Lydia Ko now stands one point away from qualifying for the LPGA Hall of Fame. She’d be the 35th member of the LPGA Hall, nine of which are honorary members. Only 25 players have met the Hall’s requirements.
The LPGA Hall remains one of the most exclusive in all of sports. Players must reach 27 points to get in: (one point for each regular LPGA victory; two for a major win; one point each for the LPGA Rolex Player of the Year and Vare Trophy awards; and one point for an Olympic gold medal).
In addition to having 27 points, players must also either win an LPGA major, Vare Trophy or Player of the Year honors.
The 27-point threshold was actually lowered in the late 1990s when it looked like some of the greatest to ever play the game weren’t going to get in under the old system that required 30 LPGA victories with two major championships, or 35 with one major, or 40 with no majors.
Even so, there are a number of players even hard-core fans might be surprised aren’t in the LPGA Hall, though many are in the World Golf Hall of Fame.
Here’s a list of 10 decorated players still on the outside looking in:
“Imagine Lydia (Ko) and Rory (McIlroy) walking down the 18th hole together. How cool would that be?”
THE WOODLANDS, Texas – Something unusual happened early this week at the Chevron Championship. Golf’s most important leaders gathered on LPGA soil to brainstorm how to drive the women’s game forward. Attendees of the inaugural Commission at The Chevron Championship in Houston included PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan, PGA of America CEO Seth Waugh and U.S. Golf Association CEO Mike Whan.
“We convene at the (men’s) majors and the industry comes together in various forms,” said LPGA commissioner Mollie Marcoux Samaan. “We just felt like it was really important to bring people to an LPGA event.”
The commission was hosted jointly by Marcoux Samaan and Chevron Chairman and CEO Mike Wirth. Other attendees included executive vice president of content and executive producer for NBC Universal and Golf Channel Molly Solomon, LPGA board chair and former KPMG chair John Veihmayer and LPGA major champion and television broadcaster Dottie Pepper.
Guest panelists included Olympic gold medalist Angela Ruggiero, co-founder and CEO of Sports Innovation Lab, Danette Leighton, CEO of the Women’s Sports Foundation and Angel City Football Club CRO Jess Smith.
“Mostly our goal was to educate them,” said Marcoux Samaan. “Level-set on where we are, where we’ve been, where we’re going, where women’s sports is more broadly. And then to really think about innovative ways to think about women’s golf and the LPGA.”
Marcoux Samaan said one of the most eye-opening topics to many in the room was the impact of the LPGA’s travel schedule. Organizers shared a social media post from Golf.com’s Claire Rogers that illustrated the way players bounce around the country and the globe in head-spinning fashion.
“We don’t have as much of an ability to control our destiny as much as they do,” said Marcoux Samaan of the LPGA’s schedule compared to that of men’s leagues.
“When we build the demand and build the understanding of how good our women are, we can help dictate the schedule a little bit more.”
Marcoux Samaan believes that shared resources with the PGA Tour around technology could make an immediate impact on the women’s game, such as ShotLink for scoring and data management.
The event served as a great conversation starter for many topics, Marcoux Samaan said.
After the morning session, attendees were invited to play in the Chevron Championship Pro-Am, where Marcoux Samaan and Monahan teed it up together with Nelly Korda on the front nine at The Club at Carlton Woods.
Stacy Lewis only had two holes with Monahan on the back nine before he had to head back to Florida for family reasons. Lewis was impressed by how prepared and engaged Monahan was during their short time together.
“I think he realizes that they need to do more,” said Lewis on Wednesday. “He said that to me multiple times yesterday. … it’s just now whether we can push it forward and actually do something about it.”
Lewis put forth her desire to see the LPGA and PGA Tour come together for an event that features the top men and women playing together in full-field events with separate leaderboards and separate purses across two courses on one site.
“Imagine Lydia (Ko) and Rory (McIlroy) walking down the 18th hole together,” she said. “How cool would that be?”
Korda hinted at the same to Monahan, though she noted that the unofficial Grant Thornton Invitational later this year that features LPGA and PGA Tour players partnered together is a good step.
“They have such a big platform,” said Korda. “I feel like the best way to grow the game at the end of the day is to combine the two.
“Girls golf is growing at an incredible rate, and they see that too.”
Final selections for the 2024 World Golf Hall of Fame induction class will be announced the week of March 6.
The World Golf Hall of Fame announced its finalists for the 2024 Hall of Fame induction class Wednesday, and it’s loaded with star power.
Among the big names? Padraig Harrington, Jim Furyk. Cristie Kerr and Dottie Pepper.
