This state champion sophomore who made an LPGA cut has forfeited her high school eligibility

She competed in two LPGA Tour events last year, the Dana Open and the Kroger Queen City Classic.

Mia Hammond, a New Albany sophomore and last season’s Ohio Division I girls golf individual state champion, has signed with a sports management company for name, image and likeness representation — a move that forfeits her high school eligibility.

Columbus-based Sterling Sports Management announced the partnership Tuesday morning, and Hammond’s father and coach, Tom, confirmed her decision to The Dispatch. Mia Hammond has not signed any NIL deals but there are “irons in the fire,” Tom Hammond said.

“It’s more about representation and guidance (through the NIL process) than anything else,” Tom Hammond said. “We’ve had a lot of companies reach out to represent Mia and we don’t want to do anything wrong to jeopardize her college eligibility.”

Thirty-three states and Washington, D.C., currently permit NIL for high school athletes, but Ohio is not among them. An Ohio High School Athletic Association referendum to allow NIL, as the state does for college athletes, failed by a 68-32% margin in May 2022 in a vote of member schools.

OHSAA bylaw 4-10-2 states that “an athlete forfeits amateur status, and thus interscholastic athletic eligibility, if any of the following standards of amateurism are violated … (including) entering into an agreement with a sports or marketing agent.”

2023 Kroger Queen City Championship
Mia Hammond gets ready to tee off on the 11th hole during the second round of the 2023 Kroger Queen City Championship at Kenwood Country Club in Madeira, Ohio. (Photo: Liz Dufour/The Enquirer)

Hammond competed in two LPGA Tour events last year, the Dana Open in Sylvania and the Kroger Queen City Classic in Cincinnati. She made the cut in her LPGA debut in Sylvania, tying for 26th place, but fell short in Cincinnati, and participated in the World Junior Girls Championship in October in Ontario.

“We started talking about (leaving high school golf) last summer,” Tom Hammond said. “We didn’t see her popularity taking off this quickly.”

Mia Hammond has led New Albany to district championships each of the past two seasons, extending the team’s streak to six. She shot rounds of 67 and 69 at state last fall for a two-day score of 136 that set the Division I tournament record, and the Eagles tied Rocky River Magnificat for second place behind Dublin Jerome.

Hammond tied for fourth at state as a freshman.

“The high school season takes a toll as far as the time commitment and the number of tournaments they play,” Tom Hammond said. “It’s a lot of time between (amateur) tournaments and high schools, and typically (the high school season) is when she would take a break from tournaments. And it’s not about having nothing left to prove in high school, although she’d have loved to have won a championship with her team.”

Hunter Mahan has happily left PGA Tour life behind to become a golf coach at a tiny Texas high school

Mahan mused that he could be the start of a trend of players enjoying shorter careers.

Starting next year, just call Hunter Mahan, “Coach.”

That’s because the 41-year-old former six-time PGA Tour winner and former U.S. Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup player is set to begin coaching the boys’ golf team at Liberty Christian, a private, college preparatory Christian school located in Argyle, Texas.

“I asked randomly about the head coaching golf position because I thought it could be fun and interesting and something completely out of my comfort zone but something I have a lot of knowledge in, and the coach was retiring so I threw my name in the hat,” said Mahan, who is taking over in the spring season. “When you talk about God’s path for you, it just became so clear for my wife and I. We plan on moving (to Argyle) next year from Dallas and for the kids to start attending school there.”

Mahan reached a career-high world ranking of No. 4 on April 1, 2012. That made him the highest-ranked American golfer at the time. But he last won in 2014 at The Barclays, a FedEx Cup Playoff event, and his game went into steep decline. Mahan’s longtime caddie John Wood and swing coach Sean Foley both are reluctant to say why Mahan lost his mojo, but agree that having three kids in diapers and enjoying being a stay-at-home dad factored into it.

Photos: Hunter Mahan through the years

“He had a lot going on besides golf for the first time in his life,” Wood said.

“When he was at the course, he wanted to be at home and when he was home he wanted to be at the course,” Foley said. “He kind of fell out of love with the game if he was in love with it in the first place.”

Despite having one of the best golf swings of his generation, Mahan attempted to make swing changes and they backfired. Mahan’s short game, which was never a strength, became problematic when his trademark fairways-and-greens game no longer was automatic. Mahan stepped away from the PGA Tour after the 2020-21 season – he still has limited status as a past champion – but said it was the right time for him.

