The people behind takes deep breath The ANNIKA driven by Gainbridge at Pelican got a taste of that viral life a year ago with Caitlin Clark’s pro-am appearance, and have doubled down on it.
Clark was back on Wednesday, the most famous women’s basketball player in the world, playing a very relatable version of golf, this time surrounded by Indiana Fever teammates Sophie Cunningham and Lexie Hull. The Fever play in Gainbridge Fieldhouse, and the “direct-to-consumer digital annuity platform” is why those three, along with former USWNT star Briana Scurry and NASCAR driver Carson Hocevar, all showed up in the Tampa Bay area this week.
Pro-ams are a great place for such stunts. There’s an unseriousness baked into the entire thing, as wealthy individuals or representatives of well-heeled corporations pay for the chance to rub shoulders with the pro golfers a day or two ahead of the actual tournament. Invite the entire WNBA and try to work out a collective bargaining agreement at the halfway house, and you’ll hear no argument from this corner.
But it’s what happened the next day that bears more serious mention, and worry that the three forces putting on this LPGA tournament may have lost the plot here.
Kai Trump played in The Annika on Thursday, one of 108 women playing in the final full-field LPGA event of the season. The No. 461 junior golfer in America was given a coveted sponsor exemption because of her last name and massive social media following, with no belief by those who handed her a golden ticket that she could compete against the actual best women’s golfers in the world.
“So the idea of the exemption, when you go into the history of exemptions, is to bring attention to an event,” the Pelican’s Dan Doyle Jr. said Tuesday.
“Yeah, I think any tournament wants buzz,” Annika Sorenstam followed up.
Sure. But suppose the only way for a tournament bearing the name of the arguably best women’s golfer ever, with several other built-in advantages, to generate buzz is to create stunts. Then doesn’t the LPGA have a major problem on its hands and has to seriously consider why it’s being left behind in the rise of women’s sports popularity?
You can’t blame Kai Trump. She is 17 and her stated dream is to be an LPGA golfer. Annika Sorenstam asked her to play. How was she going to say no?
But just because you can does not mean you should, and there’s little to no argument that a teenager who has played in three elite-level junior tournaments and finished at or near the bottom of each of them is actually ready to compete with Nelly Korda and the rest of a field that includes four major champions from this year alone.
She finished the first round on Thursday at 13-over-par, an 83 that was four shots worse than the next woman in the field and 19 strokes behind leader Haeran Ryu. Trump’s Friday second-round tee time will almost surely be her last in her LPGA debut.
Annika Sorenstam has publicly defended the decision to invite Trump to her namesake tournament. (Douglas P. DeFelice / Getty Images)
Trump was 35-over-par for three rounds at Bay Hill earlier this year. The Pelican is not nearly as punishing off the tee as Arnold Palmer’s course in Orlando, but the contouring on and around the greens is such that Korda won with a respectable 14-under score in 2024.
While Trump has signed to play at Miami next year and her supporters have complimented her high ball flight as an example of her ability, it’s her 6 million followers across all of social media and last name that lead her CV.
“Give this girl a chance, right?” Sorenstam said, a preemptive attempt to deflect any negative attention headed Trump’s way. It’s an odd quote from Sorenstam, whose foundation is committed, in part, to providing pathways to top junior and collegiate women’s golfers.
Sorenstam’s defense plainly ignores the obvious advantages Kai Trump has already had in her life, and why the tournament was interested in inviting her in the first place. She is the granddaughter of the president of the United States, and her father, Donald Jr., helps run the company that operates 11 golf courses in the United States alone. Her mother is dating Tiger Woods. The only limit to Kai Trump’s professional golf ambition is her own athletic potential.
However, Sorenstam also accepted the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Kai’s grandfather on Jan. 7, 2021, and has visited Mar-a-Lago with her husband, Mike McGee. Belleair, the small beachside community where the exclusive Pelican Golf Club is located, voted for Donald Trump by 33 points last year.
At least publicly, Kai is the closest grandchild to the president, and their shared love of golf has been foundational to her social media brand.
Kai Trump signs autographs before a practice round. (Douglas P. DeFelice / Getty Images)
We all know what’s happening here. Any cries of sticking to sports are so faint as to not be heard this week at the Pelican, all involved content to enjoy the connection to the president and the largely complimentary media coverage they’ve received thus far this week.
It’s just curious why the LPGA is playing along, allowing a sport that has always been rooted in meritocracy to be about something else.
The Annika should be one of the biggest tournaments of the year for the LPGA. There’s its namesake, for one, but also a top-class venue and a total purse, $3.25 million, which is No. 4 among non-majors.
It’s the last event before next week’s CME Group Tour Championship, ensuring it always has a loaded field. Even more, its only competition for eyeballs in mid-November is a sleepy PGA Tour fall event in Bermuda.
The WNBA is on an exponential growth trajectory. Women’s soccer continues to get bigger and bigger. The PWHL is rapidly expanding. The LPGA, with 75 years of history behind it, should be out in front. But a miserable TV deal and poor marketing efforts have let it fall behind in North America, leaving it in a position where midday Golf Channel TV coverage and a video on Kai Trump’s YouTube channel must have sounded appealing.
So it’s giving the thumbs-up emoji to a teenager being used for cheap attention, with no credible hope that it’ll have any lasting impact on the sport. It doesn’t say much about the LPGA, does it?