Final selections for the 2024 World Golf Hall of Fame induction class will be announced the week of March 6. There are 12 finalists, and they include major champions, instructors and those who had a profound impact on the game, including the remaining seven of the 13 founders of the LPGA.
The finalists were selected by a nominating committee comprised of select Hall of Fame members, media, World Golf Foundation Board organizations and at-large selections. Additionally, all living Hall of Fame members were sent ballots and had the opportunity to vote.
“The nominating committee has selected finalists who represent the highest caliber of competitors and contributors,” said Greg McLaughlin, CEO of World Golf Hall of Fame. “Congratulations to all who have been nominated for this special recognition.”
These 12 finalists will be considered for admission into the World Golf Hall of Fame, Class of 2024 by a 20-member Selection Committee, comprised of Hall of Fame members, media representatives and leaders of the major golf organizations. They will be tasked with reviewing the merits and qualifications of each finalist and ultimately selecting the Class of 2024.
The 12 finalists are Padraig Harrington, Tom Weiskopf, Dottie Pepper, Jim Furyk, Cristie Kerr, Sandra Palmer, Peter Dawson, Butch Harmon, Johnny Farrell, Beverly Hanson, Jay Sigel, and the seven remaining co-founders of the LPGA: Alice Bauer, Bettye Danoff, Helen Detweiler, Helen Hicks, Opal Hill, Shirley Spork, Sally Sessions.
Harrington won 21 times professionally, 15 of those coming on the European tour. he also has three major victories and appeared on six Ryder Cup teams. He also captained the 2020 team.
Weiskopf won 16 times on the PGA Tour and captured the 1973 Open Championship.
Pepper won 17 times on the LPGA, including two majors. She was also tabbed 1992 Player of the Year and was a part of six Solheim Cup teams.
Palmer has 21 victories and two majors in her career, earning Player of the Year honors in 1975.
Dawson served as chief executive of the R&A for 16 years and played a pivotal role in golf returning to the Olympics.
Harmon is one of the best instructors in golf history. His pupils include Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Greg Norman.
Farrell has 22 victories on Tour and won the 1928 U.S. Open.
Furyk has captured 17 wins on the PGA Tour, including the 2003 U.S. Open. He was named Player of the Year in 2010. He’s the only golfer to have shot a 58 in competition.
Hanson won the U.S. Women’s Am in 1950 and went on to win three majors and 17 titles.
Kerr has 20 official victories and two majors and has been a part of nine Solheim Cup teams. She ranks third on the LPGA’s all-time money list.
Sigel was a stellar amateur, winning 27 total am events, including the 1982-83 U.S. Amateur, the 1979 British Am and three U.S. Mid-Ams.
Nick Faldo retired after 19 years as a golf broadcaster. Here’s what his friends and colleagues had to say.
It’s the end of an era on the CBS broadcast.
After 16 years wearing the headset for the network, Sir Nick Faldo said goodbye from the booth during the final round of the 2022 Wyndham Championship at Sedgefield Country Club in Greensboro, North Carolina, on Sunday. The six-time major champion, who has a deep history at Sedgefield dating back to his PGA Tour debut at the 1979 Greater Greensboro Open, was honored with a plaque behind the ninth green on the club’s Wall of Fame where he joins the likes of Charlie Sifford and Arnold Palmer.
The broadcast also featured a handful of messages from Faldo’s former and current colleagues both on and off the golf course, and it got to be pretty emotional at times. So much so that Dottie Pepper at one point joked, “Are you guys able to call this or do you want me to take it?”
“I thought I was pretty much the luckiest person ever to have a guy like this.”
In all, there are roughly 145 letters between student and teacher. Dottie Pepper has cherished the words of George J. Pulver, Sr. for more than four decades, carefully placing each letter in a three-ring binder that she guarded like sacred treasure. She was 15 and he was 81 when they first started working together. The eloquent and straightforward letters arrived after lessons and often more frequently.
In Letters to a Future Champion: My Time with Mr. Pulver, Pepper, a 17-time winner on the LPGA and on-course reporter for CBS who will most certainly be in the World Golf Hall of Fame before too long, pays tribute to a wonderfully deep and impactful friendship that laid the foundation for her successful career.
While “Mr. Pulver” shared practical tips on her swing and tournament preparation in the letters, lines of encouragement and nuggets of wisdom leap off the typewritten pages.