“If you don’t love it on Tuesday, you can’t love it on Thursday. It’s just never going to work that way,” he said, noting it was everything before the competition that was a struggle for him. “It was actually a rather easy decision based on that. I have four kids at home and a family and it was clearly my time to do something else. I didn’t want to keep playing just to keep playing because I could.

“I didn’t want my kids on the road with me. I wanted them at home going to school and being with their friends. Uprooting them for my life didn’t feel right to me and it wasn’t right for them. I wasn’t going to ask them to do that. It just didn’t make sense.”

Hunter Mahan, left, and Zach Johnson during the 2014 Ryder Cup at Gleneagles.

He made just two cuts in his final 20 starts on Tour during the 2020-21 season and appeared in the last of his 453 career tournaments in July 2021 at the 3M Open.

With three girls and a boy ranging in age from three years old to 10, the former Oklahoma State Cowboy golfer has been happy handling car-pool duty. He has shown talent as a TV golf commentator, handling analyst duties for the world feed at the Ryder Cup in Rome this year, reprising a role he performed admirably in 2016 and 2021.

“When you listen to him speak, he’s fantastic, right?” Foley said. “The guy didn’t say anything to anyone for years but when Hunter talks it’s very well thought out.”

A larger role in TV will have to wait, at least for Mahan’s kids to grow older.

“It’s something I’ve thought about,” Mahan said. “But it requires too much travel that I’m not willing to do right now given the attention that I want to give to my family.”

Mahan mused that he could be the start of a trend of players enjoying shorter careers. Mahan earned more than $30 million in official money and despite never winning a major, he had nothing left to prove.

“When I joined the Tour, Vijay Singh, Kenny Perry and Jay Haas were in their 40s and having their best years. They were on Ryder Cup teams. I don’t think that’s going to happen anymore,” Mahan said. “The money is going up so much and the pipeline of new players coming through is so good, guys are going to be like, well, I’ve made so much money do I really want to grind at 45 and travel all the time? Golf is getting younger. The youth of golf is going to be at the forefront.”

Foley, for one, agrees that careers on the Tour will trend shorter.

“Ludvig Aberg isn’t going to be a unicorn. That’s going to be the norm. Every year there is going to be a kid coming out here and contending almost every week,” Foley said. “Is it going to be like other sports where he’s going to lose his advantage by not having as much time to work on his game once a guy settles down and has kids? There are 34-year-old defensive backs in the league that know everything about offenses, know how to run routes, their wisdom is amazing but they’ve lost too many steps to stay in the league. I think golf can be like that.”

Mahan says he plays occasionally but rarely hits balls and it’s not even a monthly thing he does anymore. None of his kids have the golf bug just yet, but he imagines that coaching a high school golf team will get him to play a bit more. Mahan won’t be the only former standout athlete coaching at Liberty Christian. Former Dallas Cowboys tight end Jason Witten is coaching his son on the football team and Olympic gold medalist Jeremy Wariner was named the track and field coach in July.

“They take pride in their athletics and academics and also give the kids a lot of opportunities for a well-rounded education,” Mahan said.

Of the pending move to the tiny suburb of Argyle north of Fort Worth, Mahan said one of his daughters calls it “city-country.” It’s not too far from the Tour’s annual stops in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex but it might as well be a world away from his old life as a tour pro.

“I miss the people I spent so much time with but I don’t miss the grind, day to day. What it takes out there is so all-consuming and I don’t miss that,” he said. “It’s very taxing and I hit my limit and it was just time to go.”

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This Tennessee (now Ole Miss) star was the 2023 USA TODAY HSSA National Girls Golfer of the Year

Linder capped off her high school career in dramatic fashion by winning in a playoff for her fourth consecutive state championship.

There wasn’t much that Sophie Linder didn’t check off her list during a stellar career at Gordonsville High School, which sits about an hour east of Nashville.

Linder capped off her high school dominance in dramatic fashion last October by winning in a playoff for her fourth consecutive state championship.

She became the fourth Tennessee high school girls golfer to win four state titles, joining Baylor’s Brooke Pancake, Greeneville’s Karen Socha and St. Agnes’ Rachel Heck.

