The 23-year-old bomber appears to be back to full strength.
There was no true summer vacation for Maria Fassi, who was trying to bounce back from a spring knee surgery and subsequently missed a number of cuts on the LPGA tour, working through the process along the way.
But the 23-year-old bomber appears to be back to full strength, as evidenced by her fifth-place showing at the ShopRite LPGA Classic and then another string of solid rounds at this week’s Cognizant Founders Cup in West Caldwell, New Jersey.
After firing a 69 on Saturday — good enough to put her T-6 heading into Sunday’s final round — Fassi told the Golf Channel that she made a significant declaration to her mother.
“I was on the phone with my mom today and I was like, ‘hey, I think I remembered how to play golf,’ ” Fassi said with a wide smile.
Saturday’s back nine was certainly a wild ride. Fassi’s only par came on No. 13 while the rest of the card was certainly colorful.
But in the end, the University of Arkansas product feels she’s making tremendous progress, and she’s happy with playing her way into contention in consecutive events after a rough stretch to start the year.
“It was a tough start (to the season). It was just not the way I like to play the game,” she said. “But I’m very happy with the way that my game is right now. I think we’re playing a lot smarter than I ever have.
“So that’s definitely paying off and I’m very excited to be under par and to be in contention.”
“I love this place. I think it’s an unbelievable golf course,” Fassi said. “You’ve got to hit good golf shots to score around here and I’m hitting the ball very good. So I just got to keep doing what I’m doing. We have an amazing game plan. I’ve just got to trust what I’m doing, trust our lines and just keep having fun, keep enjoying the crowds that we’ve had.
“I am definitely happier than I’ve ever been, and I have a bigger purpose than I ever have.”
Long before Maria Fassi ever turned professional, she dreamed of starting her own foundation. Fassi, 23, was inspired by her cousin Josefina Gomez, who is the same age and took up golf after watching Fassi compete in a tournament around six years ago in Mexico. Gomez has brain paralysis and is both mute and deaf.
“It’s been very inspiring to see her transition,” said Fassi, “and how she’s overcome so many different things that she’s had to do to be able to play the game.”
It’s because of Gomez that started the Maria Fassi Foundation and Fassi’s Friends, a series of inclusive and adaptable clinics that bring disabled and full-bodied kids together to learn the game of golf. Fassi held a kick-off event on Wednesday evening at Topgolf in Rogers ahead of the Walmart NW Arkansas Championship and a junior clinic at Pinnacle Country Club on Thursday afternoon in partnership with the local First Tee.
“Just seeing them hit a golf shot and the joy that that brings to them,” said Fassi, “I mean, I wish everybody had the opportunity to witness that. It’s so special.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/CULGVxYlpiX/?hl=en
Fassi is in her third season on the LPGA. The popular Mexican player rose to prominence when she finished runner-up to Jennifer Kupcho at the inaugural Augusta National Women’s Amateur and then won the NCAA Championship the next month on Arkansas’ home course.
Her best finish this season was a share of 12th when partnered with famed Razorback Stacy Lewis at the Dow Great Lakes Bay Invitational. She went on to tie for 15th the following week at the Amundi Evian Championship.
Lewis said she has encouraged Fassi to have a focus outside of golf and believes this will help create a nice balance for the talented player.
“You can’t just do golf,” said Lewis. “You’re going to drive yourself crazy. So you need to have something you’re passionate about and something you enjoy outside of golf. I’m excited that she has found this.”
Fassi said that while this has been a dream for some time, she didn’t really set a timeline for when it would start. The fact that she hasn’t gotten off to the kind of start she had envisioned for her LPGA career made her realize that perhaps she was lacking in other areas.
"You wake up every day with a choice. You can live in fear of everything around you. Or you can push through those feelings and seize your destiny. I choose to be fearless."@MariaFassi0 shares her #DriveOn story in her own words.
“I know personally I needed just something bigger than myself to play for,” said Fassi, “and I know now I have that extra motivation to raise awareness and of course money for the kids that are going to be part of the clinic.
“I think it could be very, very good for my career, because I am definitely happier than I’ve ever been, and I have a bigger purpose than I ever have.”
It didn’t take long for Stacy Lewis’ influence to pay off for Maria Fassi.