Take, for example, this paragraph from the last letter he wrote before Pepper went off to Furman for her freshman year:
“In virtually all endeavors, those who succeed work harder, think deeper, and continue in their undiminished zeal towards definite goals. Often, chance darts at them, for the good or bad. Surely, a promising future lies before you.”
It’s no wonder she couldn’t wait to get to the mailbox!
The audio version of Pepper’s book will be released in early January. This was important to Pepper because her 98-year-old grandmother, Dorothy Woodcock, can no longer read due to macular degeneration.
Golfweek recently caught up with Pepper, 56, to talk about her beautifully unique self-published book, which is a finalist for the USGA’s Herbert Warren Wind Book Award. Here are excerpts from that conversation:
When did you first start thinking about making a book out of these letters?
When I showed (husband) David Normoyle the three-ring binder, we might still have been dating, he said, ‘Wow you have a book here.’
I said ‘Well you’re biased, and I have no time, so thanks for your help.’
He’d come up with a book format every once in a while … the one that I really liked was Peter Thomson’s book. It was actually a booklet … it was full of all of his thoughts and letters and articles that he’d written. It was really cool. I thought well, that’s nice, but again, I have no time.
And then Covid hit.
We were taken off the road, and we weren’t going to resume for a while. I thought I’m not just going to sit here and watch bad news on the television, I’m going to do something positive, and maybe this is the time to write the book.
I got my binder back out … in the pile of stuff that his kids had sent me, and this was separate from the library that he left me, there was a blue folder, all beat up, and all it said on the outside was “golf articles.’ When I was working with Mr. Pulver, I was not allowed to read anything in Golf Digest or Golf Magazine or Golf World that had to do with swing mechanics, anything like that. He didn’t want me to go off on some wicked tangent… He’s been gone for 36 years, I guess I can open it. It was really exactly what I thought I was going to find. Just like the letters and books he’d asked me to read, with his thoughts in the margins, going back all the way to 1966. But what I was not prepared to find was every letter that I had written to him.
As you can imagine, it was a fragile afternoon in this house. … David was not around. He was actually down working at Baltusrol. I said, ‘I don’t know if this is a good day for you not to be home or a bad day for you not to be home, but there’s been a flood in the basement.’
Why do you think you kept these letters safe for so long?
The relationship was that special. It was special from me to him. I didn’t realize it was as special as it was to him – the boomerang effect. There were so many things in the letters that were evergreen. It was the way I could really still hang on to him.
Reading them all again for the first time in a long time, what did you learn about yourself?
I always seemed to have a gripe (laughs). But it wasn’t like a whiny gripe, it was just How do I get better? I was on a mission, that’s for certain. I think he was concerned that it was going to be too much on the mission and not take time to enjoy the other things that you should if you’re going to be a balanced person. He was always aware of burnout.
Dottie Pepper of the USA tees off on the 10th hole during a practice round before the 2000 Solheim Cup played at the Loch Lomond GC, Loch Lomond, Scotland. Mandatory Credit: Warren Little/ALLSPORT
Mr. Pulver talked a lot about the greats of the game when giving you instruction in his letters. How was that important to you?
It was huge for me because it gave me the sense, especially with Snead, who came from nothing to become one of the best players to ever play the game, that it can be done.
Also, I think it was important because he just didn’t get caught up with the players that were on TV at the moment. It was looking back at Palmer and Hogan and Hagen. He got everybody involved because he was curious.
What are the biggest lessons juniors can take from this book?
Fundamentals were huge for him. He goes right back to the basics of a good grip and setup. While it’s boring, it never goes out of style. I think too, for as much as I did on my golf swing, he talks a lot about distance control with putting, and being prepared to play anywhere at any time in any weather.
There’s one of the notes that even asks, ‘Do you have a good umbrella, an extra towel?’ … What Tiger calls the process, that’s part of the process. Being prepared to play no matter what Mother Nature throws at you … arriving at the first tee unhurried, having a game plan for the day. He didn’t leave much unturned.
Why do you think you two clicked?
There was respect on my behalf. I thought I was pretty much the luckiest person ever to have a guy like this, and I was really his only student other than his two kids at the time.
He had left the game as a full-time employment. He was 81-years-old when we started working together. I respected that it was not just about teaching. He taught me a lot about agronomy, golf course management, picking a schedule, about the value of at least an undergraduate degree, which no one in my family had ever had. He really directed that part of my life in a significant way.
And the other way, coming from him to me, Martha had died four days before the letter he first wrote me saying he would work with me, but his schedule was pretty much up in the air right now. That was in March of ’81. It was the perfect medicine really for both of us because my dad couldn’t take me any farther in the game, and he’d just lost his wife.