For her efforts, Linder was recognized by USA Today as the recipient of the 2022-23 High School Sports Awards Girls Golfer of the Year.

The USA Today High School Sports Awards is the largest high school athletic recognition program in the country with 14 regional award shows and one national awards program. Linder was named the winner from a class of twenty-five nominees picked from all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

A native of Carthage, Tennessee, Linder has now joined the Ole Miss golf team, entering the season as the No. 23 overall recruit in the class of 2023, and the No. 1 recruit coming from the state of Tennessee. Among the other honors she was chosen for were the 2021 Middle Tennessee Girls Player of the Year and the 2021 Tennessee Girls Junior Player of the Year.

Along with her successful high school career, Linder’s amateur career is highlighted with prominent wins at events like the 2021 Golf Capital of Tennessee Women’s Open and the 2021 Tennessee Girls’ Junior Championship. She also recently earned a third-place finish at the 2022 Tennessee Women’s Amateur Championship.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CvstrD1ppM3/

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Unrelenting heat is forcing some high school golf teams to play morning matches

“I’ve had girls throw up … Every season I have had some kind of heat-related illness strike somebody.”

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PALM SPRINGS, Calif. — It is a solution to a problem that is so obvious that you wonder why no one thought of it before.

If it is physically demanding and perhaps even dangerous for high school girls golfers to play at 3 p.m. in desert temperatures nearing 110 degrees in August and September, why not have the girls play in the morning?

“I really think it is a great idea,” said Rob Hanmer, in his fourth year as girls golf coach at Rancho Mirage High School.

The Rattlers have played two home matches this season starting at 9 a.m. at Mission Hills North, just across Ramon Road from the high school. But the idea of morning matches is growing, with Shadow Hills High School scheduling two matches this season at 8:30 a.m. at Bermuda Dunes Country Club.

With girls golf a fall sport in California high schools, and with the start of school and athletics edging earlier and earlier in August, golf matches played in August afternoons face temperatures well over 100 degrees. CIF-Southern Section rules require players to walk the golf course, and on particularly hot days that can cause serious problems.

“I wish we had been doing it the whole time,” said Shadow Hills head coach Nick Anziano, whose team played a morning match last week against the Rattlers. “Years ago, I brought it up to a handful of coaches, and at the time I was still just trying to learn the ropes. It seems like a no-brainer.

“I’ve had girls throw up. It’s not uncommon, really,” Anziano said. “Every season I have had some kind of heat-related illness strike somebody.”

Damariz Hernandez of Shadow Hills High School tees off on the first tee at 9 a.m. Tuesday morning in a match against Rancho Mirage High School at Mission Hills North golf course. (Photo: Larry Bohannan/Desert Sun)

Courses tough to find in the fall

Like the seemingly obvious answer to other problems, Hanmer’s scheduling of morning matches for his team actually came from another issue: course availability. Hanmer discovered last fall at the Desert Empire League boys golf finals that his girls team wouldn’t have access to Mission Hills Country Club in August or October of this season.

“So I started scrambling. Mission Hills North has been unbelievable for us, but they close at noon (in August),” Hanmer said. “My athletic director was standing there, and I said we’re going to have to play some matches at Mission Hills North in August. Can we play at 9 in the morning?”

In the summer months, most public play at the Gary Player-designed Mission Hills North has teed off by 8:30 a.m., meaning the 9 a.m. slot is perfect for the high school matches.

Both Hanmer and his assistant coach, David Shaw, said there are some academic benefits from the earlier matches as well.

“We had our first match last week and missing the early classes, well, the girls don’t want to miss classes that much,” Shaw said. “Now, instead of always missing the back end (of the day), it’s half and half now. They get to see more of their back-end classes. We will get them back today by fourth period.”

Hanmer said the morning matches might solve some problems for teams, but the fall still presents issues like courses closing for overseeding in September and October. But knowing some matches won’t be played in the heat of the afternoon might improve participation in the sport.

“We are trying to create some enjoyment in the sport and some lifelong golfers,” Hanmer said. “It still comes down to golf course availability. We have to play whenever the golf courses let us play. It just worked out really well with this golf course that 9 a.m. opened up and it worked for us.”

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High school athletes are dying at an alarming rate — and golf hasn’t been spared

Protections for high school athletes are being ignored and kids are dying as a result.

