{{ubiquityData.prevArticle.description}}
{{ubiquityData.nextArticle.description}}
Five years ago at Westchester Country Club, in the midst of her rookie-of-the-year campaign on the LPGA Tour, Sei Young Kim challenged at the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship but finished a distant second as countrywoman Inbee Park claimed the sixth of her seven major championships.
A turnaround of sorts came Sunday. The ever-improving Kim – last year’s big winner at the season-ending CME Group Tour Championship – cruised to her first major title, leaving Park and a handful of other headline names in her wake.
The newest major champion in the women’s game is a throwback of sorts. When it comes time to deliver on a shot, Steve Eubanks says, Kim tends to lean on bygone elements of the game.
Kim took a two-stroke lead into Sunday at Aronimink Golf Club near Philadelphia, and used a flawless seven-birdie final round to seal the deal.
It can be like clockwork: When major championships roll around, Park makes her way toward the top of leaderboards, despite signs in recent years that her dominance has begun to wane.
Having grown up near Wentworth, the site of the European Tour’s BMW PGA Championship, Tyrrell Hatton credits the event for inspiring him to become a touring pro. It’s why he admitted to more nerves than at the Ryder Cup when he began Sunday with the 54-hole lead and why, in his words, he was delighted to get across the line with a four-stroke victory.
Patrick Reed finished T3 south of London. As John Hopkins relates, Reed’s willingness to travel to Great Britain and compete there earns the American golfer warm reviews and – at least in this one way – puts him in the company of some of the game’s greats.
John Daly has never lacked in the ability to attract a spotlight and, as Ron Green Jr. notes, that’s never much concerned him. Now, recently diagnosed with bladder cancer, the 54-year-old long-hitting iconoclast says he’ll approach it in the same fashion as he has every other challenge: fearlessly and unapologetically.
As a playoff dawned at the PGA Tour’s Shriners Hospitals for Children Open, the setting sun in Las Vegas was among the challenges faced by Martin Laird, Austin Cook and Matthew Wolff. Laird, a 37-year-old Scotsman, emerged from the lengthening shadows at TPC Summerlin with a birdie on the second extra hole, claiming his fourth PGA Tour victory and first since 2013.
GGP continues to profile PGA professionals of merit, and here John Steinbreder checks in with Eden Foster of the Maidstone Club on the East End of Long Island. A product of the American West, Foster has found success and happiness on the other side of the continental United States.
In this year of pandemic we’ve all spent more time close to home. In this week's installment of the Divot, Steinbreder reflects on how that impacts a writer when wanderlust is built into his job description.
Sam Dolson
E-MAIL SAM