Michelle Wie-West is a first time host at the Mizuho Americas Open.
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JERSEY CITY, N.J. — Megha Ganne appears to be like awfully confused.
It’s Wednesday morning at golf’s newest tournament — the Mizuho Americas Open — and he or she’s simply been requested a silly query.
“Have I spent any time here?” Ganne asks rhetorically. She friends out towards the horizon. “Well, I used to live on the 14th hole.”
So sure, Megha Ganne has spent a while at Liberty National. In reality, an excessive amount of of it. Even if house is now driving distance from Liberty, this week counts as one thing of a dwelling recreation for Ganne, the 19-year-old rising faculty sophomore who stormed via an all-PAC-12 freshman season at Stanford. Two years after gorgeous the girls’s recreation as a excessive schooler with low-am honors at the U.S. Women’s Open, she’s again at dwelling, enjoying alongside the tournament’s different shy-of-drinking-age Stanford star, Rose Zhang.
This week will mark Zhang’s first begin as a professional, and Ganne’s first LPGA look. Someday, should you imagine the prognosticators, this pair of children may show a key piece of professional golf’s future, their brilliance blazing a new path ahead for girls’s golf. And should you imagine that to be true, it’s exhausting to see this week — at a brand-new occasion in the world’s largest media market highlighting a few of the sport’s brightest younger expertise — as something aside from the launch get together for the LPGA’s new future.
And at Liberty National, it appears the get together has discovered a new dwelling.
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Before Ganne and Zhang, girls’s golf had Michelle Wie. At the Mizuho Americas Open, girls’s golf nonetheless has Michelle Wie — although she carries a totally different final title (Wie-West) and slate of duties now.
“It’s slightly strange,” says Wie-West, who traded in her golf equipment to be this week’s tournament host. “But it’s great in a way. Usually, when I’m at a tournament, I’m stressed about playing. It’s pretty nice and walking around saying hi to people.”
On the identical week the PGA Tour will host a participant tournament to honor certainly one of its greats (Jack Nicklaus), the LPGA will host one to honor Wie-West. In some ways, this tournament suits the identical format outlined by the Tour’s player-hosted occasions. This week’s occasion may also be contested at a marquee venue, additionally for a huge purse, and likewise with the distinct really feel of premium billing. But that’s not all.
The power round Jersey City is owed to the tournament host and sponsor, however the blueprint belongs to the PGA Tour. The LPGA and Mizuho have dedicated to giving gamers free Manhattan lodge rooms and a ferry from decrease Manhattan that runs on the half-hour for this week’s occasion, simply as the PGA Tour did when it got here via right here in 2021. NBC Sports has devoted a footprint and TV schedule of appreciable dimension, full with two nationwide tv home windows on the weekend, simply as it will for a PGA Tour occasion. On-site, the short-term constructions are significantly smaller than the common Tour occasion, however the company hospitality setting — lengthy a bastion of the males’s golf enterprise mannequin — is decidedly no-joke.
Walking round the glimmering build-out — a sweeping pavilion with views of the 18th inexperienced, the Statue of Liberty and Manhattan skyline — it could be misplaced on the week’s youngest contestants that these facilities have been as soon as seen as unreasonable luxuries for the girls’s recreation. Wie-West hopes it is misplaced on them. That’s one method to measure progress.
“I mean, everything is just so above par. It’s just excellence everywhere,” Wie-West mentioned. “Honestly, this is the fewest complaints that I’ve heard from players ever. Player dining is bomb, obviously, I love the chef here. The hotel; the ferry to and from New York City; and this golf course is just unbelievable. Honestly, my job is so easy because everything is just perfect.”
Wednesday’s pro-am led to a smattering of celebrities from the New York social scene; former New York Giants stars Michael Strahan and Victor Cruz have been amongst the attendees, whereas the NBA’s Larry O’Brien championship trophy made a tour round the property (a feat owed with little doubt to Wie-West’s husband Jonnie, director of basketball operations for the Golden State Warriors and son of NBA legend Jerry West). But maybe the most essential pro-am additions have been the relative nobodies — a group of golf stakeholders and company companions who proved important in bringing the tournament to life.
This group, of each gamers and energy brokers, is how an LPGA occasion with a $2.75 million purse finds its manner into New York City; and likewise the way it stays right here. If it’s unusual so that you can consider golf and competitors as solely secondary components in an occasion’s long-term success, you mustn’t have spent a lot time following professional golf in the final 18 months.
On the enterprise facet, it’s straightforward to see how Wie-West may assist the Americas Open turn into a bell-cow for legions of company backers sitting simply a 20-minute ferry experience throughout the Hudson. And on the participant facet, it was a battle to seek out even a single individual with a unhealthy factor to say about the tournament, its host, or most notably, its location.
“You know I love food,” mentioned Wie-West. “This week I’m going to Kote, a Korean BBQ spot, Nami Nori (sushi), maybe even sprinkle in some Carbone (Italian). This is my absolute favorite city in the world.”
“This is my first time here,” countered Zhang later with a grin. “I’m just looking for a good bagel.”
Setups like this are nonetheless the exception in girls’s golf, not the norm. But there’s motive to hope that at some point they won’t be uncommon in any respect.
Megha Ganne isn’t very previous, however she’s sufficiently old to recollect a time when an invitation to Liberty National appeared unattainable. Now, at 19, she’s enjoying an LPGA occasion right here on a sponsor’s exemption … and has a model cope with Liberty National to sport the membership brand on her golf bag in competitors. That growth speaks to the jaw-dropping potential of the two Stanford golf teammates as a lot because it does to the seismic progress in girls’s golf completed by those that got here properly earlier than the two of them.
“With this course especially, you feel like you’re in the center of everything,” she mentioned. “It’s just a very different vibe from any other golf course I’ve ever been to. The vibe makes a major difference.”
The vibe can also be totally different due to issues fully unrelated to the golf course, like motels and ferries and sponsors and a highlight. This, it seems, is certainly one of the few methods by which Ganne can nonetheless be thought-about a Liberty National novice — a level supported by her shuffle via the observe space together with her employees bag on her again.
“It’s just easy. All of it,” mentioned Wie-West. “The cost for the week, how they’re treated, how their caddies are treated. That’s what this is all about. This event is about empowering women. It’s about advancing the next generation.”
By the appears to be like of the subsequent technology, it appears the get together is simply getting began.
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