’s PGA and the Pelican Women’s Championship in consecutive starts. But Ko responded with a runner-up at the U.S. Women’s Open and a victory at the CME Group Tour Championship. By taking the $1 million check in the season-ending tournament, Ko claimed the 2020 money title in four starts.

This week, Ko can lean on good vibes from her previous starts at Wilshire. She finished T-5 and T-2 in 2018 and 2019, respectively, hinting that the venue might be one where she can hold her own.

“I’m just trying to play my game, and focus on my game, not the other players,” Ko said on Tuesday. “Even Sei Young, or Inbee, or Nelly, or the other players, I don’t care really.”

Maybe she doesn’t, but those giving chase do. And they’re not likely to give up until they catch her.

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By Keely Levins
The final hole at the Hugel-Air Premia L.A. Open at Wilshire Country Club is a par 3. Minjee Lee stood on the 18th tee with a three-shot lead, looking down a hole that had seen far more bogeys than birdies on Sunday. She went straight for the pin; it was as if she didn’t even see the fattest, safest part of the green. In form with the rest of her day, Lee hit her approach to 18 feet, then made the putt. A decisive end to the 22-year-old Aussie’s fifth LPGA victory.

Though the birdie at the 18th and the final score of 14-under 270 to runner-up Sei Young Kim’s 10-under made the tournament look a bit like a blowout, there were moments during the final round when it felt a heck of a lot closer. Kim, especially, posed a threat. Turning in 32 and making three straight birdies on the back nine, Kim appeared as if she could make Lee’s back nine incredibly stressful. But Kim cooled off, finishing par-par-bogey to open things back up for Lee. Simultaneously, other players were finding more birdies on the course than Lee. Amy Yang shot 64 to finish at eight under. Annie Park’s bogey-free 67 had her finishing at nine under.

Lee didn’t know what was going on around her for the most part, and to her credit, didn’t let it bother her once she realized what was happening.

“I wasn’t aware until probably that first par 5 on the back nine,” Lee said. “I was just going to carry on playing my own game. I had a couple of birdie opportunities coming in, so I didn’t get rattled up or anything.”

She proved that she couldn’t, in fact, be rattled. Lee birdied that par 5 where she became aware of her competitors and finished with four pars in a row, topped off by that birdie at the last. Hitting the green on 18 was the 16th green she had hit on Sunday. And her approach shots weren’t the only part of her long game that was dialled in L.A. Throughout the week, Lee average 280 yards off the tee, which is 12 yards longer than her season-long average.

Yong Teck Lim

Lee isn’t a household name in the way Lydia Ko, Lexi Thompson and other tour stars are. But for those who know of her, this first win of 2019 was only a matter of time, and is likely a sign of more victories to come. Now the No. 4 player in the world, Lee already had three top-three finishes so far in 2019, two of which were runners up. Earlier this season she’d passed the $5 million career earnings mark.

This win was more emotional than most for both Lee and her caddie Jason Gilroyed, whose mother is battling cancer.

“This was definitely for Loraine,” said Lee after her win. “Hopefully she’s proud of me and proud of Jason.”

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By Keely Levins
Moriya Jutanugarn has been on the leaderboard so many times in the past year, it’s easy to be confused whether or not she’s actually won on the LPGA. Combine her many top-10 finishes—three runner-ups and two T-3 in the last 10 months alone—with the fact that her younger sister, Ariya, has won seven times on tour, and casual fans are likely to think Moriya has already had her breakthrough victory. But until Sunday at the HUGEL-JTBC L.A. Open, the 23-year-old from Thailand had been nothing but painfully close to a win.

With a final-round 68 at Wilshire Country Club for a 12-under 272 total, that all changed for Jutanugarn, who held off Inbee Park and Jin Young Ko by two strokes.

Jutanugarn, the 2013 LPGA rookie of the year, was steady on Sunday. She missed just four greens and made one lone bogey en route to victory in her 156th LPGA start.

