Here’s a look at the top 10 LPGA stories, as clicked on by you.
For the final 10 days of 2022, we’re offering up a snapshot of the top 10 stories from each of Golfweek’s most popular sections, including travel, the PGA and LPGA tours, instruction and amateur golf.
But to close out the year, we’ve been looking through the numbers and tallying up which stories drew your attention, and we’re now sharing the findings with you. Here’s what we’ve already counted down.
And now here’s a look at the top 10 LPGA stories, as clicked on by you (we should note, the top LPGA post of the year by far was this gallery of Michelle Wie West, but this list doesn’t include photo galleries or money lists):
Bobbi Stricker wants to play on the LPGA. She has always said her golf journey is about seeing how good she can get. Sticker played tennis in high school and didn’t start playing competitive golf until college. Every step she has taken in golf, she said, has been a “dream come true.” Now, as she ticks off goals she has felt deep down in her soul, she’s starting to say the big ones out loud.
“I do fully believe they need to be spoken out into in the world,” she said. “Say them out loud, and you start to believe them.”
This week, Stricker takes an important next step toward that big dream, as she participates in Stage II of LPGA Qualifying School for the first time. Her father, Steve, a 12-time winner on the PGA Tour and the winning captain for the U.S. squad at the 2021 Ryder Cup at Whistling Straits, will once again be on the bag.
Steve, 55, has 11 titles on the PGA Tour Champions, including four this season.
LPGA officials were forced to reschedule Stage II from its original October dates in Venice, Florida, after Hurricane Ian caused considerable damage to the area. A total of 178 players will tee it up Nov. 17-20 in the 72-hole stroke-play event at Plantation Golf and Country Club on the Bobcat and Panther courses. There is no cut, and players, who range in age from 16 to 40, will compete in foursomes due to daylight concerns. The field includes 36 amateurs, including 16-year-old Holly Halim from Indonesia.
The top 45 and ties will advance to LPGA Q-Series, held the first two weeks in December in Alabama. Everyone in the field in Venice, Florida, will earn at least minimum Epson Tour status.
Stricker family: Nicki, Steve, Bobbi and Izzi (courtesy Bobbi Stricker)
Last December, Bobbi caddied for her uncle, Mario Tiziani, at the PGA Tour Champions Qualifying Tournament. The front-row seat was eye-opening, even for a player who has been around golf her whole life.
“I see and have seen my whole life, really kind of one way of doing things,” she said. “What my dad does works for him and makes sense, but it’s been really cool to see maybe a different way of doing things and realizing that it is different for everyone and you do what fits you.”
Bobbi reports that everyone in the family is super competitive. There have been times when Bobbi and her younger sister, Izzi, a high school junior who who recently won a state title, have taken on their parents in a match. Their mother, Nicki, played golf at Wisconsin. Sometimes Izzi and her dad take on Bobbi and mom.
“The game keeps us together,” said Bobbi. “We travel with (dad), we practice with him.”
Last year at Stage I, a worked-up Bobbi was intimidated by the whole scene at Mission Hills Country Club. She walked on Wisconsin’s golf team as a freshman, and her first goal was to start breaking 80 consistently and make the traveling team.
This year at Stage I, a more seasoned Bobbi experienced a profound sense of calmness the whole week. She closed with a 69 on the Dinah Shore Tournament Course to finish in a tie for seventh and easily advance.
“It was the first time in really my whole golfing career where I was fully in control of everything golf-game wise,” said Bobbi. “My spiritual journey has really aligned with my golf.”
Bobbi said she never thought of herself as a perfectionist until recently. She’s a grinder, like her father, and started to appreciate the importance of extending herself grace. For that example, she can look to dad, whose renewed love of the game is palpable after a serious health scare.
“It’s just like this joy that radiates from him,” she said.
While studying at Wisconsin, Bobbi joined a Christian organization called Athletes in Action, where she learned how to apply her faith to other areas of life.
“I say today, golf has become church for me,” said Bobbi. “I find the Lord in nature and I always have.”
The beauty of the desert mountains in Stage I, she said, contributed to the calmness she felt at Mission Hills.
“There is only one being in this world that’s perfect, and that’s Jesus,” said Bobbi. “It relaxes me, knowing that I can’t ever get to that perfection, so golf is never going to be like that.”
Stricker was one of 106 players to advance to Stage II of LPGA Qualifying.
Former Wisconsin player Bobbi Stricker, daughter of Steve Stricker, was one of 106 players to advance to Stage II of LPGA Qualifying. Bobbi closed with a 69 on the Dinah Shore Tournament Course to finish in a tie for seventh at Mission Hills Country Club in Rancho Mirage, California.
Steve Stricker, a 12-time winner on the PGA Tour and the winning captain for the U.S. squad at the 2021 Ryder Cup at Whistling Straits, caddied for Bobbi, who didn’t begin playing competitive golf until after high school. Emily Lauterbach, a Wisconsin senior, also advanced to Stage II with a share of 25th.
