PEBBLE BEACH, CA: The USGA does not hold an annual dinner for past champions like the Masters or PGA tournament, only on special occasions.

Being at Pebble Beach is a special occasion, and the “Reunion of Champions” drew crowds. The league said 39 former women’s champions met Monday night, ranging in age from 22-year-old Yuka Saso to 84-year-old Jo Ann Carner.

“To see 39 champions come together and have a chance to catch up and talk, great food, great wine, and for the USGA to bring this together, to fly everyone over to Pebble Beach to host there at the Club, three Women’s Open titles,” said Annika Sorenstam, who has claimed three Women’s Open titles. The beach, doesn’t get much better than that.”

Many of the players were asked to share stories of their victories, Sorenstam said, and that was back in the ’60s — Mary Mills defeated Louise Suggs and Sandra Heaney at the Kenwood Country Club in Cincinnati in 1963.

“I hope we can carry on that tradition,” Sorenstam said.

The most recent winner was Minjee Lee last year at Pine Needles, and she said some of the stories include prize money. The entire purse was $9,000 in 1963, and Mills earned $1,900 that week. This year’s portfolio is expected to exceed $10 million over last year’s.

“Every time you have an interaction with the older generation, you just realize we have a job because of them,” said Michelle Wei West. “Because they were our founders, because of the women who came before us, because of all the hard work and things they’ve done to improve the Tour.”

Lee got a special pep talk from two-time Women’s Open champion and fellow Australian Carrie Webb. Lee is the defending champion. The last player to run back in the Women’s Open was Webb in 2001.

He told me: ‘She said the next person should also be Australian’. “A little bit of extra pressure, but it would have been nice of you to say that to me.”

travel plans

The LPGA Tour was in New Jersey for the KPMG Women’s Championship and then it was a week off before the US Women’s Open in Pebble Beach. Good thing too, because this past week has been a mess with all the flight cancellations.

The winner, Ronnie Yen, was trying to get to her home in Orlando, Florida. Her flight was canceled on Monday, and Tuesday didn’t look good until she took a flight from Newark to Key West, then changed to Orlando.

“It is very strange,” Yin said.

And then there was Rose Chang. Chang, who appeared on the Golf Channel, said she had an outing Monday in Merion and then her flight from Philadelphia was cancelled. By the time I booked another flight all the hotel rooms were booked so I slept on the couch in the hotel.

In the end, Chang paid the money to drive to Baltimore, only for it to be cancelled. She headed to Atlantic City where her management, Excel Sports, took her on a private trip with Travis Kelsey, who was headed to Las Vegas for a made-for-TV golf show.

I finally made it to Los Angeles on Wednesday night.

“I was sitting for about eight to ten hours by the time I was there at the airport and at the hotel, I think I was hopping on Oppers and hopping flights,” she said. “But I was able to go home a little bit and get a little massage, and I was able to practice on the course at home, and I was there for three or four hours.”

Rough start

Ronnie Yin is the LPGA’s newest major champion and second major winner from China. She chose a club for the first time when she was four years old. She didn’t really start playing until she was 10 years old, and there’s a reason for that.

She was at the driving range with her parents. Her father taught her mother how to swing. The girl was curious.

“He was standing behind me and said, ‘Don’t swing, because I was holding a club,’” Yin said. “I made one swing anyway, and it just hit his head and he got four stitches. It wasn’t very fun. After that, I didn’t touch a club at all until I was 10 years old.”

Her passion was basketball, and she still loves shooting. But she hasn’t completely given up on golf, even if it takes some convincing.

“There’s a summer camp in China and my mom said, ‘Maybe you should go and try it. If you go, I’ll take you to a movie.’ That’s really why I started,” she said.

Baltusrol’s PGA Women’s was her second LPGA win of the year.

cliff

Nelly Korda caught her first look at Pebble Beach on Monday and loved everything she saw, except for one view.

She played her second putt to the par-4 eighth and looked down the steep slope at the end of the fairway. You couldn’t help but think of Jordan Spieth hitting a 7-iron off the edge of a cliff during the 2021 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.

“I looked to the side and said, ‘Oh my God, Jordan was crazy,’” Korda said. “I saw they had already grown grass there. Maybe it’s because of him.”

She may have a point. The rough cut was extended and slightly thicker for this year’s PGA Tour event in February.

Shuttlelink

Michelle Wei West believes that a strong set of statistics will go a long way toward being able to introduce women’s golf to a wider audience.

It’s an expensive project. KMPG contributed a few years ago to “Performance Insights” where the player’s case records all the information to provide analysis of the shots.

“We need to be able to engage fans with technology and stats, especially for our broadcasters,” Wee West said. “When they say, ‘Jin Young Koo is good,’ well, we need statistics to back that up.”

The US Women’s Open will be different. The USGA relies on the PGA Tour’s ShotLink system where cameras are located in every fairway and around every green allowing every shot by every player to be recorded and analyzed.

It was also available at the US Open two weeks ago in Los Angeles.

DIVOTS

Alabama sophomore Nick Dunlap followed his Northeast Amateur win in Wannamoisett by capturing Northeast Amateurs at Pinehurst, cementing his bid to make the Walker Cup team this year. … Bernhard Langer won the US Open at SentryWorld for his record 46th PGA Tour Champion, making Wisconsin the 15th state he’s won a PGA Tour Champion. By comparison, Tiger Woods has won his 82nd PGA Tour title in 16 states. … The Heritage Classic returns to the PGA Tour schedule for Australia next January for the first time since 2013. … Albane Valenzuela is tied for sixth at the ShopRite LPGA Classic two weeks ago. This lifted her seven places to No. 70 in the world, and she entered this week’s US Women’s Open being in the top 75.

case of the week

Bernhard Langer ranks in the top five on the list of oldest PGA Tour Champions.

“I think his secret sauce is his desire. I don’t know that he’s lost his desire to play and to compete and to get better. And I think that’s what it takes as you get older.” — Jay Haas on Bernhard Langer, who broke the PGA Tour’s record for first US Open title with his 46th title.