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New York Times
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Reigning major champ Mao Saigo may be proving she's the real deal at the U.S. Open
ERIN, Wisc. — The only thing stopping Mao Saigo from completely running away with this U.S. Open was hitting too good a shot. On a heater. Coming off a major win. This 23-year-old Japanese newcomer the golf world still hardly knows hit a spinny little pitch so perfect it bounced three feet in front of the pin — clearly about to halt right behind the hole for a birdie putt — and struck the center of the flagstick. Advertisement It bounced off and rolled. And kept rolling. Oh no. Down the slope. Off the edge. Into a bunker. The ball rolled 90 feet away from the pin into the sand, a comically bad break flipping the hole from a likely birdie to a bogey. 'I did a pretty good third shot,' Saigo said through a translator. 'It was very good. However, I missed birdie chance. But I thought that was not my mistake, I just thought to myself that it was just unlucky.' How dialed in is Mao Saigo? Her lone blemish – this bogey on 14 – came on an incredibly unlucky break.@Ally — U.S. Women's Open (@uswomensopen) May 30, 2025 No problem. Because the thing we're quickly learning about Saigo is she's not going to go away. She's not just somebody on a Friday run. She's not just a random Chevron Championship winner we'll forget by next year. She stuck her next par-three approach to three feet. She birdied four of five holes. She shot a second-round 66 — the best round of the week — to enter the weekend with a two-shot lead at the U.S. Women's Open with a chance to become the first back-to-back major winner in a decade. For all the stories of Friday at Erin Hills, from Nelly Korda's 67 launching her into contention to Sarah Schmelzel's opening-nine 31, the greatest lesson may be that we didn't realize who Saigo really was. The way she won the Chevron in April, with Ariya Jutanugarn disastrously whiffing a chip to set up a five-way playoff, and then for Ruoning Yin to miss her eagle and birdie putts before Saigo sunk hers for the surprise win, it ran the risk of being one of those women's major championship winners that blends into history. It did not propel her into stardom. She entered the week with the 20th-highest odds to win in the field. Now, it all just looks a little different. The entire picture is clearer. Advertisement Suddenly, you notice her at 20 on the LPGA of Japan Tour, winning five tournaments in two months like a Japanese tour Nelly Korda. You remember she showed up in the States and won LPGA Rookie of the Year with two major top 10s at 22. And then you see that major championship at 23, playing in the final Sunday group, and you realize she might be something else entirely. The shame of language gaps in sports is purely that we don't get to know the real players through a translator. Though translators do fine and admirable work under pressure, we don't get the true vibe of a player—their tones, intimations, nuances. Some players, who'd rather not speak often, brilliantly use it to give boring answers and not be requested for interviews. Generalities work. Nobody can blame you. This matters, because after Saigo won the Chevron, she was asked what was next. The player who entered the week ranked 37th in the world did not give a generality. 'I still have four more majors to go, and I want to shoot for No. 1 in the world,' she said via translator. 'I will do my best in the remaining four majors.' Or Friday, after that dominant 66, she was asked what winning a major did for her confidence: 'I think that I was able to be more confident about my judgments that I make. I would like to play my play rather than thinking about changing myself. I want to do and play my play.' Saigo wants to play her way. And Friday, she was indeed a thrilling watch. She hunted tough pins on 11 and 17 and placed approaches within five feet. She sank tough birdie putts on 1 and 2. On the par five 7th, her ball was stuck so deep in the rough that all she could do was hit an ugly, weak 7 iron to the left side of the fairway. But Saigo, hitting her third shot up a steep hill, stuck that 125-yard shot four feet from the pin for her seventh birdie of the round. Or on 8, she had another awkward lie in the fairway rough. She creatively played a fairway wound and bounced it off the sharp green front hill and rolled it to the center of the green. Her way. Advertisement And for as much as modern women's professional golf is often dictated by East Asian greats like South Korea's 34 wins this century or Australian/New Zealand greats of East Asian descent, the famously golf-loving country of Japan hadn't produced many winners. Until recently. Chako Higuchi won the LPGA Championship in 1977. Ai Miyazato reached world No. 1 in 2010. But the country went 42 years without a major until Hinako Shibuno's British Open win in 2019. Then Yuka Saso, who represented the Philippines until 2022 but now plays for Japan, won the 2021 and 2024 U.S. Women's Opens. Ayaka Furue won the 2024 Evian. Then, Saigo at Chevron. The No. 13, 14, 15 and 16 players in the Rolex Rankings are all Japanese and between 22 and 25 years of age: Saigo, Furue, Miyu Yamashita, Rio Takeda. The 22-year-old Iwai twins are 23rd (Akie) and 37th (Chisato). Oh, and Nasa Hataoka has six wins. Saso has her two majors. The LPGA of Japan Tour keeps cranking out young, experienced players who've learned how to win, and this week in Wisconsin, Saigo is joined in contention by Shibuno, Takeda and the Iwais all under par. And maybe Saigo is just riding a wave. Maybe she'll play herself out of contention Saturday and fade down the rankings by next year. The sport has seen it many times before, hot streaks of one or two years that don't quite last. Or maybe we're seeing a new killer on tour, a young, big-game hunter who will go toe to toe with Nelly Korda for the U.S. Open and snag consecutive majors at 23. Whatever happens, we know one thing. She's playing her way.
