Thursday was a great day for tournament golf in general and the LPGA in particular. Korean golfer Haeran Ryu shot a flawless first-round 64 in a tournament named after Annika Sorenstam, played on a wide-open, beautiful course on the bay near Clearwater, Florida. One shot behind her was Australia’s Grace Kim.
This is the final full-field (108 player) event of the LPGA season, the last chance to qualify for the grand final, the CME Group Tour Championship, where 60 players will compete for a $4 million winner’s check, the largest prize in women’s golf; the runner-up gets $1 million. Rose Zhang, the Stanford student in her second full year on tour, is a bubble girl for the Tour Championship. Watch out, people: exploding stories! Would you know these things if Kai Trump, the 18-year-old high school golfer and granddaughter of Donald Trump, weren’t in the field as a sponsor exempt? Maybe not. But she is, and many of us notice it where I might not otherwise.
Trump shot 83 in the first round. No one shot higher.
And therein lies the real beauty of the day. Kai Trump received one of three special sponsor invitations to play in the Annika piloted by Gainbridge at Pelican (host/sponsor/course). Would she have received the invitation if her paternal grandfather wasn’t the President of the United States and if she didn’t have over seven million followers on her various social media platforms? No. Does her presence in this tournament bring extra attention to the LPGA, as the tournament sponsors had hoped? Yes. That’s not where the beauty lies. The beauty lies in the powerful reminder of what tournament golf is all about: the scores. The scores!
If Kai Trump ever wants to become an LPGA player, her goal, she will have to do what every LPGA player does with cards, and that is shoot the scores to earn – to earn! – her place. Point. That’s why millions of us are drawn to golf. There’s no place to hide. You can tell IG stories until you get green in the face, but it doesn’t really matter. In tournament golf – especially the professional golf that we watch in person and whatever screen is around – your day can always be summed up in a number. For Haeran Ryu on Thursday it was 64, six under par. For Kai Trump that number was 83, 13 above par.
“I was definitely more nervous than I expected,” Trump told reporters shortly after her round. Definitely an honest assessment. “I hit a lot of good shots, just in the wrong places.” A comment you would expect from a good high school golfer. Not something you’re likely to hear from a touring professional.
Trump attends the Benjamin School in South Florida. Sam Woods, the eldest child of Elin Nordegren and Tiger Woods, is in her class. Charlie Woods is on the boys team there. Kai Trump got pep talk advice from her grandfather, from Tiger Woods (her mother’s boyfriend), from Annika Sorenstam. She has access to the best golf instructors, fitness experts, equipment technicians, manufacturers, courses, practice facilities and everything else. If Trump wants to make it in professional golf, she will have to rise above that. It won’t be easy.
“I feel sorry for rich kids now, I really do,” Ben Hogan said in 1983. “Because they’ll never get the chance I had. I know hard things, and I’ve had hard days all my life, and I can deal with hard things. They can’t.”
The tournament organizers did not hide the reason Trump was invited to play in this event. It wasn’t because of her exceptional talent. There are probably thousands of teenage golfers around the world who are better than Trump. It’s because of her bloodline and the social media reach that comes from it.
2 Ways to Think About Kai Trump’s Controversial LPGA Invitation
By means of:
Josh Schrock
“This is one of the most high-profile women’s golf tournaments that has probably ever existed,” Justin Sheehan, chief operating officer of Pelican Golf Club, said shortly after Trump’s invitation became public late last month. “The number of impressions on social media is huge. Love it or hate it, it gets people talking about the event.”
This is a new day in golf’s long-standing practice of offering sponsorship exemptions to golfers, amateur or professional, who can help at the gate and broadly improve the tournament. When Tony Romo, a break-par amateur golfer, played in PGA Tour events as an amateur at the invitation of a sponsor, the built-in question was: What’s the difference between an elite former NFL quarterback who plays good golf and a PGA Tour player?
In other words, it was his athletic skills and the fame that came from them that earned him a starting spot on the PGA Tour. When Sorenstam played in a PGA Tour event, the same basic math: What can one of the greatest female golfers do when she plays against the men? It was her athletic skills and the acclaim that came with them that earned her the invitation to the 2003 Colonial.
Kai Trump isn’t famous for her athletic gifts (although she did hit a most impressive 20-foot back-of-the-rim shot on the first tee of Wednesday’s pro-am on her first and only shot). She is famous because of her DNA. It’s something different. It’s a different era.
When Trump was invited to play at this event, the invitation did not go directly to Trump or to her mother or father or the high school coach. It went to her agents. She is represented by GSE Worldwide, the same agency that represents many LIV Golf players. Her asking price for a one-time Instagram video post is $125,000. She develops her own merchandise line. Will her two days – there is a 36-hole cut in this 72-hole event – in the Annika piloted by Gainbridge at Pelican hurt matters, regardless of the scores she scores? Not likely.
The levels of confluence here are staggering. Donald Trump gave Tiger Woods the Presidential Medal of Freedom during his first term shortly after Woods won the 2019 Masters. There is also a Tiger Woods Villa at Trump Doral in Miami. When Trump hosted an LPGA event at his course in West Palm Beach, he played in the pro-am with Sorenstam, then the top player in women’s golf. On January 7, 2021, Sorenstam, along with Gary Player, also received a Presidential Medal of Freedom from Trump. Woods, among others, met with Trump at the White House in hopes of resolving the ongoing dispute and tension between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf. Trump was an early supporter of the LIV Golf case. One of his golfing buddies is LIV star and two-time US Open winner Bryson DeChambeau, who is also represented by GSE Worldwide.
So much synergy!
But synergy cannot turn an 80-shooter into a 70-shooter. The golfer shoots what the golfer shoots. The rest is commentary.
Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com
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