It didn’t take long for Stacy Lewis’ influence to pay off for Maria Fassi. It was Fassi who asked the former No. 1 and fellow Razorback to partner with her at the Dow Great Lakes Bay Invitational. Fassi soaked up every second of the experience and came into this week’s Amundi Evian Championship on the highest note of the season.
On Saturday, Fassi matched her career-low round of 65 with eight birdies to move into the top 20 at 6 under for the tournament. Her best finish in a major is a tie for 12th at the 2019 U.S. Women’s Open, her professional debut.
“I think I learned and grew so much,” said Fassi of last week in Midland, Michigan. “Even from those five, six days that we were together.
“Honestly, I’m just trying to have fun, to enjoy playing golf again, and not give a damn about the score or what each shot means rather than just enjoy the opportunity to do what I love every day.”
Stacy Lewis isn’t at Evian, but she’s still making an impact it seems. The Dow team event made a big impression on Fassi. https://t.co/D5FrofJBt9
Lewis and Fassi tied for 12th together at the Dow, giving the 2019 NCAA champion her first made cut since April and only her second of the season. Fassi said she smiled more playing alongside Lewis that she had all year.
Lewis praised Fassi for her willingness to learn.
“Sometimes you try to give advice to people and they don’t listen to you, and she’s definitely listening and taking it in,” said Lewis.
“Like she said, it’s literally just, OK, what’s the lie, what’s the wind and what type of shot do we need to hit. Not, OK, it’s a pitching wedge. No, what kind of pitching wedge are we going to hit?”
At the Evian, Fassi said keeping the ball in the fairway is key this week. She hit 14 greens and took 26 putts in Round 3.
“I think I’ve just been a lot more patient as of late,” said Fassi, “and trusting that my work and what I been doing sooner rather than later is all going to pay off.”
Fassi finds her game peaking just in time for the Tokyo Olympics. She made sure to watch fellow Mexican Gaby Lopez carry their country’s flag in Friday’s Opening Ceremony.
“I mean, it gives me chills even now telling you about it,” said Fassi, “that it’s actually here now and that she represented us the way she did and that I’m going to be able to join her and all the others in a few days.
Could four rounds with Stacy Lewis be the catalyst that turns around Maria Fassi’s year? Judging by her words, it sure seems that way.
Could four rounds with Stacy Lewis be the catalyst that turns around Maria Fassi’s year? Judging by her words and demeanor after Day 2, it sure seems that way.
Fassi said the education started on Monday during a practice round at the Dow Great Lakes Bay Invitational.
“I’ve been able to learn so much of just how the game should be played,” said Fassi. “For me, it’s just been a lot of fun. I think I’ve been able to smile really more than I have all year.”
Lewis put the Arkansas women’s golf program on the map, and then Fassi helped carry the torch, matching her with an NCAA individual title in 2019.
Together, they’re 6 under for the tournament and in a share of 16th after carding a 5-under 65 in the fourball format. They’re four strokes behind clubhouse leaders Mel Reid and Carlota Ciganda.
Fassi, who has dealt with health issues this year and missed the cut at the last major after being assessed a two-stroke slow play penalty, has cashed only one paycheck all season on the LPGA. It was Fassi who asked Lewis to be her partner for the team event.
Lewis, a two-time major champion and former No. 1, said she feels that Fassi has grown “a lot” since that Monday practice round.
“The greatest thing about her is that she can already hit the shots,” said Lewis. “That’s why I’m hounding on her; it’s just the right shot at the right time. I look back on my career and playing golf shots and hitting well, you’re playing the right shot at the right time.
“I don’t speak Spanish with her and her caddie, but I can kind of hear some numbers being thrown out and when I hear the right number I walk away because I know they’re on the right track, but if they’re kind of taking longer than I think they should I’ll step in and say something.”
Fassi moved back to Arkansas from Orlando earlier this year and described it as the best decision she’s made in a while. Fayetteville feels like home, and her old college coach, Shauna Taylor, is there to help with short game, too.
While there was plenty of hype at the start of Fassi’s professional career, she said the biggest weight came from her own expectations. As the missed cuts mounted, the self-doubt did, too.
Thankfully, this week already feels different from any other she’s experienced as a professional.