Italian amateur Alessandra Fanali, who played collegiate golf at Arizona State, topped the field with back-to-back 69s over the weekend. Fanali, 23, finished at 14 under for the tournament, one stroke ahead of two more amateurs, Natthakritta Vongtaveelap (67) and Valery Plata (68).
“It feels good,” said Fanali, who didn’t have a caddie this week. “I still don’t really realize it, but it’s good. I’m so excited. This is what I’ve been waiting for since I was 12.”
The second stage of Q-School will be held Oct. 18-21 at Plantation Golf and Country Club in Venice, Florida. From there, players will advance to Q-Series, a two-week contest in Mobile, Alabama, and Dothan, Alabama, where LPGA cards will be handed out.
At this week’s event in blistering Rancho Mirage, 311 hopefuls teed it up in carts on three different courses: Mission Hills Country Club (Dinah Shore and Palmer Courses) and Shadow Ridge.
The youngest player in the field, 16-year-old Holly Halim, finished in the top 100 as did Shuangshuang Fan (17) of China, Ting-Hsuan Huang (17) of Taipei, Yunxuan Zhan (17) of China and Bailey Shoemaker (17) of the United States.
Shoemaker, a rising high school senior and USC commit who recently advanced to the semifinals of the U.S. Women’s Amateur, finished T-67 to advance to the second stage of Q-School. Shoemaker said she has no plans to turn professional this year.
Hailey Davidson, 29, a transgender woman who first competed at Stage I last year, was among those who missed the cut after rounds of 70-76-73.
Davidson became the second transgender golfer to compete in the event after Bobbi Lancaster, a 63-year-old physician from Arizona who earned Epson Tour status in 2013, but ultimately spent her time traveling the country as a human rights advocate.
Davidson earned a scholarship to play on the men’s team at Wilmington University, an NCAA Division II school in Delaware, before transferring to the men’s team at Christopher Newport, an NCAA Division III school in Virginia.
Davidson began undergoing hormone treatments on Sept. 24, 2015, a date that’s tattooed on her right forearm, and in January 2021, underwent gender reassignment surgery, a six-hour procedure that’s required under the LPGA’s Gender Policy.
Players who completed 54 holes without a score of 88 or higher earned 2023 Epson Tour status.
Bobbi Stricker is at LPGA Q-School with dad Steve Stricker on the bag and in prime shape to advance.
Bobbi Stricker didn’t start playing competitive golf until after she’d graduated from high school. She’d always had a club in her hand, a self-described 80s shooter who played golf on family vacations and headed to the range in the dead of winter in Wisconsin because there was little else to do.
Now she’s at the first stage of LPGA Q-School with dad Steve Stricker on the bag and in prime shape to advance.
“I’ve been picking his brain in a way that I probably never have,” said Bobbi of her dad. “It took him four tries to get through the whole thing.”
Steve Stricker, of course, has a dozen victories on the PGA Tour and is the current U.S. Ryder Cup captain. Caddies get to use a cart in the desert heat at Mission Hills Country Club, and the Strickers have a stocked cooler.
Bobbi sits at even par and in a share of 61st at the midway point in Rancho Mirage, California. A minimum of 95 players and ties will advance to Stage II out of a field of 339. She opened with a 73 on the Dinah Shore Tournament Course at Mission Hills Country Club followed by a 71 on the Pete Dye Resort Course. Today she’ll play Marriott’s Shadow Ridge Golf Club, just three miles down the road in Palm Desert.
It had always been a dream of Bobbi’s to follow in the footsteps of her mom, Nicki, a four-year letter-winner on the Badger women’s golf team where grandfather Dennis Tiziani was head coach from 1989-2003. Tiziani also coached the Wisconsin men’s team from 1977-2003.
Bobbi kept thinking she’d switch to golf in high school, but all her friends played tennis and her doubles team was among the best in the state. She was too good to quit, but not quite at the level needed to get a scholarship to play Division I tennis.
So after high school, Bobbi walked on the golf team at Wisconsin and watched her scoring average drop from 79 to 74.6 by her senior year. Earlier this summer, after graduating from Wisconsin, she won the Wisconsin Women’s Amateur Championship with her mom on the bag.
“I’ve tried not to put a ton of pressure on an outcome (this week) because I don’t really know what to expect,” said Bobbi, who is enjoying the mountainous desert scenes.
That’s really the most important question she asked her dad before they got started: What should I expect out of myself?
Dad’s response: This is just a great experience for you.
“Him not saying anything but that,” said Bobbi, “it kind of put me at ease, you know, starting this whole thing. Nobody else is expecting anything of me. Why should I put this pressure on myself?
“I’ve never played with girls of this caliber before, ever.”
Bobbi has relied on her dad on the greens — especially in the desert — noting that she’s found reading the grain to be somewhat tricky. The pair have similar personalities, she said, but he likes to know more information than she does.
Mom and dad, Bobbi said, have never put a ton of pressure on her and younger sister Izzi.
Bobbi now likes golf more than tennis, probably because she’s on a steep upward trend. This week is just another step toward answering the question: How good can she get?
