Saigo Emerges From Five-Way Playoff
Rookie from Japan wins her first major and LPGA title at a beleaguered Chevron Championship. Plus, Ben Griffin and Andrew Novak emerge in New Orleans while several players book major berths.
It’s not easy to put on a successful golf tournament. These weird little gatherings of golfers require hundreds of people and lots of luck to pull off. It takes very little to negatively impact how we reflect on the outcome and remember a week. But in general, the winning formula typically involves a strange concoction of venue, weather, market, history, media, players, agronomy, volunteers, and fan turnout. Oftentimes, it’s a lot like a magical performance where the set list, setting and something mysterious in the air allowed musicians to take their art to another level. In golf, it’s usually a properly prepared course with a special setting and fan vibe that takes 72 holes of generally boring stroke play and produces something magical.
This was not one of those weeks.
And the fault lies with forces far beyond the control of players or the people who put in long hours to make tournaments go. Not helping matters: we’re coming off an absurd Masters. The bar is unfairly high right now. But this weekend’s first LPGA major and only team event on the PGA Tour reinforced just how the pursuit of a buck or desire for control can undermine the otherwise noble mission of giving players a stage for success.
After taking all of this in, emergency staff meetings were convened at Quad headquarters and the staff demanded that I get the negativity out of the way now before reporting on the big weekend performances. Here goes.
The Chevron Championship finished its third year at Carlton Woods outside Houston and appeared to lose whatever momentum the tournament enjoyed after Nelly Korda’s dramatic win in 2024. The major formerly known as the “Dinah” never felt remotely close to a big, important, and distinguished event until Sunday’s 18th hole shenanigans. That’s when the golf was surrounded by crowds that could be called, well, crowds. Over the previous three days, the galleries looked more like those of a college event. Worse, the all-important hospitality tents—the ones we were told three years ago were vital in justifying Chevron’s investment and the move away from greater Palm Springs supported by former champions of the event who also picked up sponsorship deals with the oil company—sat largely empty until Sunday. Then, the corporate chalets became a TIO backstop used by players to avoid taking on the lake fronting the green.
Then there is April in the suburbs of Houston. A lot of rain fell again, leading to soft conditions for three days. Sunday’s finale seemed more major-like thanks to superintendent Tim Huber’s crew getting enough moisture out of the greens. They appeared to restore a need for precision down the stretch. So they’ll always have that.
The final turd atop this Sunday sundae involved pace of play. The LPGA that cracked down on players practicing during pro-am rounds earlier in the week did nothing to speed up the final round. Setting aside a conversation over whether a major championship should have a pro-am at all, Sunday’s final threesome took an inexcusable five hours and 46 minutes.
Meanwhile, over at the PGA Tour where someone thought it’d be cool to be like the IOC and control all broadcasting pictures, sound, and commentary—even though no network partner asked for the courtesy—an outage of some kind knocked out the ability to show final round golf for several hours. This included the final portion of Golf Channel’s pre-network final round coverage that ended without explanation. After an hour or so of uncertainty, an official Tour social media account acknowledged the issue but gave few details. This went about as well as you’d expect.
The mid-round weather delay softened the outage blow since this would have meant showing last year’s taped final round until the storm passed. But since the PGA Tour wanted control of the compound as part of its current nine-year deal, they’ll have to explain what happened to cause such a huge embarrassment for their partners at Golf Channel, CBS and Zurich. The rest of us? We’ll have to endure months of make-good Zurich ads instead of golf shots.
It’s all quite perplexing since the Tour is quietly laying people off while sitting on $1.5 billion in private equity cash. While putting together $20 million comp packages for the Commissioner who engineered the bold, unasked-for new broadcasting structure that did not work on Sunday. And one that also included a pricey a new building where the Champions Tour announcers have sounded like they’re talking inside a shipping container. Under the Atlantic. In 1993.
Or maybe the “technical difficulties” were just caused by Johnny pulling the plug…
Onward to the weekend’s results.
Mao Saigo Wins The Chevron
The first five-player playoff in women’s golf history ended with Mao Saigo of Japan holding off Hyo Joo Kim, Ruoning Yin, Ariya Jutanugarn, and Lindy Duncan to win the Chevron Championship.
Entering the final round, Saigo co-led alongside Haeran Ryu but struggled on Sunday to a 74, the highest winner’s score since Betsy King finished with a 75 to win the Dinah.
Saigo also looked to be out of it after a bogey on the 15th, which dropped her win probability to 2.3%. But she was just a stroke out of the lead heading to the 18th hole and made an 11-footer to join the others already in at seven-under-par (a group that would round up to five with a final hole birdie by Duncan seconds later).
Saigo made three birdies and five bogeys in her final round, but she led the field with 17 birdies and co-led the field in fairways hit. But she also hit just 45 of 72 greens for the lowest total by a winner in the championship since 2000.
Before the playoff, the par 5 18th hole had already seen all sorts of strange stuff, including use of the corporate chalet as a backstop to get a free drop. The move backfired on Jutanugarn who hit one of the worst flubs in major history. Since this is a family newsletter and some of you are reading this over a croissant, orange juice, and coffee only the way Jeeves can brew it, I won’t embed the link.
By the time Saigo made birdie on the first playoff hole to win (after also getting free temporary immovable obstruction relief), the other four had missed their shots at birdie, including a nightmarish three-putt from Ruoning Yin. Unphased by watching the mess made by Yin, the 23-year-old Saigo putted last and sank the winning birdie putt to pick up her first major championship and LPGA Tour victory. This feat makes her the 46th player to earn her inaugural LPGA win at a major and first since Allisen Corpuz at the 2023 U.S. Women’s Open. Saigo is the eighth player to do it at the Chevron/Dinah.