“I was talking about it with my mom actually last night,” said Fassi, “and I was telling her like I think regardless of what happens this week, it’s going to be definitely one that I’ll remember for the rest of my life. It’s just been so much fun. It’s been a privilege to be able to learn from Stacy, to play with her, to get hyped together.”
After a penalty for slow play, Maria Fassi said she found it difficult to keep her head in the game in the second half of her round.
JOHNS CREEK, Ga. – As Maria Fassi made the turn at the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, she was informed that she had incurred a two-stroke penalty for slow play. The infraction occurred on the par-5 18th hole (her ninth) at Atlanta Athletic Club’s Highlands Course, and a rules officials approached her shortly before she teed off on the first.
Fassi, who is playing on a sponsor exemption, was so fired up that she cried down the hole. The former NCAA champ said she found it difficult to keep her head in the game after that.
“One of the players in our group was pretty slow,” said Fassi. “I’m not going to be pointing fingers; I did go over time. I guess that’s the penalty.”
Fassi, 23, tried to contest it after the round, but said that a rules official told her that she took 50 seconds on her second shot, which is 20 more than allowed.
Fassi had 180 yards left for her second shot into the closing par 5 and 167 to cover the water.
“The wind should’ve been helping,” she said, “but it didn’t feel like it was helping. I hit my 6-iron 183, my 7-iron 172. We didn’t know what to hit, because they had to be a perfect 7 for it to get there. The six could’ve been too much, and bunker long wasn’t good.
“It was just the perfect in-between number for me with those circumstances.”
Fassi, who shot 77 and is 3 over for the tournament (currently inside the cut line), was in breach of Rule 5.6 while being timed by a member of the Rules Committee.
“Every other LPGA player will tell you, we know who the slow ones are,” said Fassi, “everybody knows it. The rules officials know it, and I’m not one of them. This time around I guess it was me … I just don’t think that I deserved it.”
Maria Fassi and Gabi Ruffels, two young LPGA stars, are into the LPGA’s next major, next week’s KPMG Women’s PGA.
Maria Fassi and Gabi Ruffels have received sponsor invitations into next week’s KPMG Women’s PGA.
Fassi missed several weeks of competition after undergoing surgery last April to repair a tear in her left knee. She returned to action last week at the LPGA Mediheal, where she missed the cut.
“I actually wrote an email and like a letter to Shawn Quill requesting an invite,” said Fassi. “I mean, I talked with Suzy Whaley like if she could do something. I talked to Stacy (Lewis) as her being sponsored by KPMG, if like she could put in a word.
“So I talked to everybody to see if they could help in any way to get a good word for me and I could get the exemption. Stacy actually texted me and she was like, ‘Hey, you should be expecting a good call sometime soon.’ And within an hour or so I got an email, and, I mean, I couldn’t stop beaming for the rest of afternoon.”
Fassi said she played Atlanta Athletic Club back in April with a friend and loved the course. The former Arkansas star had extra time to work on her short game as she recovered from surgery and expects that extra focus to pay off soon.
Gabriela Ruffels holds the Robert Cox Trophy after winning the 2019 U.S. Women’s Amateur at Old Waverly Golf Club in West Point, Miss. on Sunday, Aug. 11, 2019. Photo: USGA/Steven Gibbons
Ruffels, the 2019 U.S. Women’s Amateur champion, made her professional debut at the Gainbridge LPGA in February and is competing in this week’s Meijer LPGA Classic in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The former USC standout has three top-20 finishes in major championships in the past two years: 2020 ANA, T-15; 2020 U.S. Women’s Open, T-13; 2021 ANA, T-19.
“I’m excited,” said Ruffels. “I’ve never played in KPMG. I’m pretty sure as an amateur in 2020 I played in all the other majors, so I’ve never played in that one. Really looking forward to it.”
Ruffels left college without any tour status of any kind. She could earn her LPGA card and avoid Q-School by either winning an LPGA event or earning the equivalent of the top 40 on the points list by season’s end.
Women at the Augusta National Women’s Amateur face a tough decision for final round: Keep their own caddie for comfort, or take a local one?
AUGUSTA, Georgia – At the 2019 Augusta National Women’s Amateur, the event’s two biggest stars took two very different approaches to the final round in one particular area: caddies.
Jennifer Kupcho made a game-time decision to swap out her dad for Augusta caddie Brian McKinley for that historic final round. Maria Fassi kept her swing coach.