I became the child for him that was living in town.
CBS Golf correspondent Dottie Pepper looks on during the third round of the 2020 RBC Heritage at Harbour Town Golf Links in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. (Photo by Sam Greenwood/Getty Images)
You talk a bit about how you felt like it was the haves vs. the have-nots, and you were the latter. But you can’t put a price tag on what you shared with Mr. Pulver. How much of your success do you credit to him?
It’s the foundation for everything, let’s put it that way. It would be like trying to put up a skyscraper without the proper foundation. It’s the foundation of things I still talk about on air. These are literally 40-some years of evergreen messages.
Check out the top 10 PGA Tour stories of the year.
While you’re resting and celebrating (we hope!), we’re closing the books on a year that will leave a lasting impression.
And as part of taking our year-end inventory, we’ve been looking through the numbers and tallying up which stories drew your attention — and sharing the findings with you.
For the final days of 2021, 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. Here’s what we’ve already counted down.
Here’s a look at the top 10 PGA Tour stories, as clicked on by you (we should note, this list doesn’t include photo galleries or money lists):
It’ll take more than an errant shot to rattle Dottie Pepper, a two-time major champion and 17-time LPGA winner.
McKINNEY, Texas — There’s not much that fazes Dottie Pepper, who has a pair of majors, 17 LPGA titles and decades of broadcast journalism on her impressive resume.
But even Pepper giggled nervously on Saturday after she was nearly struck by a ball during the third round of the PGA Tour’s AT&T Byron Nelson while watching a group that included leaders Alex Noran and Sam Burns.
Noran pushed a drive a bit to the right at TPC Craig Ranch, and the ball nearly clipped Pepper as it went by.
Pepper, who lives in Saratoga Springs, New York, and is married to occasional Golfweek contributor David Normoyle, brushed it off.
“Almost got me,” Pepper said. “Don’t flinch. I didn’t.”
Pepper later joked she might wear a helmet next. She joined CBS Sports as a reporter and analyst in 2016 and was elevated to the role of lead on-course reporter for the 2020 season. She has also worked for the Golf Channel, NBC, Sports Illustrated and ESPN.
It’ll take more than an errant shot to rattle Dottie Pepper, a two-time major champion and 17-time LPGA winner.
McKINNEY, Texas — There’s not much that fazes Dottie Pepper, who has a pair of majors, 17 LPGA titles and decades of broadcast journalism on her impressive resume.
But even Pepper giggled nervously on Saturday after she was nearly struck by a ball during the third round of the PGA Tour’s AT&T Byron Nelson while watching a group that included leaders Alex Noran and Sam Burns.
Noran pushed a drive a bit to the right at TPC Craig Ranch, and the ball nearly clipped Pepper as it went by.
Pepper, who lives in Saratoga Springs, New York, and is married to occasional Golfweek contributor David Normoyle, brushed it off.
“Almost got me,” Pepper said. “Don’t flinch. I didn’t.”
Pepper later joked she might wear a helmet next. She joined CBS Sports as a reporter and analyst in 2016 and was elevated to the role of lead on-course reporter for the 2020 season. She has also worked for the Golf Channel, NBC, Sports Illustrated and ESPN.
In this edition of the Forward Press podcast, Golfweek’s David Dusek chats with two-time major winner Dottie Pepper about her new book, “Letters to a Future Champion: My Time with Mr. Pulver.” Julie Williams joins later to preview the upcoming Walker Cup at Seminole Golf Club in Juno Beach, Florida.
Pepper paid off the school lunch debt of more than 50 students at Dorothy Nolan Elementary School in Wilton, New York.
Inspired by 49ers star cornerback Richard Sherman, Dottie Pepper decided to pay it forward in her hometown.
Pepper paid off the school lunch debt of more than 50 students at Dorothy Nolan Elementary School in Wilton, New York, according to a report in the Times-Union. “It’s debt that didn’t need to be sitting there, burdening people,” she told the newspaper.
Pepper and her sister, Jackie Diehl, attended the elementary school, which is near Saratoga Springs, according to the report. She declined to say how much she donated to the school.
“I just thought it’s been a really good year for my husband and I and if we can make it a little easier for families that didn’t have much on the holidays,” Pepper said. “It was just a good thing to do.”
The 17-time winner on the LPGA was recently promoted to lead on-course reporter by CBS.
Sherman donated $20,000 earlier this year to schools in Tacoma, Washington, for school lunch debt, according to reports. Last month Sherman donated another $7K for school lunch debt at a middle school in Santa Clara, California.