Even though youth sports are a multi-billion-dollar industry, even eclipsing the National Football League, protections for high school athletes are being ignored and kids are dying as a result.

The Louisville Courier-Journal, part of the USA Today Network, did some significant reporting on the topic and found that most states and thousands of high schools don’t have “gold standard” policies in place to protect young athletes. What’s frustrating is that the cost of life-saving equipment, often used as a reason not to implement safeguards, is a tiny fraction of what schools spend on athletics.

Although many have introduced legislation at the state level to fix the problem, it has been routinely defeated or watered down and, according to the paper’s reporting, policies and laws that are in place have little enforcement and are often ignored.

Here’s a blurb from the package, which was entitled “Safer Sidelines.”

Sudden death in high school sports is not a rare occurrence.

It happens multiple times across the nation every year. And sudden cardiac arrest, the leading cause of death in high school athletes, happens once every three days during the school year.

This isn’t just a Kentucky problem or a Midwest problem. It’s not only a big-city problem or a small-town America problem. And it’s not just a football problem.

Athletes collapsing and dying is a national problem ― one that happens again and again, but rarely goes beyond a local news story.

Schools drill for fires and tornadoes because one day, they could happen.

In the last 10 years, seven students have died from a tornado on school property in the U.S.

In the last 10 years, no student has died from a fire at a school.

In the last 10 years, at least 200 students have died playing high school sports.

And that’s a conservative estimate.

While football and other cardio-intensive sports dominate the death rates, golf hasn’t been completely spared.

Tyler Erickson was a senior at Holmes County High School in Bonifay, Florida, and was practicing for an upcoming golf tournament when he was found dead on the course. He was just two days shy of his 18th birthday.

For those who have high school athletes in their families, the paper offered an important series of 10 questions that should be asked of the local school administrators. Among them:

  1. Who determines what sports/events get covered by an athletic trainer and which don’t — and how is that determined?
  2. Who is the point person for emergency situations on the field? In the weight room?

There are many dangers for high school golfers, but heat is often the one that is most prevalent. One part of the in-depth series highlights the four ways that 90% of deaths are caused: head, heart, heat and hemoglobin.

Expanded, those conditions look like catastrophic brain injuries (head), sudden cardiac arrest (heart), exertional heat stroke (heat) and exertional sickling (hemoglobin).

SOURCE USA TODAY Network reporting and research; Korey Stringer Institute, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Which of these 25 nominees will be the USA Today national high school boys golfer of the year?

The winner will be revealed on July 30 during an on-demand broadcast that will feature top athletes.

The USA TODAY High School Sports Awards has announced the 2022-23 All-USA TODAY HSSA Boys Golf Team.

These 25 All-USA Team members will be honored as nominees for national Boys Golfer of the Year. The winner will be revealed on July 30 during an on-demand broadcast that will feature top athletes in 31 boys and girls sports awards categories, as well as special honors like Special Olympics Athlete of the Year, Play of the Year and more. Nominees are posted for the regional and national programs as they are selected. Regional nominees are the best in their area and national nominees are the best high school athletes in the country.

Visit the event website for the latest updates on this year’s event.

High school golfer makes three aces in 24 swings during alumni golf outing

Joseph Maloof, 15, had never made a hole-in-one before this week. Now he has three.

If you have trouble believing this story, don’t feel bad. Joseph Maloof’s own mother thought he was joking when he told her about his day at the Thomas F. Koch ’88 Alumni Golf Outing benefitting Saint Ignatius High School (Cleveland) earlier this week.

The 15-year-old sophomore from Avon, Ohio, is a member of the two-time defending state champion boys golf team at Saint Ignatius and was participating in the annual charity event. Maloof was parked on the 120-yard par-3 16th hole at Lakewood Country Club, and groups in the outing could use his tee shot if they made a $20 donation to charity. Koch passed away while attending the school, and all profits from the event go to a scholarship established in his memory.

Of the 24 groups to use his tee shot, three walked away with a one on the scorecard as Maloof made not one, not two, but three aces during the outing, all with his 50-degree wedge.

“After I finished the outing it didn’t feel real. I came home, took a shower, ate dinner and went to bed like nothing happened that day,” he said. “The next day it started kicking in I’m like, ‘Wow, I really made three holes-in-one?’”

