Only five months into the 2014 LPGA season, Golf Digest’s John Strege said, “The LPGA hit the jackpot again, with another marquee winner, in a year-long succession of them.”
It was just getting started at that point – a season of twists and turns written by the game’s biggest stars.
If given the task, it would have been difficult for a script writer to pen a season as poignant and enthralling as 2014. Every story one could ask for was there and seemingly topped the previous one.
From Paula Creamer’s Putt Heard Around the World to kick off the year to Mo Martin’s splendid eagle at the Ricoh Women’s British Open to encapsulate the ultimate underdog story to the phenom closing out everyone in the inaugural Race to the CME Globe to end the year, the 2014 LPGA season was easily one of the most beautiful stories this Tour’s ever written.
We saw a renaissance of American women’s golf, with Americans taking 11 of the first 17 tournaments. Then, we saw South Korea recapture their mojo after going winless the first five months of the season by reeling off 10 victories the last seven months of the year. We saw the International Crown, a thrilling global showcase that had players from eight different countries saying they were as nervous as they’d ever been on the first tee of a golf course, as Spain captured the first Crown. We saw TV ratings explode. We saw major championships evolve and grow with the support of global companies like KPMG and ANA forging new partnerships to create the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship and the ANA Inspiration in 2015. And we saw four characters reign supreme throughout – Stacy Lewis, Michelle Wie, Lydia Ko and Inbee Park.
Lewis permanently embedded herself in the history books, becoming the first American since Betsy King in 1993 to sweep the Triple Crown of women’s golf, winning the Vare Trophy, Rolex Player of the Year, and money list title. She won three tournaments, finished in the top-10 18 times, and held the No. 1 ranking for 21 straight weeks.
Wie, for her part, just transcended all of golf not once but twice in 2014. First, she snapped a four-year winless drought with a win in her home state of Hawaii in April to show this year was going to be different for the former childhood prodigy. Then, in June on the grandest stage of all, playing a week after the men on the same golf course for the first time in history at the U.S. Women’s Open, Wie made sure everyone in the world’s eyes were on women’s golf on Sunday, holding off a furious late rally from Lewis to win the U.S. Women’s Open. That wasn’t the only piece of hardware connected with legends she etched her name into either, winning the inaugural Annika Major Award for the most consistent performance in the season’s majors. That’s what Wie’s year was all about in 2014: Consistency. Unlike the past, she was as consistent as anyone on Tour with 13 top-10s, including a stretch of five in a row, in only 23 starts.
Then, there’s Ko, the 17-year-old dynamo that’s played 42 events on the LPGA Tour and has yet to miss a cut. Six times a player under the age of 18 has won an LPGA Tour event and Ko’s now won five of them. Essentially, every age-related record on the LPGA Tour, Ko’s smashed it. Youngest to a million in career earnings. Youngest to win on Tour. Youngest Rolex Rookie of the Year. Then, to put the cherry on top of her 2014 season, Ko went to the CME Group Tour Championship in Naples, Fla., and scored the biggest payday in women’s golf history, winning the $1 million inaugural Race to the CME Globe and the $500,000 first prize for winning the CME Group Tour Championship. It’s not hyperbole to wonder at this point if this whiz kid could end up one of the greatest of all time. She’s certainly the greatest teenager the Tour’s ever seen and based on her conclusion to 2014, she’s just getting started.
While Lewis, Wie and Ko all hoisted end-of-the-year hardware that every player on Tour covets, Inbee Park ended the season with the moniker everyone seeks: the No. 1 player in the world. Park, who had held the No. 1 ranking for 59 weeks when Lewis overtook her in early June, wrestled the No. 1 ranking back from Lewis, who had it for 21 weeks, on the strength of a stretch of nine consecutive top-10s late in the year. On the season, Park won three times, including the Wegmans LPGA Championship, and finished in the top-10 in 17 of 23 events. It’s hard to even fathom topping Park’s 2013 season in which she won six times, including three major championships, but Park’s scoring average was actually lower in 2014 than her record-breaking 2013.
And those were just the four main overarching themes that permeated the 2014 season. In between there was the young 21-year-old American Jessica Korda winning twice in the first half of the season. There was the grizzled veteran, Karrie Webb, firing a 63 on Sunday at the JTBC Founders Cup to overcome a six-shot final-round deficit for the 41st win of her career. There was Lexi Thompson, the 19-year-old bomber, outdueling Michelle Wie on Sunday at the Kraft Nabisco Championship to take her first major championship and the infamous leap into Poppie’s Pond. There was Paula Creamer at the HSBC Women’s Champions in Singapore, draining a 70-foot bomb for eagle on the second playoff hole – arguably the shot of the year in golf – to beat Azahara Munoz. And it’s arguable whether that was even the most compelling playoff of the year. That honor could go to the three-way, five-hole playoff at the Mizuno Classic in which Mi Hyang Lee, Ilhee Lee, and Kotono Kozuma all drained deep birdie putts on the third playoff hole on top of each other to head back down the 18th hole again, where Mi Hyang Lee finally escaped two times later with a birdie on the fifth playoff hole.
And we’ve still failed to even mention Mo Martin’s Sunday win at the Ricoh Women’s British Open, which just might be the greatest underdog story this Tour’s ever written. The former walk-on at UCLA toiled on the mini tour for six years before her big breakthrough onto the LPGA Tour. But in two years on the LPGA Tour, she had only finished in the top-10 once. But on Sunday with the world’s best behind her at Royal Birkdale, she fired the round of the day – an even-par 72 in blustery Scottish conditions – to outrace the field with an eagle on the last in the most stunning of victories. One of the shortest hitters on Tour ran up a beautiful 3-wood at the last that caromed off the flag stick and one roll of the flat stick later dropped from six feet out for eagle, creating an hour wait to see if her 1-under-par posted score would hold. It did and Martin completed one of the most surprising victories in Tour history.
Yes, 2014 surely had it all. Mechelle Voepel of ESPN might have summed up best the 2014 season when she said: “There really was something for everybody this season on the LPGA Tour.” Or maybe it was Sports Illustrated’s Alan Shipnuck when he penned: “If you have a young daughter, the LPGA Tour is one-stop shopping for positive role models.”
Is there really anything better for this Tour to be?
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