“It’s definitely really hard to have that conversation with whoever is caddying for you,” Kupcho said earlier this week from the ANA Inspiration, “whether it’s a parent or a coach or whatever, but it’s definitely worth it in the long run.”
Arizona State super senior Olivia Mehaffey has had Kupcho’s Augusta caddie all week.
Fassi, the runner-up in 2019, stuck with her then-instructor, Jose Maria Sanchez, and said if she had to do it again, she wouldn’t change a thing.
“I knew I was going to need that emotional support,” said Fassi.
World No. 1 Rose Zhang, who co-leads with Ingrid Lindblad, has her trainer Josh Loyo on the bag again. So, too, does Erica Shepherd. Rachel Heck her father and Emilia Migliaccio has her mother.
Rose Zhang, shown with her caddie, prepares to tee No. 4 during the final round of the 2019 Augusta National Women’s Amateur. (Photo: Augusta National)
“During the practice round they send an Augusta caddie out with you,” said Shepherd, who finished T-23 in 2019, “so you kind of rack up as much knowledge as you can about the course and then I think when you’re there in tournament mode playing Augusta, it’s all about comfort still. That doesn’t change anything. Definitely going to go with who I’m comfortable with.”
Two years ago, South Carolina coach Kalen Anderson looped for former player Ainhoa Olarra, relying on Francesco Molinari’s caddie Pello Iguaran for help with hole locations. In fact, Anderson was nearly late to the first tee as she spent valuable minutes cramming with Iguaran right before the final round.
This time she’ll watch from outside the ropes as top Gamecock Pauline Roussin-Bouchard has a European Tour caddie, Sebastien Clement, on the bag. Roussin-Bouchard said even though this is Clement’s first time seeing Augusta National, she has no plans of changing course.
“Right now, we have specific work to do on the course, work together,” said Roussin-Bouchard. “I would not do it if I were a professional. I would not go like, ‘OK, we just played three rounds together and now next. I’m taking someone else.’ So it definitely would not change for anything.”
Houston coach Gerrod Chadwell, who is married to Stacy Lewis, will be paying close attention to the wind and elevation changes during Friday’s practice round with Karen Fredgaard. Chadwell and his player are taking a Solheim Cup approach to the week: No apologies.
“It’s going to be a high-stress situation,” said Chadwell, “we have such a great relationship and trust.”
An Augusta caddie certainly knows the course better, but Chadwell knows her game and personality.
Which is worth more?
“I think it’s a personal decision,” said Anderson.
Jack Fulghum has worked at Augusta National for nearly three decades and currently loops for Lexi Thompson on the LPGA.
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime deal,” said Fulghum. “Why wouldn’t you take an Augusta caddie? It’s going to help you 100 percent.”
When asked if there are holes in particular that local knowledge proves especially key, Fulghum said, “All of them. Every one.”
Brooke Matthews is the new big hitter from Arkansas in the second Augusta National Women’s Amateur.
AUGUSTA, Ga. – Maria Fassi’s image is everywhere this Augusta National Women’s Amateur week. The runner-up in the inaugural tournament in 2019, the Arkansas graduate was unforgettable with her big game, shiny aviators and her unwavering support for friend and opponent Jennifer Kupcho, the eventual winner.
This week, it’s Fassi’s words that echo in former teammate Brooke Matthews’ head. Fassi wants her simply to trust it in her ANWA debut.
“Just trust it, that’s a big thing,” Matthews said of the mantra she got from Fassi and Dylan Kim, another former teammate and ANWA competitor.
Matthews is the only Arkansas player in the field this week and with big shoes to fill after Fassi’s memorable run in 2019. But their games are similar, with Matthews also being an exceptionally long player. Matthews, who redshirted her freshman season with the Razorbacks, overlapped Fassi two years. They only traveled together one season.
“Maria was very confident in the way she did things,” Matthews said earlier this spring, at the UCF Challenge. “She was probably one of the most encouraging teammates I’ve ever had – go out of her way to have personal connections and conversations with everyone on the team.”
— Augusta National Women's Amateur (@anwagolf) April 4, 2020
In Fayetteville, Arkansas head coach Shauna Taylor would sometimes pair the two together on purpose to give Matthews a window into how another big hitter gets it done. Matthews also plays quite a few rounds with members at Arkansas’ home club, the Blessings, or with members.