When Jutanugarn talks about what it’s been like waiting for this win, she talks about staying patient and trusting in the work that she’s been doing. “I just, like, keep doing what I’m doing,” said Jutanugarn, who lost to Danielle Kang in the finals of the 2010 U.S. Women’s Amateur, “and finally it worked out pretty good.”

When Moriya finished, her mom and sister were there to wrap their arms around her in celebration. Ariya actually cried more than Moriya did.

With the win, the Jutanugarn sisters join Annika and Charlotta Sorenstam, as the only two pairs of sisters to win on the LPGA.

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Subsequent rounds of 76 and 68 (the third best on Sunday) left her tied for 42nd in her first start since the Evian Championship last September. It might not seem like much, but for Gulbis, it was more than a little satisfying.

Gulbis’ journey to simply playing four rounds again has been a sequence of surgery, followed by recovery, followed by surgery, recovery and surgery again. It turns out Tiger Woods isn’t the only player who struggles with a bad back. So debilitating was Gulbis’ problems she thought she was going to retire.

In a conversation with Golf World over the weekend, Gulbis explained her experience, beginning with her first back surgery occurred in 2008. It was a discectomy that attempted treat bulging discs. Unfortunately, it wasn’t very successful.

“I struggled with getting re-injured,” said Gulbis, whose lone career win came at the 2007 Evian. “I had to get cortisone shots. I was constantly in ice baths or getting physical therapy. I spent more time in physical therapy than practising.”

Gulbis wasn’t afraid to swing hard last week in L.A., where she made her first start since September 2017 and her first cut since 2015. (Harry How/Getty Images)

Gulbis played golf hurt, but it was more than that. Her quality of life was affected. Only in her 20s, she couldn’t walk up stairs without pain. She couldn’t sit in a car without her back hurting. A career as a competitive golfer no longer made sense. So she sat down with her coach, Butch Harmon, to come up with a plan on how to leave the LPGA on a good note.

But then Gulbis learned that Peter Jacobsen had had the same surgery, but his first had proven successful. Gulbis began contemplating having the procedure done a second time, weighing the options with her doctors and coach. There appeared little downside, with doctors telling her she had an 80-percent chance of success. She might not be able to play professional golf, but she should be able to live pain-free. So she decided to try it again, going Phoenix to have the procedure done at the Laser Spine Institute.

“I had the surgery, and I felt no pain two weeks later,” Gulbis said. “A month later I played on tour. Recovery was easy, we just moved forward from there.”

In the years following, Gulbis played full seasons, her best coming 2012, where she has three top-10 finishes, including a T-4 at the Evian.

Her results didn’t improve after that season, and a bad bunker shot in June 2017 brought the bad days back. Gulbis was playing in the ShopRite Classic and had an odd, one-foot-in-the-bunker, one-foot-out lie. The ball was buried. When she went to hit it, her back went out.

“I was stuck sideways,” Gulbis recalls. “I was bent to the left. I thought I was gonna be done. My back got better just from taking time off. But at the end of the year—I knew I’d have surgery after Evian, just for the quality of life.”

And so Gulbis had a third discectomy, one disc up from the one she had operated on previously. Another option for this type of surgery would be a spinal fusion, but Gulbis didn’t really consider it, thinking that athletes who move rotationally wouldn’t be able to come back and compete after that. Now, of course, she’s seen Tiger Woods’ recent play after spinal fusion.

“It’s been really inspiring to watch his success,” Gulbis said, “not just in how he’s played but how much he’s played. His speed and how far he’s hitting it, it’s made me look at how much golf I could play. He’s played events that have sidehills and rough and I wasn’t sure if I could play those. He’s been one of the best greatest success stories in back injuries.”

She and Woods haven’t spoken about their back surgeries, but she said she has a lot of questions and would like to see a scan of his back. When talking about other golfers who have dealt with bad backs, Gulbis also brings up Stacy Lewis as a success story.

Gulbis’ third discectomy, done in September, went well, but the recovery took a longer than anticipated. Gulbis had hoped to be back playing on tour in January but had to push her return back until the April event in L.A.

