Henderson talks 2016 KPMG Women's PGA Championship
Brooke Henderson reflects on winning the 2016 KPMG Women's PGA Championship at Sahalee Country Club, sharing how she has grown since that victory and why her caddie and sister, Brittany, is so important in her life.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
USA Today
10 hours ago
- USA Today
Texas teaching pro will hit first tee shot in major championship debut at KPMG Women's PGA
Texas teaching pro will hit first tee shot in major championship debut at KPMG Women's PGA Show Caption Hide Caption Former Texas Longhorn Katelyn Sepmoree to open KPMG Women's PGA Golfweek's Beth Ann Nichols (on the set of Golf Channel's coverage of the KPMG Women's PGA) talks with Katelyn Sepmoree. FRISCO, Texas – The woman hitting the first tee shot to open play at the KPMG Women's PGA Championship might have the most experience at PGA Frisco. Katelyn Sepmoree, a member of the Northern Texas PGA Section, will play in her first major championship not too far from her hometown of Tyler, Texas. She played the Fields Ranch East Course four times before championship week, even taking part in media day alongside 2024 Women's PGA champion Amy Yang. 'We're ready to rock,' said Sepmoree, who, in addition to a pre-tournament press conference, made a stop by the Golf Channel set on Monday. The former Texas Longhorn, who had a brief stint on the LPGA before turning to the teaching ranks, now works at Willow Brook Country Club, where she first learned the game. Her boss at Willow Brook – head pro Chris Hudson – has been teaching her since age 7. 'My goal when I started teaching was I was given a really great opportunity to learn from really great people, and if I could just share a little bit of that to the generation below me that's worth it,' said Sepmoree. 'I try to be a mentor to not only the girls I teach, but the boys that I teach as well. They have given me – they look at me and say, you can do this Katelyn, Coach Katelyn, you got this. To hear it from them, it's something special. Kind of hard to put into words. I hope to do them proud and my section proud.' Dozens of friends, family and Willow Brook members plan to make the drive from Tyler to Frisco for Sepmoree's 7 a.m. tee time. 'I think the bus was used to describe the number of people,' said Sepmoree. 'I can't confirm there is actually a bus, but I wouldn't put it past our members. I do know a lot of people are staying the night, like Wednesday night, because it is an early tee time.' The 34-year-old played her way into the championship by winning the PGA Women's Stroke Play Championship. To prepare for the week, she's packed her schedule with lessons in the morning and practice in the evenings, putting in long days in the Texas heat. Fellow Willow Brook pro Correy Davis will be on the bag. The first goal, she said, is to enjoy the moment. The second comes as more of a surprise from someone with a full-time job: win it. Cool things we saw in 2024: Frisco hot tub could be Ryder Cup hotspot When asked about her confident approach, Sepmoree said it comes from her circle. 'It's my coach, it's my family, it's Correy, it's the members,' she said. 'They instill confidence that I can just drink up and take in. 'And honestly, it's my faith and knowing this is where I belong.'
