{"id":743800,"date":"2026-06-18T00:13:24","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T00:13:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/743800\/"},"modified":"2026-06-18T00:13:24","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T00:13:24","slug":"usga-leaders-say-women-deserve-to-win-at-golfs-best-courses-the-impact-is-already-being-felt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/743800\/","title":{"rendered":"USGA leaders say women deserve to win at golf’s best courses \u2014 the impact is already being felt"},"content":{"rendered":"

Less than two weeks ago, Nelly Korda won her second straight major<\/a> in a thriller at Riviera Country Club.<\/p>\n

It was the first time the famous golf course had hosted a women\u2019s major, and the result exceeded expectations.<\/p>\n

NBC Sports reported a 78% increase in final-round viewership from 2025, including an average of 1.3 million viewers throughout Sunday\u2019s broadcast. Viewership peaked in the final 15 minutes, when 2.2 million tuned in to watch a precarious par putt from Korda nearly lip out <\/a>\u2014 but ultimately drop in \u2014 to secure the world No. 1 her first U.S. Women\u2019s Open title and fourth major overall.<\/p>\n

Korda bested runners-up Charley Hull and Gaby Lopez by a stroke<\/a>, narrowly avoiding a playoff.<\/p>\n

The win has stuck with USGA leadership. So much so that CEO Mike Whan and Chief Championships Officer John Bodenhamer raved about it during a press conference on Wednesday ahead of this week\u2019s U.S. Open.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor 15 or 16 years of my life, I\u2019ve been standing on the 18th green waiting to give somebody a trophy, and if we were being honest, by the time you get to Sunday afternoon late in the day, you are thinking, \u2018Somebody win, we have planes to catch, we got the next.\u2019 [But] I was standing there saying, \u2018Please be a playoff, please be a playoff,\u201d Whan said. “… Then Nelly did what she did, and I was the first person to run up and hug Jason, her caddie. You become a fan in those moments.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"nelly<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

World No. 1 ranking. Two major championship victories. Four LPGA wins. Eight top-ten finishes. Nelly Korda is celebrating her incredible year so far with a victory tour of the Big Apple.<\/p>\n

For decades, the men\u2019s U.S. Open has been played at the country\u2019s best golf courses. You scroll down the list of winners and locations, and it\u2019s behemoth after behemoth. Meanwhile, the women have played still good, but often lesser known courses. <\/p>\n

The difference is twofold.<\/p>\n

For one, there isn\u2019t instant fan recognition; there aren\u2019t heated pre-tournament debates on social media about how to tackle Shinnecock\u2019s 252-yard par 3.<\/p>\n

For two, the women\u2019s current and future players limit themselves by thinking winning at those courses isn\u2019t a possibility, dimming their dreams and motivation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we were at Riviera for Women\u2019s Open media day, someone asked Maja Stark, [the 2025] champion, if she had ever dreamed about competing for a Women\u2019s Open at a place like Riv, and she said never,\u201d USGA\u2019s Beth Major chimed in on Wednesday. \u201cShe said, \u2018I never thought that was something that was realistic for us.\u2019 So she said this really changes what our dreams look like. I think for all of us, that was super powerful.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you look at the lineup of future hosts for the U.S. Women\u2019s Open over the next 20-ish years, it\u2019s much more recognizable \u2014 much more behemoth-like.<\/p>\n

Oakmont. Pinehurst No. 2. Oakland Hills. LACC. Merion. Pebble Beach. Oak Hill. The Country Club.<\/p>\n

And notable to this week: Shinnecock in 2036.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we will not know the impact of Riviera for another decade,\u201d Bodenhamer said. \u201cI\u2019ve just got to believe, like I as a little boy watched Jack Nicklaus win at Baltusrol in 1980. I can tell you so many friends that I have that watched that moment, and it inspired us. Tom Watson winning at Pebble Beach in 1982. We were little boys that wanted to win the U.S. Open.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were thousands, if not tens of thousands of little girls, who watched Nelly Korda lift that trophy, and ten years from now, we\u2019re going to see them playing and winning, and we\u2019re going to see more Nelly Kordas. Isn\u2019t that cool? Not just in the United States, but all around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe women deserve to win at Riviera \u2014 at Shinnecock,\u201d Bodenhamer added.<\/p>\n

Whan also pointed out that, in the past 15 years, the most watched U.S. Women\u2019s Opens have been at three of the aforementioned courses: Pinehurst No. 2, Pebble Beach and Riviera.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo shock there. That\u2019s why [Bodenhamer\u2019s] leading us to those places over the next 20 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Hazeltine<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Minjee Lee enters Minnesota as the reigning KPMG Women\u2019s PGA Champion but faces the task of stopping world No. 1 Nelly Korda, who has yet to lose a major event this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Less than two weeks ago, Nelly Korda won her second straight major in a thriller at Riviera Country…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":743801,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":["post-743800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=743800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743800\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/743801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=743800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=743800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=743800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}