BETHESDA, MARYLAND | It’s like a train wreck you know is coming and can do nothing to stop. At breakfast on Sunday before the final round of the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, in the castle of a clubhouse that is the hallmark of Congressional Country Club, noted coach Gary Gilchrist grabbed a warm danish and a cranberry juice and said, “I’m going outside the box today and picking Lexi Thompson. It’s crazy that that’s an outlier pick, but I think everyone expects her to be close and not get it done. Maybe this is the time.”
When Gilchrist said that, Thompson hadn’t teed off yet and was three shots behind the leader, In Gee Chun. Four hours later, Thompson held a two-shot lead. With most of the players around her struggling to hit the firm and undulating greens redesigned by Andrew Green, it looked for all the world as if this finally, mercifully might be Thompson’s time. After all, it has been 50 starts since her last win, a streak that includes seven runners-up.
But the specifics were far worse. Among those seven second-place finishes was last year’s U.S. Women’s Open in which Thompson blew a five-shot lead over the final nine holes at Olympic Club, missing one putt after another down the stretch. Then there was the Pelican Women’s Championship last fall in which Thompson led late into the final round but made a double bogey on the back nine and then failed to convert two 4-footers – one to win outright and another to extend a playoff with eventual winner Nelly Korda.
As with most Thompson rounds, this one included a couple of moments that left you on the edge of your seat – a missed 5-footer for birdie on the eighth, and a 4-foot gak on the par-5 ninth.
So, despite Gilchrist’s prediction, an uncomfortable cloud lingered over Thompson’s lead. No matter how large or how late, there was always the likelihood – even a sense of certainty – that Thompson would miss a short one or two when it mattered. A reporter in the media center even said it out loud: “Let’s hope she doesn’t have a 4-footer to win.”
As with most Thompson rounds, this one included a couple of moments that left you on the edge of your seat – a missed 5-footer for birdie on the eighth, and a 4-foot gak on the par-5 ninth. But she calmed her nerves with a 5-footer for par on 10 and then rolled in a curling, downhill 10-footer for birdie on 11. That’s when you thought this might be the one, the breakthrough. She last won a major in 2014 when she was 19 years old. Since then, one heartbreak after another has left observers wondering how much scar tissue is enough to numb her for good.
The haunting moment that foretold the outcome came at 14, a long par-4 that Thompson reached with a 4-iron. Still leading by two, Thompson rolled her first putt up to 18 inches. It should have been a routine, easy par. Instead, the short jab stroke that fans have seen far too often reared its head. From a foot-and-a-half, she didn’t hit the hole, leaving herself a longer comeback putt for bogey.
Her ball-striking, as always, was extraordinary, which helped. On the par-4 15th she was the only player in the last four groups to hold the green that slopes away, and only because she had a pitching wedge after a tremendous drive. On the next hole, however, she made one of the ugliest bogeys of the week. After another huge tee shot on the reachable par-5 16th, Thompson flared an iron short and right, leaving what looked like a relatively simple pitch and putt. But she lunged at her wedge like someone trying not to skull it. The ball rolled over the green and, even though she was off the green, she three-putted for an untimely 6.
That wouldn’t have been the worst of it. On the 17th tee, Thompson was still tied for the lead. Her length gave her an edge. But by then, everyone knew. She hit 17, leaving herself a 12-footer that she rolled 3 feet past. That comebacker never touched any part of the hole. And just like that, another Thompson lead got away.
Chun played the last two holes with routine pars to win by one despite shooting 3-over 75 herself.
What Thompson suffers from is not yet considered “the yips.” She can take the putter back. Quite frankly, her short stroke looks better than that of the PGA Tour’s Will Zalatoris, who appears to be having some sort of spell in the middle of his 3-footers. With Thompson, the backstroke gets short, the head moves backward, and the putter moves up, almost as if she’s trying a fadeaway basketball jumper.
Throughout the week, she said she is no longer beating herself up and that she remains focused on the process instead of the outcome. Sunday afternoon, no one in golf believed that line.
Thompson declined all interview requests after Sunday’s 73. Not a soul blamed her. At some point, you wonder when it all becomes too much.
Let’s hope this loss was not that tipping point.
Steve Eubanks