Short par-3 9th at Erin Hills anything but sweet
Keep your eyes on the short yet "diabolical" par-3 9th this weekend in the U.S. Women's Open at Erin Hills. Nelly Korda, Allisen Corpuz and Paige Mackenzie explain what makes it so challenging.
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USA Today
a day ago
- USA Today
Daughter of Michigan State coach makes LPGA debut at Meijer as Monday-qualifier
Daughter of Michigan State coach makes LPGA debut at Meijer as Monday-qualifier Olivia Stoll got a late start in golf. Not due to lack of opportunity – her mother is longtime Michigan State women's head coach Stacy Slobodnik-Stoll – but simply a lack of interest. That changed at age 15, and she torpedoed into college golf at Division II's Grand Valley State, where she was a three-time Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Women's Golfer of the Year. After graduation, Stoll had plans to work at one of the family's three golf courses and spend the winter interning at a course in Naples, Florida. That's still the plan, though after Monday-qualifying for the Meijer LPGA Classic, there might be a detour. 'Going into this I didn't think I really wanted to turn pro because I think the confidence, I didn't have it in my head,' said Stoll. 'I'm going to enjoy this week and see what happens next. This could be a big turning point to push me the extra step to decide to turn pro.' Stoll opened the Meijer with a 4-over 76 that included an eagle, a birdie, a double and bogeys on five of her last six holes. There's much work left to do to make the weekend at Blythefield Country Club with her father, Jim, on the bag. But it's all about the experience. Slobodnik-Stoll just wrapped her 28th season at MSU, and since the LPGA first came to Grand Rapids, has brought Olivia out to Blythefield Country Club to watch her Spartans compete in the Meijer. At this year's Monday qualifier, Olivia defeated her good friend, MSU player Taylor Kehoe, in a playoff to earn the spot after both shot 71. Slobodnik-Stoll said it was clear early on that her daughter had the physical capability to play at a high level, but with a background of more volleyball than golf, it took some time for Olivia to believe it herself. Slobodnik-Stoll would tell Olivia that she hit it as good anyone on her MSU team. And she wasn't sugarcoating anything. 'I'm not just saying this because you're my kid,' she'd tell her. 'I'm telling you this because it's real.' It's been quite the stretch for Slobodnik-Stoll who, after leading her team to the NCAA Championship, caddied for Brooke Biermann at the U.S. Women's Open at Erin Hills before returning to Michigan to win her second straight Golf Association of Michigan Mid-Amateur title. It marked Slobodnik-Stoll's 13th GAM Mid-Amateur title overall. For more than a decade, Olivia watched LPGA players walk the fairways of Blythefield, fueling goals and dreams. 'I always thought that was so cool,' said Olivia during a pre-tournament press conference. 'I was like, wow, I cannot imagine being one of them with all these people watching and just hitting a good shot, and now I'm going to be roles reversed hitting the shots.'
USA Today
2 days ago
- USA Today
Patty Sheehan dishes on how she slayed the beast that is Oakmont in 1992
Patty Sheehan dishes on how she slayed the beast that is Oakmont in 1992 OAKMONT, Pa. — Bobby Jones, Jack Nicklaus, and Johnny Miller are all part of the legendary players who won at Oakmont Country Club. Count fellow World Golf Hall of Fame member Patty Sheehan among that exclusive club. After falling short in heartbreaking fashion multiple times at the U.S. Women's Open, including squandering a 12-stroke lead in 1990, Sheehan defeated another Hall of Famer, Juli Inkster, in an 18-hole playoff at Oakmont in 1992 to win the title she so desperately wanted. "It certainly was something that I'd always wanted to do is to win the U.S. Open, and it was always so difficult because it's the hardest golf course we play all year long," she told Golfweek. Inkster agrees with Scottie Scheffler's assessment of Oakmont as one of the toughest courses she's ever played. Tough, she said, but fair. "You know, you had to hit the ball in the right spots," said Inkster. "It's kind of a golf course where – usually you play to the front of the greens because then you have uphill chips. At Oakmont, you want to play from the pin beyond, because the back -- you're chipping back uphill. So I always thought it was kind of reverse of what we always played." Here's more from Sheehan on how she slayed the beast that is Oakmont. GWK: How did you solve the riddle that is Oakmont? PS: I'm not typically a very straight driver of the ball. I don't think I had the best short game, but I worked on it very hard a lot at home, and I would try to find the most difficult shots around the golf course and try to hit them. Tried to feel a little more comfortable with my short game, and it started getting better. It really was amazing how much better it got. Honestly, that's probably one of the reasons why I won at Oakmont because I was not hitting – it didn't seem like I was hitting a lot of greens in regulation and having easy pars. That just doesn't happen at Oakmont. So it came in handy. GWK: Did you have any other secret weapon that week? PS: When I got to Oakmont on that Monday of tournament week, my caddie, Carl Leib, had