Maloof missed the green with his first two attempts, but on the third he figured out the issue. The Avon, Ohio, native landed his ball just beyond the pin and spun it back into the hole for not just his first hole-in-one of the day, but his first ever.

“The whole group was going crazy and it felt weird because I’ve never experienced or even seen a hole-in-one on TV or with my friends,” said Maloof, a member at Lakewood. “So it felt weird but also felt great because it was my first hole-in-one ever.”

His second hole-in-one came just a few swings after the first, and the final ace was near the end of the day.

“The first one we were all like screaming and shouting. The second one, only me and my teammate Bradley Chill saw it drop. The people that were in the group didn’t see it go in,” Maloof said. “Both of us were just laughing and they didn’t know what was going on until they found out it went in. Then they all started screaming and hugging me.”

Maloof held on to the first two balls he made aces with, but he doesn’t have the third.

“One of the guys told me to hit one of their balls and I made one of theirs. I didn’t want to be rude and say, ‘Can I keep it?’” explained Maloof. “I probably should have.”

Saint Ignatius golf tryouts are next Monday and Maloof is feeling good about his chances of making varsity and helping the Wildcats win a third consecutive state title. After all, he knows a thing or two about three-peats.

Which of these 25 nominees will be national high school girls golfer of the year?

The winner will be revealed on July 30 during an on-demand broadcast that will feature top athletes in 31 categories.

The USA TODAY High School Sports Awards has announced the 2022-23 All-USA TODAY HSSA Girls Golf Team.

These 25 All-USA Team members will be honored as nominees for national Girls Golfer of the Year. The winner will be revealed on July 30 during an on-demand broadcast that will feature top athletes in 31 boys and girls sports awards categories, as well as special honors like Special Olympics Athlete of the Year, Play of the Year and more. Nominees are posted for the regional and national programs as they are selected. Regional nominees are the best in their area and national nominees are the best high school athletes in the country.

Visit the event website for the latest updates on this year’s event.

Amateur Adjacent: Best mid- to high-handicap options similar to Brooks Koepka’s winning bag

While the PGA Championship winner’s setup might work for some, there are more suitable options for amateurs that are in the same brand lineup as Koepka’s.

Brooks Koepka held off the weather, the field, and the tight track at Oak Hill to claim his third PGA Championship, tying notable icons Gene Sarazen and Sam Snead in Wanamaker Trophy history.

For Koepka, it’s a comeback tale that only sports can provide, a one-eighty from injury-plagued seasons that were saturated in doubt.

That’s now in the rearview as the talented golfer secures his fifth major, a solid follow-up act to his 2023 Masters run.

As expected, the national stage always piques amateur golfers’ interest, especially regarding what’s in the bag. And that includes high school golfers who are tinkering with their equipment ahead of the summer practices and the fall seasons—in certain states—after that. 

With that in mind, here’s the full breakdown, which includes other options that might fit higher handicappers a litter better.

For more equipment breakdowns, check out the wonderful work from Golfweek’s gear guru David Dusek.

5 of the best deals on ‘distance and forgiveness’ drivers at PGA TOUR Superstore

Best golf sales ahead of the summer swing takes us to the star of the show: the driver.

Bombing a drive off the tee in golf has become one of the most compelling feats in the sports world. And the rise of equipment technology has allowed amateurs to pull of the long-ball launching—in theory—just like the professionals, which leaves everyone from 20-plus to single-digit handicappers constantly searching for the star of the show: the driver. 

Golfweek’s golf gear expert, David Dusek, broke it down perfectly in his 2023 driver review:

Everyone wants to hit the ball farther and straighter, and with exotic materials like titanium, carbon fiber and tungsten used to make today’s drivers, the dream of more distance can be a reality for many players.

The best way to discover the driver that is best suited to your swing and game is to work with a good custom fitter who has a launch monitor, try several models (along with different shafts) and see which performs best.

Of course, the latter part of that is often given a head-nod, and then ignored, which is usually the same case when discussing the different models available from the top brands in the game.

As it goes, we all want to hit it longer, straighter, and less spinny, and according to the blurbs accompanying the newest releases, the formula has always been cracked and rests within THIS year’s model.

But in reality, the drivers available from prior years pack just as much technology that can help a wide demo of golfers—including those in high school, and, as we’ll note below, even Collin Morikawa.

With in mind, here our are top picks from the sale rack at PGA TOUR Superstore.