Kai Trump shoots 83 in LPGA debut, a powerful reminder

Thursday was a great day for tournament golf, especially the LPGA. South Korean golfer Haeran Ryu shot a perfect 64 in the first round of the Annika Sorenstam tournament on a wide, beautiful bayside course near Clearwater, Florida. Australia’s Grace Kim was one shot behind.

This is the final full field (108 player) event of the LPGA season and the last chance to advance to the finals of the CME Group Tour Championship, where 60 players will compete for a winner’s check of $4 million, the largest prize in women’s golf; the runner-up will receive a $1 million bonus. Stanford student Rose Chang, in her second year on Tour, is the bubble girl at the Tour Championship. Attention everyone: Explosive story! Would you know these things if 18-year-old high school golfer Kai Trump, Donald Trump’s granddaughter, wasn’t competing as a sponsor exemption? Maybe not. But she does, and many of us are noticing things I might not notice.

Trump shot 83 in the first round. No one hit higher.

This is the true beauty of daytime. Kay Trump received one of three special sponsor offers to race Annika driven by Gainbridge at the Pelicans (Hostess/Sponsor/Pitch). If her grandfather hadn’t been the President of the United States, and if she hadn’t had more than 7 million followers on various social media platforms, would she have received the invitation? Won’t. Will her participation in this tournament bring more attention to the LPGA, as tournament sponsors hope? Yes. This is not where the beauty lies. The beauty of it is that it’s a powerful reminder of what championship golf is all about: scores. Fraction!

If Kai Trump wants to become an LPGA player (her stated goal), she has to do what every licensed LPGA player does, which is score to win – earn! ——her place. period. That’s why millions of us are drawn to golf. Nowhere to hide. You can tell IG stories until you’re green in the face, but it really doesn’t matter. In golf tournaments—especially professional golf, which we watch in person and on any nearby screen—your day can always be summed up in one number. Haeran Ryu shot a 6-under 64 on Thursday. For Kay Trump, that number was 83, 13 over par.

“I was definitely more nervous than I expected,” Trump told reporters shortly after her round. An honest review of course. “I hit a lot of good shots, I just hit them in the wrong places.” This is a comment you might expect to hear from a good high school golfer. You probably won’t hear this from touring professionals.

Trump attended the Benjamin School in South Florida. Sam Woods, the eldest son of Elin Nordegren and Tiger Woods, was in her class. Charlie Woods was on the boys team there. Kay Trump gets morale-boosting advice from her grandfather, Tiger Woods (her mother’s boyfriend) and Annika Sorenstam. She has access to the best golf instructors, fitness experts, equipment installers, manufacturers, lessons, practice facilities and more. If Trump wants to succeed in professional golf, she’ll have to rise above all that. It’s not easy.

“I feel bad for rich people’s kids now, really,” Ben Hogan said in 1983, “because they’ll never have the opportunities that I had. I know hard things, I’ve been through hard times my whole life, and I can handle hard things. They can’t.”

Event organizers did not hide why Trump was invited to the event. It’s not because of her extraordinary talent. There are probably thousands of junior golfers around the world who are better than Trump. That’s because of her lineage, and the social media clout that comes with it.

“This is probably one of the most talked about women’s golf tournaments ever,” Pelican Golf Club chief operating officer Justin Sheehan said shortly after Trump’s invitation was made public late last month. “The amount of impressions on social media is staggering. Love it or hate it, it gets people talking about the event.”

It’s a new day in golf’s long-standing tradition of offering sponsor exemptions to amateur or professional golfers who can help at the gate and broadly improve the tournament. When Tony Romo, a par-breaking golfer, accepted a sponsor’s invitation to compete in a PGA Tour event as an amateur, the inherent question was, what’s the difference between a former NFL quarterback who plays well and a PGA Tour player?

In other words, it was his athletic skills and the fame that came with it that earned him a tee shot on the PGA Tour. When Sorenstam plays on the PGA Tour, it’s the same basic math: What can one of the greatest women’s golfers do against men? It was her athletic skills and the fame that came with it that earned her an invitation to the 2003 Colonial Championships.

Kay Trump isn’t exactly known for her athleticism (although she did hit an impressive 20-foot shot behind the rim on the first tee of Wednesday’s Pro-Am, her first and only shot). She is famous for her DNA. This is another story. This is a different era.

When Trump was invited to the event, invitations were not sent directly to Trump or her parents or high school coaches. It was given to her agent. She is represented by GSE Worldwide, which also represents many LIV Golf players. Her asking price for a one-off video post on Instagram is $125,000. She is developing her own line of merchandise. Regardless of how many shots she scores, will those two days with the Gainbridge-ridden Annika at the Pelican – 36 holes of the 72-hole event make the cut – hurt business? Not likely.

The level of integration here is astounding. Shortly after Tiger Woods won the 2019 Masters, Donald Trump awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in his first term. Trump Doral in Miami also features the Tiger Woods Villa. When Trump hosted an LPGA event at his course in West Palm Beach, he played in a pro-am with Sorenstam, the top player in women’s golf at the time. On January 7, 2021, Sorenstam received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Trump along with Gary Player. Woods and others met with Trump at the White House in hopes of resolving ongoing disputes and tensions between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf. Trump was an early supporter of LIV golf. One of his golfing partners is LIV star and two-time U.S. Open champion Bryson DeChambeau, who also represents GSE Worldwide.

So much synergy!

But synergy can’t turn an 80-point shooter into a 70-point shooter. Golfers hit what golfers hit. All that’s left is to comment.

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com