When Georgia Hall won the Women’s British Open in 2018, it did not turn her head. “I’ll still stay in Travelodges because you only need a bed,” she said. “I still go to Wetherspoons.” The prize money at the majors has since improved dramatically, with up to $10 million (£7.6 million) on offer at the US Open later this year, but the fight for recognition goes on.
While Twitter melted down after Tiger Woods was sighted in Augusta on Tuesday, the world’s best women golfers were gathering in California for the Chevron Championship, the first major of the year. Play starts today with Hall, the 25-year-old from Bournemouth, trying to build on winning the Saudi Ladies International less than a fortnight ago.
In recent years the women’s majors have produced a string of surprise winners. From Sophia Popov’s British Open win in 2020 when ranked 304, to rookie Patty Tavatanakit winning last year’s Chevron Championship, then the ANA, despite a final round 62 from Lydia Ko, the drama has been top-notch. Hall is ranked 24th in the world, two spots above fellow England player Charley Hull, but her win in Saudi was a reminder of her talent as well as the moral dilemmas facing modern golf.
You would have to have been living in a hermetically sealed basement to not know the furore caused by Greg Norman’s prospective Saudi-backed Super Golf League. Phil Mickelson branded the Saudis “scary motherf***ers” and now finds himself in exile after cosying up to the interlopers to create leverage and force the PGA Tour to dig deeper. It was noted by some that the women escaped almost all criticism for playing in Saudi a week after 81 mass executions.
Those playing in the Ladies European Tour event were clearly not signing up for a megabucks super league and were playing in a single event in the kingdom, as the likes of Tommy Fleetwood, Shane Lowry and Bryson DeChambeau had done the previous month, but should any of them have been there? Whatever the rights or wrongs of that debate, the fact is the discrepancy in prize money means the women golfers can ill-afford to be as choosy as their male counterparts.
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It is at the majors where significant change has started to happen. The prize money in California this week is $5 million (£3.8 million) and the purse at this year’s British Open will be $6.8 million (£5.2 million), double the amount when Hall won. These are huge figures, but not reflected in the size of the regular tour purses. During the pandemic in 2020, while the men went back on tour, some of the European women had to throw in £125 apiece for Liz Young’s one-off event in the New Forest, before Justin Rose added £35,000 and it became a series.
Hall admitted that women’s golf flies under the radar last night when asked if she saw parallels with Emma Raducanu after she had won her first major. “Well, she’s got more media attention than me due to tennis,” Hall said. “She’s got much bigger sponsors. Golf is obviously not as popular . . . but hopefully she doesn’t feel too much pressure from people. I had a stellar year in 2018 and I think you put more expectations on yourself.”
Building a profile and history is hard. The Chevron Championship was founded in 1972 by Dina Shore, the singer-actress-golfer, and has been played near her old home at Mission Hills in Rancho Mirage ever since. The celebratory dip in Poppie’s Pond by the 18th has become a regular feature of celebrations, albeit that Pat Hurst merely waded in back in 1998 as she could not swim. Now, with new title sponsors, the tournament is moving to an unnamed venue in Texas next year, at a new date which means it will not clash with the Augusta National Women’s Amateur, which takes place this week with the top 30 playing a final round on the Masters course on Saturday. Plenty will miss Mission Hills.
The standard of women’s golf cuts through old-school prejudice. Take Ko Jin-young, the South Korean who has been in a rich vein of form on the LPGA Tour, racking up wins as well as 16 consecutive rounds in the 60s. How good is she? “We’re just trying to keep up with her,” the American player Cheyenne Knight said. “I hope people fully grasp what she is doing. It’s very Tiger-esque.”
Hard to beat, perhaps, but Hall came close to adding to her 2018 triumph when she finished second at last year’s British Open at Carnoustie, on the back of a sixth place at the Evian Championship. “Deep Breath” and “Be Brave” say her twin tattoos, which is good advice for all as the year’s first major gets under way. “Hopefully I can jump in the pond at the end of the week,” she said.
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Chevron Championship
Mission Hills, California
Thursday to Sunday
TV Sky Sports Golf, from 5pm