New York Times
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Nelly Korda and the weight — and wait — of the U.S. Open
ERIN, Wisc. — She was 9, her sister sneaking her into the U.S. Open locker room to show her the world that would soon be hers. She was 14, playing in her first U.S. Open, walking practice rounds with Michelle Wie West and hitting balls on the range next to Lydia Ko and Inbee Park. This was the dream. It was that week Nelly Korda truly decided this was what she wanted to do with her life, to chase major championships. Advertisement She was 25, on top of the world, a two-time major winner, winning her sixth tournament in seven starts, and one of the first things she said was how badly she wanted to win the big one, this one. 'There has definitely been some heartbreaking times where I just haven't competed well in the U.S. Women's Open, where I feel like I put a little bit more pressure on myself, because I do love the event, and I feel like out of all the events that's, like, the event for me.' Three holes in, the air was sucked out of the balloon that day. She shot a 10 — ten — on Lancaster Country Club's 12th hole at the 2024 U.S. Open to eject with an 80. Korda is the No. 1 player in the world, and she really, really wants to win the U.S. Open. Yet in 10 tries, she's missed three of her last five cuts and finished better than 39th just twice. Often, she is out of it within 18 holes. But Thursday at Erin Hills, she is still in this thing. And she's done it with patience. Nelly Korda didn't have a single birdie on her card… until her last hole! She's 4 off the lead.@Ally — U.S. Women's Open (@uswomensopen) May 29, 2025 On a day when nobody came in lower than 68 and where half the field is at least 2-over par, Korda is right where she needs to be. If anything, she should be higher up the leaderboard, struggling to get much out of a strong round from tee to green. Sixteen pars in a round can sting. 'I was striking it pretty well out there,' she said with a sigh Thursday night, 'just under-read some putts and burned a couple edges too. I think I'm happy with it. Obviously, I wish the ball found the bottom of the cup a little bit more. Overall, I can't complain. 'First day of the U.S. Open, it's all about patience.' She found nearly every one of Erin Hills' tricky, slopey fairways, with one of her only misses rolling from the center of the fairway and down a hill just two yards into the first cut. She consistently found greens, but she missed birdie putts of 11, 10, 17, 18, 14, 13, 13 again, 13 again, 19 and six feet. She had one bogey all day, and that came from a three-putt on the green, too. Advertisement 'I was hitting my putts really good,' Korda said. 'Wherever I was kind of looking, rolling it over my intermediate target, that's where I was hitting it. I have no complaints.' At U.S. Opens, golfers accept those missed opportunities. When you have Korda's track record, you go home thrilled with playing so well off the tee and in approach. U.S. Opens cannot be won on Thursdays, but, my goodness, can they be lost. And Korda still has the fifth-best odds at sportsbooks. You cannot treat these as normal tournaments, neither the golfers nor the audience. These are tricky mental tests where each par is a little victory. They're about course management and discipline, and fairly or not, some critics have questioned whether Korda can win the grind-it-out type tournaments that separate the greats. But more than the test itself, Korda would be the first to admit it's about the pedestal stars put this tournament on. Three-time major winner Lydia Ko, who hasn't won the U.S. Open and admits her next goal is the career grand slam, said on Tuesday: 'I think this would be the one that I'd say, 'Oh, I wish I was a U.S. Women's Open champion.'' And Korda shot that Thursday 80 last year at the absolute apex of her hype and belief. The entire sport rallied around her as its biggest star in a decade. Six wins in seven starts. Two major championships at 25. That was going to be the one, and seemingly every women's golf fan tuned in for her featured group to see if she could maintain history. In minutes, it was over. But it's more than that. Korda shot an 80 on Sunday the year before at Pebble Beach to finish 64th. She had an impressive T8 in 2022, but even that was 11 shots off the lead. Two missed cuts the years before that. The unfortunate reality was Korda might have played herself out of U.S. Opens before they started. Advertisement 'Oh, yeah, lots of ups and downs,' she said earlier this week with a laugh. 'I mean, it's the biggest test in the game of golf — definitely has tested me a lot. I love it. At the end of the day, this is why we do what we do, is to play these golf courses in these conditions, to test our games in every aspect. Not even just our games, our mental, as well.' No, it's not Rory McIlroy at the Masters. Not even close. It would take many more years of torment and attention to reach that sort of level, the kind nobody wishes on a golfer. But it's a cousin of it. Because the thing Korda's 80s and missed cuts do is add a little more tension each year. A little more scar tissue. A little more time in press conferences dedicated to the hurdle. But this is not about whether Korda will win the U.S. Open. It's Thursday. It's early. Golf probabilities say she won't. It's a story about the fact that Korda entered this week carrying all those hopes and dreams, and she kept herself in it. Sure, she says, she started to get frustrated toward the end with all the missed putts, the missed opportunities to get off to a fast start. But before Korda could get too angry, her caddie, Jason McDede, reminded her of something. 'It's all about patience.'
