AUGUSTA, Ga. — Anna Davis had simply turned 12 when Augusta Nationwide Golf Membership, in a shock, introduced it could create a brand new nationwide girls’s beginner championship. On Saturday, now 16 years previous, Davis received the event.
Annika Sorenstam, who received 10 L.P.G.A. main championships, attended the membership’s information convention in 2018, when Augusta Nationwide officers mentioned it needed the 54-hole event to learn girls’s golf in any respect ranges.
“This can be a dream come true,” Sorenstam mentioned on the time. “Will probably be an thrilling carrot for these younger amateurs.”
Sorenstam sat behind the primary tee on Saturday as Rachel Kuehn, who was 16 when the event was created, teed off within the remaining spherical.
“I rotated and Annika Sorenstam was there and I assumed, Oh my gosh, I’ve to hit the green,” Kuehn, who would end seventh, mentioned later. “I didn’t hit the green but it surely was actually cool to see her and so many individuals out supporting girls’s golf. It’s what this event was meant to do.”
Amari Avery was 14 when Augusta Nationwide introduced the occasion, which included the information that the nationwide girls’s beginner championship could be broadcast reside on NBC on the weekend earlier than the beginning of the Masters Match.
“The very first 12 months they performed it I noticed how electrical it was and I made it a objective for myself to be part of that environment that very second,” Avery mentioned Saturday after she finished tied for fourth.
If Augusta Nationwide’s intent was to learn girls’s golf, particularly the junior circuit, Kuehn, whose mom, Brenda, was a prime beginner who would have liked taking part in aggressive golf at Augusta Nationwide, and Avery, whose father is Black and mom is Filipino, every insisted the membership’s comparatively new beginner championship is attaining its goal.
“It’s simply been unbelievable,” Kuehn mentioned. “It’s a testomony to what Augusta Nationwide is doing right here.”
Avery, whose look 9 years in the past in a Netflix documentary about elite grade faculty golfers earned her comparisons to Tiger Woods, mentioned the Augusta Nationwide event was “large.”
“It’s exhausting to search out phrases for a way a lot this has impacted beginner girls’s golf,” she mentioned. “Seeing all these folks lined up and clapping and cheering for us, it’s the way it needs to be and it’s a step in the correct path, for positive.”
Andre Avery, Amari’s father, noticed the symbolism.
“For my daughter to activate the TV years in the past and see younger girls taking part in on the golf course the place the Masters is performed, I imply that was a turning level for her,” Avery mentioned. “And as we speak, for African American youngsters to be watching TV and see somebody that appears like them on the identical course, that’s a extremely massive deal, too. It’s vital for them to see that.”
The primary Augusta Nationwide Ladies’s Beginner was held in 2019 and the 2020 occasion was canceled by the pandemic, which inhibited attendance on the 2021 event as effectively. However on Saturday, the crowds at Augusta Nationwide, which started admitting girls members in 2012, had been hearty, with the galleries across the closing holes 10 deep with followers. (Augusta Nationwide doesn’t launch attendance figures.)
“I’ve by no means performed in entrance of such massive crowds,” Davis mentioned. “I’ve by no means seen something like that.”
Brenda Kuehn couldn’t assist however discover what number of girls had been in attendance — and what number of had introduced their grade faculty and preteen daughters, who surged across the golfers as they completed their rounds, clamoring for autographs.
“I gave my golf ball to just a little woman as I got here off the 18th inexperienced as we speak and I’m unsure if she understood what was happening, however the look and smile on her face was a wonderful factor,” Ingrid Lindblad of Sweden, who completed tied for second, mentioned.
Lindblad, a junior on the golf crew at Louisiana State, mentioned that one among her professors even knew she could be competing on the storied golf membership.
“Not many individuals usually discuss to me about one among our faculty tournaments,” Lindblad mentioned. “Solely household and shut mates go to these. However that’s how this event is completely different. There’s no query it’s raised the profile of girls’s golf. And that may proceed to have constructive results.”
Kuehn’s coach at Wake Forest College, Kim Lewellen, mentioned she has seen an increase in participation at junior women’ camps and within the variety of girls recruits who’ve contacted her because the event’s inception. She credit the enchantment of seeing girls at a famend golf course and the truth that it’s contested the weekend earlier than the Masters is performed.
There are different distinguished American girls’s beginner championships, just like the U.S. Ladies’s Beginner, first performed in 1895, however Augusta Nationwide appears to have captured a particular foothold.
“It’s the platform,” mentioned Avery’s golf coach at Southern California, Justin Silverstein. “Arguably, everybody in golf has heard of Augusta Nationwide and even most informal sports activities followers have heard of the Masters. It’s essentially the most recognizable golf course on the earth.
“Younger girls golfers activate NBC, and that’s one other large platform, they usually see those that appear to be them — or folks not that far faraway from them — they usually assume: Possibly I can try this too.”
Typically, that’s all it takes.
Davis, who shares her March 17 birthday with Bobby Jones, one of many founders of Augusta Nationwide who died in 1971, mentioned on Saturday that she had not heard of the occasion till final 12 months — when she watched it on tv.
“It made me very excited to try to compete on this occasion,” she mentioned. “Then I used to be excited once I realized I used to be going to play right here.”
Now she is the event champion.