Fassi has since moved back to practice in Fayetteville, a place that has always been home to Matthews.
“When you coach at Arkansas you know who the best players are in Arkansas,” Taylor said of bringing in a local like Matthews. “Brooke was obviously really close to campus. I had my eye on Brooke for a really long time.”
As a kid, Matthews was a gymnast, and didn’t pick up a club until she was 12 – a relatively late age for a player at this level. Her dream of being a Razorback gymnast slowly morphed into being a Razorback golfer. She’s been playing at the Blessings since she was 16.
By the time she reached her freshman year, Matthews wasn’t quite ready to compete. It took awhile to break into the traveling squad, and ultimately Matthews took the redshirt year to grow her game.
The pieces have finally clicked, and it was much mental as physical.
“I feel like I’ve been close for a long time,” Matthews said. “When I got into college, I really started to straighten out my driver. The older I’ve gotten, that just gave me more consistency. Been putting it a little better. Honestly just growing up and also handling the mental side of it little bit better.”
In August, Matthews reached the second round of the U.S. Women’s Amateur. Three weeks later, she qualified for the Walmart NW Arkansas Championship, the hometown LPGA event, and finished 49th. She won the Blessings Invitational in October with a big boost from opening rounds of 67-66. The next week, she was runner-up at the Ally.
“I think Brooke has kind of turned the corner in her self-belief and just a little bit smarter on the golf course, doesn’t panic when things are going a little sideways,” Taylor said. “She kind of knows that adversity is a part of what we’re doing and a part of our game and has learned to handle it a lot better.”
Back in 2019, Matthews was parked on a couch in Fayetteville with teammates, living and dying with every shot in the final round. She cheered and screamed.
“I think Maria Fassi, and Jennifer Kupcho, too, just made an impression on golf as a whole,” she said. “They kind of changed it a little bit for the better.”
The three longest players on the LPGA are paired together at the 75th U.S. Women’s Open: Maria Fassi, Bianca Pagdanganan and Anne van Dam.
HOUSTON – The three longest players on the LPGA are paired together at the 75th U.S. Women’s Open, and Maria Fassi has already fired the first shot.
“I’m just gonna to have to hit a good one on the first three holes just to let them know who the boss is,” said Fassi, with a smile, “and then just try to hit fairways the rest of the round.”
It might be the first round of a major, but it won’t be void of a bit of trash talk.
Rookie Bianca Pagdanganan (284.655), Anne van Dam (281.849) and Fassi (280.352) tee off at 11:10 a.m. CST Thursday on the Jackrabbit Course.
Van Dam and Fassi, two players whose personalities are as big as their games, have been paired together several times this season and know each other’s games well. Van Dam said she enjoyed competing alongside players who attack a course in a similar way.
While none of these players plan to make Thursday a long-drive competition, van Dam said that she and Fassi have been known to give each other a look on the tee when it’s a wide open, green-light hole.
“We don’t have to say anything,” said van Dam. “You walk past it, if you outdrive her by 10 yards, and say ‘Nice drive, Maria,’ and get her fired up on the next hole.”
Pagdanganan has never been paired with van Dam on the LPGA. At the 2019 NCAA Championship in Arkansas, seniors Fassi and Pagdanganan were grouped together in the last round during the final round of the stroke-play competition. Arkansas’ Fassi won the NCAA title and Pagdanganan, who played for Arizona and helped the Wildcats win a team title in 2018, finished third.
During a rain delay, the pair discovered that both have a “Fearless” tattoo. Pagdanganan has the word inked on her left wrist while Fassi’s is hidden away on her foot.
“It’s just how I approach the game I guess,” Pagdanganan said of the tattoo.
Pagdanganan shows her “Fearless” tattoo. (Golfweek)
All three players are searching for their first win on the LPGA and Pagdanganan is making her U.S. Women’s Open debut. The Filipino tied for ninth in her first major championship – the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship at Aronimink.
Pagdanganan said she gets to rip driver pretty much everywhere on both the Cypress and Jackrabbit courses. The USGA was forced to use both of Champions’ courses to accommodate a field of 156 players with limited daylight hours. LPGA setups often force all three players to keep driver in the bag, so Champions Golf Club presents a real treat to the big-hitters.