Gulbis intends to play a ‘mini-season’ in 2018, competing through the summer to keep her back as strong as she can. (Harry How/Getty Images)

“There’s a lot of things I can’t do,” Gulbis said. “I can’t practice as much. I’ve never seen a range ball I didn’t wanna hit, but now I have to have different discipline. My workouts are different. I have to be smarter. Everything I do has to have a purpose.”

Instead of playing a few events spread out over the season like she’s been doing, she and Harmon decided to organize her schedule as a “mini-season.” This was the first event, and in the coming weeks, she will continue to play consecutive events. After her impressive final round at Wilshire, there are a lot of positives Gulbis can take away from the first weekend of her mini-season. For one, her back doesn’t hurt. That opens her up to think seriously about her goals.

“Win a tournament, that’s my only goal,” Gulbis says. “I love to compete, that’s the only reason I do it. It’s my only motivation.”

The post Natalie Gulbis goes from considering retirement to making first cut in three years appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By John Strege
Los Angeles calls itself the entertainment capital of the world, Hooray for Hollywood and all that jazz, though sports in this melange of lights, camera, action has always been hit or miss.

A city of four million in a county of 10 million, for instance, loves its Dodgers but went without an NFL team for 20 years and responded with a collective whatevs.

This is the landscape the LPGA is re-entering this week with the inaugural HUGEL-JTBC LA Open. It will be played in the heart of Hollywood, at Wilshire Country Club, less than a mile from Paramount Studios, the famous Hollywood sign visible in the distance, parking at the Hollywood Bowl.

There’s no business like show business, so they say.

The question is, based on past performance, whether the LPGA has no business returning to a region in which it has never been able to establish traction. We posed it to Los Angeles’ resident LPGA expert, World Golf Hall of Famer Amy Alcott, a native of Santa Monica.

“From my experience in close to 40 years of playing the tour,” she said Tuesday, “I always found that it was the small cities — Corning, New York, Rochester, New York, Birmingham, Alabama, Dubuque, Iowa — those are the cities that have smaller populations where the LPGA becomes the biggest show in town.

“When it’s not the biggest show in town, New York or Los Angeles, where there’s so much going on, it becomes a little different animal. It’s not that it can’t thrive and be amazing. But a lot of it is promotion and just getting the golf people [in the area] behind it.”

The last time the LPGA came to what is called the Southland (incorporating Los Angeles and Orange counties) was seven years ago when the Kia Classic was played one time at Industry Hills in the City of Industry. Before that is was 2005, the last year of a five-year run of the Office Depot Championship, this one at Trump National Golf Club in Rancho Palos Verdes.

The previous three were hosted by Amy Alcott at El Caballero CC in Tarzana. “Out at El Cab we drew very well,” Alcott said. “The last year of the contract, out at Trump National, it didn’t draw very well at all.”

That has often been the case since the first LPGA event, the Los Angeles Open, was played in 1955 at Inglewood Country Club (which no longer exists).

Since then, the LPGA has had tournaments in Whittier, Montebello, Buena Park, Pasadena, Calabasas, Los Angeles (Rancho Park GC), Costa Mesa, Simi Valley and Glendale, four years its longest run in any one place.

Now for the optimism on the eve of the inaugural HUGEL-JTBC LA Open. “I have no doubt this tournament will be successful with this sponsor and where it’s located,” Alcott said.

The two sponsors are Korean companies and Wilshire CC is adjacent to Los Angeles’ Koreatown. Moreover, the Southland has the largest population of Asian-Americans in the United States, 10 of the top 21 players in the Rolex Rankings are Korean, and 13 of the top 21 are from Asian countries, including the No. 1-ranked player, Shanshan Feng of China.

The LPGA is returning at the right time in the right place, in more than one way the right place. One of the sponsors, HUGEL, produces Botox, among other beauty products, and intends to expand into U.S. markets.

Could there be a better place to market Botox than on Los Angeles’ west side that includes Hollywood and Beverly Hills?

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