already been there for like two weeks trying to figure out the golf course and watching members play. He really did his homework. It was one of those weeks where we had a lot of rain. A lot of rain at Oakmont makes it just miserable because you've got thick rough and now they can't get in there and mow it. It was getting harder day by day. He's like, 'OK, this is the deal. It's supposed to rain here this week, and we're going to hit a lot of 3-woods off the tees, try to stay in the fairway and try to hit as many greens as we can. This is a beast of a golf course.' So he really had it mapped out for me, and I was really impressed with his homework. It was a combination of working pretty hard on my short game for years and then getting Carl as my caddie and him doing all of his pregame work. It all came together that week. GWK: What did it mean to you to win the U.S. Women's Open that week? PS: I was pretty happy because two years before that, I lost the Open. I shouldn't have lost it, but I did. I got hypoglycemic on Sunday, and we were playing 36 holes in Atlanta. July is never fun. It's hot and humid and horrible. So I got pretty sick that Sunday. At one point, I was up by 12 shots, and I ended up losing. So it hurt quite a bit, and I learned a lot from that. So coming back a couple years later and being able to get it under my belt was probably the biggest turning point in getting to the Hall of Fame. I think the Hall of Fame is probably the pinnacle of my career, but winning the U.S. Open was definitely one of those turning points for me. I felt like after I got an Open under my belt that I could probably get into the Hall of Fame because at that point I'd had quite a few tournament wins. GWK: What did you learn about yourself that week? PS: I learned that I needed to pay attention to my nutrition. For some reason, I didn't pay much attention to my nutrition throughout my career until that point, and I know that I lost many tournaments because I was not eating properly or drinking enough on the golf course. I cleaned up my act quite a bit and started realizing that, oh, yeah, I can get through 18 holes without crashing at 13 or 14 or 15, which is basically what I would do almost every round. I never really gave it much thought. I just thought, well, shoot, I just need to work out more, I need to get in better shape. That wasn't it at all. I was in pretty good shape. Just didn't have the fuel on board to get through 18 holes.
USA Today
2 days ago
- USA Today
Lexi Thompson addresses non-retirement, begins three-week stretch of LPGA events at Meijer
Lexi Thompson addresses non-retirement, begins three-week stretch of LPGA events at Meijer Lexi Thompson makes her first start of three in a row at this week's Meijer LPGA Classic. The Grand Rapids, Michigan, stop is one of her favorites on tour and it's easy to see why. In 10 appearances, the 2015 Meijer champion has six top-five finishes at Blythefield Country Club. This week marks Thompson's sixth start to the season and next week in Frisco, Texas, she'll tee it up in her third major of 2025 at the KPMG Women's PGA. Given how much she's played so far this season, the schedule certainly doesn't have the feel of a part-time player, but Thompson said she'll probably play around 10 times total this year, meaning the next half of 2025 should be substantially lighter. At last week's U.S. Women's Open, Thompson wrote a post on social media in which she reacted to the slow-play accusations of early in the week and reminded folks that she never used the word retire. 'I feel like once I made the announcement I feel it really got misconstrued that I was retiring,' said Thompson when asked about the post, 'but I never said that word. I just said I was stepping back from a full-time schedule. 'Big picture, I probably shouldn't have said that I was stepping away because people thought I was retiring. Just really wanted to dial back my schedule and have more of a life balance, but at the same time, if I went through a phase where I didn't want to play at all, I left that door open as well.' There certainly was no shortage of press conferences and farewells in 2024, beginning with a thank you letter to golf video she posted during the U.S. Women's Open at Lancaster, in which she said "While it is never easy to say goodbye, it is indeed time." At the Dana Open, Friday was deemed "Lexi Thompson Day," complete with hats, "Thank you, Lexi" buttons and an F-16 flyover from the Ohio Air National Guard. "There could be a point where I go through a few months of not teeing it up," said Thompson of her initial announcement. "I didn't want to just do that to my fans, just disappear on them. That's not right or fair. "I wanted to give the tournaments or the fans an opportunity to watch me possibly the last time at that tournament or in their home city. So I was just putting everybody's thoughts into the announcement as well." After the KPMG, Thompson plans to tee it up in the Dow Championship, a team event in Midland, Michigan, though she didn't think it was the right time to reveal the name of her partner. As for the last two majors of the season, she plans on taking a bit of a break. Thompson last played in the Amundi Evian in 2019. 'Not set in stone right now, but there are some personal things that I have to do when I'm home in the next few months,' she said. 'So we'll see.'