The more low-key Pagdanganan said she won’t try to force anything when it comes to being the longest in the group.
“It’s just a label,” said Pagdanganan of being No. 1 in driving distance on tour. “It’s not everything, but it’s pretty cool.”
Pagdanganan can’t really explain where she gets her power, but driver is her favorite club in the bag. Her coach at Arizona, Laura Ianello, points to “insanely” fast hips and use of the ground as key to her power.
Ann van Dam is a seven-time winner on the Ladies European Tour and has what many consider to be one of the finest swings in all of golf. The 5-foot-11-inch Dutch player paired with Anna Nordqvist and Suzann Pettersen at last year’s Solheim Cup. Last year in Phoenix, Dame Laura Davies called van Dam the longest woman she’d ever played alongside.
“She has the fastest hip rotation speed that I’ve ever measured on a system,” said van Dam’s instructor David Dickmeiss.
The Bermuda rough isn’t exceptionally penal at Champions because it’s December. Texan Angela Stanford, who won last week in Dallas, said these are the tightest fairways she’s ever seen, and that hitting in the rough actually isn’t such a bad thing this week. Even if there’s grass behind the ball, she said, it’s not as thick and healthy. Her aim is to get it out there as far as possible on every hole.
Maria Fassi with her Wonder Woman golf bag.
“I don’t think I’ve ever hit this many drivers on a golf course as a pro,” said a fired-up Fassi, whose golf bag is emblazoned with a Wonder Woman logo this week. Fassi felt she connected with the inspirational female superhero during a quarantine spent watching movies.
Arkansas head coach Shauna Estes said Fassi’s swing speed can get up to 113 mph but she has the most control at 106 to 108 mph. At the SEC Championship, the explosive player once hit driver, 8-iron on the final hole, a 478-yard par 5. Estes has lost track of the number of 370-yard holes where Fassi was left with nothing more than a chip into the green.
Stories about this trio can go on for days.
“It’s going to be fun,” said a grinning van Dam. “Too bad people can’t come out and watch.”
Rookie week at the U.S. Women’s Open is impossible to forget, even for big-name players like Annika Sorenstam, Karrie Webb and Stacy Lewis.
As the 75th U.S. Women’s Open kicks off this week in Houston, 41 players will be experiencing the game’s ultimate test for the first time. Rookie week at this championship is impossible to forget – the nerve-wracking, awe-inspiring, did-that-just-happen moments are seared in the memory banks. Golfweek asked a number of LPGA players to share highlights from their U.S. Women’s Open debuts. It won’t be long now before names like Hinako Shibuno, Yealimi Noh and Bianca Pagdanganan have stories of their own.
Annika Sorenstam, 1992 Oakmont Country Club (T-63)
It was really rainy there. It was so wet that year. That’s when Patty Sheehan and Juli Inkster got in a playoff. The course was known for fast greens. They roll 12 and the members think it’s slow. The first day I only played four holes; I teed off at like 7:30 at night. The next morning, we were hitting balls warming up, and it was so lush. I was hitting wedges and my divots were huge, thick and heavy. Just mud. I remember just hitting one after another and these divots were flying, and I wasn’t really paying attention to where they were flying. My caddie said maybe you should aim somewhere else. I said why? Well, there’s a player over there giving you the evil eye. I looked over and it was Dottie (Pepper). It had landed on her head like several times, this wet divot. I was like oops.
Maybe not the entry I had planned.
Lydia Ko, 2012 Blackwolf Run (T-39, low amateur)
I know what it was like for my cousin. She fainted that week because it was so hot. And then the next day my aunt fainted. I think that was the first U.S. Open they came to and the last as well. It was obviously extremely tricky. It’s a golf course I’d seen from Se Ri’s win (in 1998) so it was super cool for me, especially being South Korean-born to go to a golf course where there’s so much history and where she really changed the game and women’s golf. It was cool to kind of see that and go oh, that shot she hit on 18. It is probably, even to this day, maybe the trickiest, or top two trickiest U.S. Women’s Opens I’ve ever played in. I was so nervous that I hit my driver and hit my second shot on the green and I couldn’t line up my putts. I use the line on my ball for putting and I just couldn’t do it. I tried a few times and I couldn’t … I remember putting without a line that first hole.
