<\/p>\n
BELLEAIR, FLORIDA – NOVEMBER 12: Professional basketball teammates Sophie Cunningham, Lexie Hull, and Caitlin Clark look on prior to The ANNIKA driven by Gainbridge at Pelican 2025 at Pelican Golf Club on November 12, 2025 in Belleair, Florida. (Photo by Julio Aguilar\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Now, if the LPGA can just get this type of atmosphere week in and week out. But for now, tournament organizers and the LPGA will try and capitalize more on the buzz created by high-profile athletes like Clark and sponsor exemption Kai Trump, the 18-year-old granddaughter of President Donald Trump who is signed to play at the University of Miami next fall and also boasts nearly 9 million followers across social media.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s always cool when you see the amount of people that come out and want to support not only myself, but just women\u2019s sports in general,\u201d Clark said. \u201cObviously, we\u2019re in a very exciting time where all sports across the board are seeing more and more viewership and more people buying tickets, more people buying merchandise, whatever it is. That\u2019s a really exciting thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Added Annika Sorenstam, who played the pro-am with Clark a year ago: \u201cJust in general, what the tournament is doing and what Gainbridge is [doing] putting all these different athletes together from different sports, it\u2019s generating a lot of buzz.\u201d<\/p>\n
Which is why Clark has a forever invitation to The Annika\u2019s pro-am.<\/p>\n
\u201cThanks for choosing to be here when I\u2019m sure everybody else was pulling left and right,\u201d Sorenstam said to Clark. \u201cWe love having you here, and I hope you feel like you can come back any time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Before she does, Clark noted, her final approach shot sitting at the bottom of the pond on No. 18: \u201cI need some lessons.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BELLEAIR, Fla. \u2013 Among those on Pelican Golf Club\u2019s first tee Wednesday morning to witness the start of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":287903,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-287902","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-golf","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287902\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/287903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}