‘Getting people talking’: Kai Trump’s surprise LPGA invitation to achieve his goal

On a Sunday in May 2017, a little girl stood on the final hole of the Senior PGA Championship in Virginia and watched Bernhard Langer win the event with a shot over Vijay Singh. The girl, Kai Trump, attended a course owned by her paternal grandfather, Donald Trump, alongside her father, Donald Trump Jr., and was in the first year of his first term as president of the United States. Kai Trump, wide-eyed and ten, seemed happy to be there. She was already well into golf.

Eight years later, her grandfather is in the first year of his second term as president and Kai is captain of the girls golf team at the Benjamin School in South Florida. Her mother (Vanessa Trump) is in a relationship with Tiger Woods. On Tuesday, Kai announced that she has accepted an invitation to play at an LPGA event in Florida in mid-November sponsored by Annika Sorenstam.

“What’s up, guys?” Kai said at the beginning of her 37-second poolside video announcement: posted on TikTokwhere she has 3.4 million followers. “I am pleased to announce that I will be making my LPGA debut in the Annika in November.”

On Tuesday evening, Kai did a 15-minute Sirius XM radio interview with Sorenstam and her husband, Mike McGee, son of Jerry McGee, a prominent PGA Tour player in the 1970s. McGee said that by his calculations, Kai had more than 8 million followers, combining her various social media channels.

“I couldn’t do it without my team,” Kai noted.

“I could use some help with my content,” Sorenstam said.

Kai Trump is a good junior golfer with LPGA aspirations who has committed to play golf at the University of Miami starting next year. There are hundreds of other teenage female golfers with similar profiles. Kai was invited to play at Sorenstam’s event because her paternal grandfather is President of the United States and her social media following is huge. Nobody disputes that.

“Since Tuesday’s announcement, I imagine this is one of the most talked about women’s golf tournaments that has probably ever existed,” Justin Sheehan, chief operating officer of the tournament’s host club, Pelican Golf Club, said in a telephone interview Thursday. “It’s on news channels and sports channels. The social media impressions, they call it, are staggering. Love it or hate it, it gets people talking about the event.”

“We are on a mission to grow this game. Seeing the impact Caitlin had last year was quite eye-opening.”

Caitlin Clark, the star point guard of the WNBA’s Indiana Fever, put her promising golf game on display at last year’s tournament, playing in the pro-am with Sorenstam. Clark will play in the pro-am again this year. Sheehan, a former teaching professional who has worked with LPGA players, described Clark as a single-digit golfer with unlimited benefits.

Sheehan, along with his professional wife, Nathalia Sheehan, played 18 holes with Kai Trump at Pelican this year. Asked for a scouting report, Sheehan said Kai had an impressive swing and LPGA length and, like all young players, was learning about shot selection. (Her caddie for the tournament will be her friend Allan Kournikova, the 21-year-old brother of retired tennis player Anna Kournikova.) Sheehan declined to make any predictions about what Kai might shoot in the four-day tournament, which starts Nov. 13.

Last year the 36-hole cut was two over par, 142. Considering Kai’s scores in junior events, where her scores are often in the mid-70s or higher, making the cut would be an astonishing feat. Sheehan noted that sponsorship invitations to many professional tournaments go to players with a wide range of skills, including local pros and famous athletes.

Sheehan said his future wife, who competed under the name Nathalie Filler, played in the tournament in the event’s first year, in 2020, on a sponsor’s waiver. Filler’s major playing qualification was her winning the North Florida PGA Women’s Section Championship. By all accounts she is an excellent golfer. Competing against the best players in the world, Filler missed the cut by 12.

As Tiger Woods has often said, getting better at golf happens like a series of “baby steps.” His goal, which he made as an amateur in the game, was to dominate at every level he played. But he did play at the 1992 Los Angeles Open, with the exception of a sponsor, as a 16-year-old amateur – and reigning US Junior Amateur champion. Steph Curry has played in professional events as a sponsor exemption, as a scratch golfer and one of the best basketball players in history. Annika Sorenstam played in a PGA Tour event, the 2003 Colonial, on a sponsor’s waiver, and as the most dominant female golfer in the game. Sheehan noted that Bryson DeChambeau’s social media following — his videotaped attempts to break 50 on a short course in the company of the likes of Steph Curry and President Trump — has brought golf to a countless number of new golf viewers. He expects Kai Trump’s participation in an LPGA event to do the same. The most important numbers here aren’t her scorecard totals, but her social media reach.

The November event’s birth certificate name is The ANNIKA, operated by Gainbridge at Pelican, but players and fans call it the Annika after the tournament host, the 55-year-old Swedish golf legend who lives in Orlando. Gainbridge, a financial services company, is the tournament sponsor and responsible for the event’s $3.25 million, with 15 percent ($487,000) going to the winner if the winner is a professional. You can say with near certainty that the winner will be a professional: a Nelly Korda, a Charlie Hull. (Kai Trump will compete as an amateur.) The tournament will be played on the “renovated” Donald Ross course at Pelican Golf Club, near Clearwater, Florida. Justin Sheehan, a former teaching professional, is the club’s Chief Operating Officer, and the invitation to Kai Trump comes at the insistence of Pelican, who will receive one of the tournament’s three special exemptions.

Ryan Dever, the tournament director, said in an interview that the invitation was extended to Kai through her agent and that “the communication was through Kai’s team.”

The event is the final full-field event of the LPGA season, four rounds with a 36-hole cut and 108 players, three of whom are in the field by special invitation.

One spot is reserved annually for a member of the winning team of a collegiate event sponsored by Sorenstam, the Annika Intercollegiate. The winning team was Wake Forest and the team decided that Anne-Sterre den Dunnen of the Netherlands, a senior, would represent the team at Sorenstam’s LPGA event.

Second place is given by Gainbridge and went to Lauryn Nguyen, a promising golfer from Northwestern University. Like Kai Trump, Lauryn Nguyen is making her LPGA pro debut. But unlike Kai, she didn’t announce her participation in the event through a TikTok post that traveled the world and reached hundreds of thousands of people.

It’s a truly extraordinary 37-second clip. In it, Kai stands next to a golf net next to a backyard pool with a small putting green and chipping area off to the side. The pool has a basketball rim for pool dunking and the hedge behind the pool is trimmed to perfection. She is wearing a TaylorMade hat (her grandfather’s favorite brand) and a sky blue Benjamin School golf shirt that matches the sky above her. The final punctuation of the video is a nothing but iron shot with a smooth, controlled backswing and ending with good balance. She is wearing little white ankle socks. She has an interesting speaking style, where she throws her right hand down to emphasize certain syllables. Millions have seen it. Soon, millions of people will see her swing at an LPGA event.

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com.