USA Today
10 hours ago
- USA Today
Architect Gil Hanse on building a major a championship venue to test the best men and women
Architect Gil Hanse on building a major a championship venue to test the best men and women FRISCO, Texas – It's been a whirlwind stretch for architect Gil Hanse. From the renovations at Oakmont to his creation at PGA Frisco, Hanse's handiwork stands at the center of back-to-back major championships this month. The KPMG Women's PGA Championship marks the second major championship held at the PGA of America's sprawling Frisco campus, following the 2023 Senior PGA, staged shortly after the opening of Fields Ranch East. The course is scheduled to host a whopping 29 championships through 2034, including six majors. Golfweek caught up with Hanse on the eve of the KPMG, the third major on the LPGA's 2025 calendar. More: Golf architects Gil Hanse and Beau Welling like each other, and players will love what they've created at PGA Frisco Transitioning from old to new It's obviously very different from our full restoration of a golf course to a brand new golf course. I think my partner, Jim Wagner, and I love the idea that we're getting to show both sides. This golf course here, Fields Ranch East, is a lot more indicative of what we think of when we think of golf architecture – wider and angles are relevant here. We give you room to hit it off the tee, but if you're in the wrong spot, you're probably going to struggle with your second shot. Whereas Oakmont was just tight and difficult and that was the original architecture. Being able to show the ability to kind of live in the two different worlds of golf architecture is exciting for us, and it's tiring. (laughs) More: Cool things we saw in 2024: Frisco hot tub could be Ryder Cup hotspot Building for the best men and women in the world In a way, it's reminiscent of what we did in Rio for the (2016) Olympics, where we knew we were going to have multiple championships on that golf course, but we're also going to have men and women playing, so how do we set that up? We got a huge assist from Amy Alcott down in Rio and that kind of helped us understand a little bit more. Because a lot of people think, well, you just have to move the tees back and forwards and that's it, but if the women are hitting from the same landing areas as the men, the men are hitting 7-iron and they're hitting 5-iron, or maybe even higher. So you've got to get them to a place where it's commensurate with the shot values of the hole. One of the more interesting aspects of what we did in Rio and here was that we had multiple sets of bunkers or hazards, water hazards that are in play which would be in play for the women in the main landing area, but the longer men, Rory and Bryson, might hit it there. This golf course is all the same grass, with the exception of the greens, so we can manipulate the mowing lines any way we want to. So if we want to make it wider this week and narrow it for '27 (PGA Championship), we can do that, but we also had to figure out, we don't want to narrow it, have bunkers sitting 20 yards out in the rough that are irrelevant. So we had to kind of figure out how do we bunker one side of the hole that we can keep the fairway right up against them, and then bring it in from the other side, and then same thing with the multiple sets of hazards for different classes of player. So it's a little bit of a jigsaw puzzle in that regard, which was, to be honest, pretty exciting. The Amy Alcott influence There was a lot of conversations (in Rio) about those sort of landing areas, the angles and needing to make sure, you know, if we're asking a male professional golfer to hit a shot in, they're more than likely going to get much more elevation on the shot, and we needed to make sure that hole locations that were going to be tucked behind bunkers or behind ridges, etc., that we got the women golfers far enough up that the elevation of their shots could actually match and hold the green. So it's not only distance, but it was a lot of talk about trajectory. What the land provided This golf course is really divided. There are natural holes, so you go, you know, two, three, four, five, six, and seven are more natural. And then on the back line, it would be 13, 14, 15, and 16 are natural. All the other holes we just had to create, all totally artificial. We hope that we did enough earthwork, that we made them look natural, and the people wouldn't know, they would just feel as if it's the entire golf course, but the holes we had to manipulate were for two reasons: They were dead flat and not very interesting, but they were also in the flood plain. We had to elevate them to get them out of the 100-year flood plain, so that, you know, it looks like this week, touch wood, we're going to be dry. But in May, we get a lot of thunderstorms in this area and the creek floods pretty good. So we had to build these holes up. It was not an easy build, because the dirt here was really bad. The philosophy of 'ribbon tees' I mean, we've always been big believers in multiple options, and the ability to kind of move things around, and sometimes it's hard for people to understand or accept, because they think, well, I got to post a score. … We just want to create different options because it's super windy here. If the wind is blowing, you can always move tees up, and you're not limited to just the pods. You have a lot of flexibility in the setup of the golf course. You also feel like there's a way where you can correlate tee setup with hole locations. You can put a difficult hole location and move the tees up on that day. Or a benign hole location moving the tees back. So we just love the flexibility these ribbon tees give to you, and we also love the presentation. They just kind of feel as if they're extensions of the fairway, just kind of wander, ripple their way down.
NBC Sports
11 hours ago
- NBC Sports
Henderson talks 2016 KPMG Women's PGA Championship
Brooke Henderson reflects on winning the 2016 KPMG Women's PGA Championship at Sahalee Country Club, sharing how she has grown since that victory and why her caddie and sister, Brittany, is so important in her life.