Amateur Lydia Ko hits her tee shot on the par-4 14th hole during the second round of the 2012 U.S. Women’s Open.
Morgan Pressel, 2001 Pine Needles (MC)
It’s funny, the things I remember are the rain delays, because it was a time that I was in the locker room with all of these people I had looked up to. It was the locker room, and then there was a little dining room. I never wanted to leave. I just wanted to sit there because it was an opportunity for me to talk and say hi to all these people I had only ever seen on TV.
"I got to sit in the locker room with players I had looked up to my whole career. My whole young life!"@LPGAGirlsGolf alum @mpressel, who made her U.S. Women's Open debut at age 12, knows exactly how inspirational #USWomensOpen players can be for the next generation. pic.twitter.com/zt03YdsaLL
I birdied my very first hole. I honestly don’t remember if I started on 10 or 1, but there was a bunker on the right side and we had talked about it with my caddie, that the bunker wasn’t really in play. I remember flying it past the bunker because of how excited I was. We had a good laugh after that, and then I hit it to 4 feet and made the putt. So I was like OK, first time out here. It was a cool birdie, and a great way to start a U.S. Open.
Stacy Lewis, 2007 Pine Needles (MC)
I was still in college. I had (former Arkansas coach) Kelley Hester caddying for me because she was going to Georgia that summer. I remember I played pretty terrible. It wasn’t the best first U.S. Open experience. I remember kind of being overwhelmed by the golf course. It was hard. I just remember not feeling prepared. It was unlike anything I’d ever played before.
As you do it more times, you kind of forget what that experience is like. You almost forget what it’s like to be that rookie or to be that amateur that’s playing for the first time.
I like seeing the girls here with their dads caddying because that’s what I’ve always had. You try to help them out, but they just need to experience that themselves. I was having a good summer too. I won nationals that year – won the Southern, the Western, semis at the North & South. I was playing well.
Stacy Lewis hits her drive from the seventh tee during the 2007 U.S. Women’s Open. (Photo by Jonathan Ernst/Getty Images)
Ally Ewing, 2014 Pinehurst (MC)
My first U.S. Open was Pinehurst. I had won the North & South there the previous summer so qualifying for that was so exciting to me. I’d played well there, and then I just got eaten alive. Pinehurst is just a really distinct golf course. I have never walked away from a golf tournament feeling like I had executed more shots then I was given credit for. So I walked away from Thursday/Friday saying, you know, I hit some really good shots that didn’t work out. It’s just an unforgiving golf course.
Angela Stanford, 2000 Merit Club (MC)
I played with Carol Semple Thompson. We had played on the Curtis Cup together that year. I remember standing on a tee and I swear she said this is my 27th in a row. (Editor’s note: Thompson, an amateur, did not play in 27 consecutive but she did compete in 32 U.S. Women’s Opens, her last coming in 2002.)
I remember thinking holy cow … how in the world did she do that? So this (year) is 21 (for me). Just looking back on that, I remember thinking I hope I get to play 10, and this will be my 21st in a row!
And I remember being terrified of Karrie Webb.
Karrie Webb, 1996 Pine Needles (T-19)
What I remember was that (my caddie) said the word patience so many times that I ended up like, I’m sick of hearing the word (bleeping) patience! But that’s my biggest memory. I had to learn how to play U.S. Open golf. You know, I’d play well up until then but had not come across a course as difficult. And I wasn’t used to making as many bogeys and working as hard for pars. And it is, it’s about patience. I think that’s still, for me, my biggest battle at any major is patience. I have, at times, been really good and then other weeks be a couple over early and start pressing and thinking about end scores and I know better than that. That’s just always going to be my Achilles’ heel at majors is patience.
Brittany Altomare, 2009 Saucon Valley (MC)
My dad caddied for me. My grandfather had actually just passed away when I had qualified, like a few weeks before. It was kind of like a special moment, playing in it. I didn’t know that you could call and make practice round times. You go and you register and look at the screens for practice rounds and Lorena had an opening in her group. My dad was like just do it! So literally my first U.S. Open and professional tournament I played a practice round with her. I was more nervous on Monday than I was teeing it up on Thursday. But she was like the nicest person ever. She was engaging with me and asking me questions. It could not have been a better experience.
Brittany Altomare tees off on the 15th hole during the second round of the 2009 U.S. Women’s Open. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
