{"id":6318,"date":"2025-07-13T09:10:04","date_gmt":"2025-07-13T09:10:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/6318\/"},"modified":"2025-07-13T09:10:04","modified_gmt":"2025-07-13T09:10:04","slug":"on-wimbledon-weekend-two-ex-tennis-prodigies-lead-the-lpga-evian-championship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/6318\/","title":{"rendered":"On Wimbledon Weekend, Two Ex-Tennis Prodigies Lead the LPGA Evian Championship"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the same day of Wimbledon\u2019s women\u2019s championship<\/a>, two former tennis prodigies are also on the brink of a major title.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cara Gainer and Gabriela Ruffels co-lead the Amundi Evian Championship, the LPGA\u2019s fourth major championship of the season, in France.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The two hold a one-stroke lead over Minjee Lee, the 2025 KPMG Women\u2019s PGA Championship winner, world No. 2-ranked Jeeno Thitikul, Somi Lee and Grace Kim.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sign Up Now. SI Golf Newsletters. Sports Illustrated\u2019s Free Golf Newsletters. dark<\/p>\n

Both Gainer, a 29-year-old from England, and Ruffels, a 25-year-old from Australia, once had dreams of competing on the WTA instead of the LPGA. However, they began playing golf at age 14, changing the course of their lives.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cTennis was I guess was my first love,\u201d Gainer said<\/a>, the world No. 129. \u201cI do still really enjoy it. I don\u2019t really play anymore but I love to watch it. Obviously, Wimbledon is on this week so that\u2019s my evening.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, I guess it wasn’t working out with the tennis. Wasn\u2019t going to quite make it as a professional, and I sort of got to a point where I was kind of burning out. Luckily, I had golf as a second option. I guess going all right so far.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ruffels, the world\u2019s 71st-ranked golfer, was the No. 1 junior tennis player in Australia. But shortly after switching to golf, she won the 2019 U.S. Women\u2019s Amateur.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Before the Evian Championship, she made a trip to Wimbledon as a guest of doubles great Todd Woodbridge.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was really cool to be in a different perspective, put yourself outside the ropes a little bit and watch another sport compete,” Ruffels said<\/a>. “I got a lot from that, and yeah, thanks to Todd were able to go to the members’ only area, which was such a cool experience.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was great to relax and not touch the clubs for a few days and get over jet lag. Seems to have worked this week.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed. And though they won\u2019t be eating strawberries and whipped cream on Sunday, winning one of women\u2019s golf\u2019s most prestigious championships is a perfect consolation. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On the same day of Wimbledon\u2019s women\u2019s championship, two former tennis prodigies are also on the brink of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6319,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,99],"class_list":["post-6318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6318","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=6318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6318\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}