Page 13 - 2020 Golf Guide

Hannah Green is this year’s KPMG defending champion.
“It’s great for the PGA to become part of the women’s circuit and take its history and knowledge to women’s play.”
The marriage is a little complicated to understand, since so many people associate the PGA with the men’s tour that bears its name. But Endsley notes that the PGA itself is a separate entity from the PGA Tour, and
it administers the men’s, women’s and senior championships, along with the biennial Ryder Cup between the U.S. and Europe.
By teaming with the PGA for this event, the KPMG has access to some of the top courses in the country. In 2022, the event will take place at Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Md., which has hosted three U.S. Opens. The next year, its Baltusrol Golf Club in Springfield, N.J., several Opens.
Although Aronimink doesn’t have a portfolio quite that impressive, it’s clearly an elite course, created by renowned designer Donald Ross,
architect of well over 100 courses. “It’s obviously a very challenging course,” says Endsley. “The terrain there and the landscape are among the best in the country.”
Endsley and her team have been on site since the fall of 2018, just a few weeks
after the BMW Championship came to
its soggy conclusion. She says the club’s administrators and staff have been extremely “adaptable and accommodating” to the PGA. It’s tough to prepare a club for a
single significant event—much less two—in under two years. Grooming the course while members and guests continue to play on it
is difficult enough. They also must have
the infrastructure necessary to handle the thousands of fans and create a hospitality network for sponsors and other VIPs.
It’s impossible to guess what might happen at the tournament. Last year at Hazeltine National Golf Club in Minnesota, Australian
golfer Hannah Green was waiting for her turn at the ninth tee when 17-year-old Minneapolis native Lily Kostner handed her a poem she’d written out of gratitude for Green having signed a ball for her at a tournament the previous year.
Green was so moved by the poem that
she turned to it as she was struggling during a four-hole stretch from 9 to 12, logging three bogeys. She ended up winning the tournament by one stroke over South Korea’s Sung Hyun Park. “I had [the poem] in the back of my yardage book, because I didn’t want it to get rained on,” Green said after
the tournament. “A couple times, on the back nine, when I was feeling nervous and had some time, I actually read it to myself.
I think it really helped me.”
At press time, the KPMG Women’s PGA Tournament was still scheduled for June 23-28. Visit www.kpmgwomenspgachampionship.com.
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