Green's KPMG Women's PGA title defense at Aronimink will now come in October

   The word arrived Wednesday via Twitter and Joe Juliano backed it up with an article in Thursday’s print edition of The Inquirer, but it wasn’t a huge surprise to see the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, scheduled to be held June 25 to 28 at Aronimink Golf Club, the Donald Ross gem in Newtown Township, Delaware County, was on the move to October as the coronavirus continued to leave its ugly mark on the 2020 sports landscape.

   I had been in touch with Ian Helling, one of the PGA of America officials involved with marketing for the KPMG Women’s PGA at Aronimink. I had been planning to do something on defending champion Hannah Green for Joe Burkhardt’s Tri-State Golfer magazine, an assignment I was really looking forward to, having watched Green play a little when, as a 19-year-old, she reached the quarterfinals of the 2016 U.S. Women’s Amateur at Rolling Green Golf Club, the William Flynn gem in Springfield, Delaware County.

   As recently as early April, Helling said the PGA of America was working on two parallel tracks concerning the KPMG Women’s PGA, one scenario in which the event was still played on its original date and another in which a postponement to a later date was being considered.

   A lot of things happened in April, hardly any of them good. So, the PGA of America finally threw in the towel on its original June dates. The event will will be held Oct. 8 to 11 at Aronimink. Whether the coronavirus will allow for fans to get to watch the best women professional golfers on the planet in person is a whole other issue.

   Bottom line, though, is that it’s a good thing the PGA of America will try to get the tournament in. The Philadelphia area has already lost a really neat USGA championship, the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball, to the coronavirus.

   It was scheduled to tee off the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend at the Philadelphia Cricket Club’s Wissahickon and Militia Hill courses and there were several local interests among the big field of better-ball partners from all over the country.

   The Wissahickon, of course, is the A.W. Tillinghast gem in Whitemarsh Township. And yeah, we have some really great courses, classics from the legends of early American golf course architecture, all over the place in the Philadelphia area. And calling each a gem, in many ways, doesn’t do any of them justice.

   I did a post in December, fairly thorough if I do say so myself, chronicling some of the accomplishments of some of the players we got to see at Rolling Green in 2016. It seems like forever, but it’s less than four years ago.

   And I started that post with Green, the Australian whom I had watched battle France’s Mathilde Cappeliez to a 19^th hole before finally falling just short of a spot in the semifinals. Green’s victory in last summer’s KPMG Women’s PGA last summer at Hazeltine National Golf Club in Chaska, Minn. made her the first player from the field at Rolling Green to capture a major professional championship.

   I mentioned how the announcers on the broadcast of the KPMG Women’s PGA at Hazeltine National just couldn’t believe how poised the young Aussie was as she tried to hold off one of the best players on the planet in South Korea’s Sung Hyun Park, the defending champion, to win her first major championship.

   But you can’t convince me that the five-footer for par she buried on the 18^th green to win the KPMG Women’s PGA wasn’t stitched with the scar tissue of the four-footer she missed on the 18^th green at Rolling Green that would have sent her to the U.S. Women’s Amateur semifinals three summers earlier.

   Another of the quarterfinal losers that day, Japanese teen Nasa Hataoka, has probably been the most successful pro out of that 2016 U.S. Women’s Amateur class. Hataoka, who turned 21 in January, nearly became the first Rolling Green alum to win a major championship in the 2018 KPMG Women’s PGA when she lost in a playoff to Park, a three-player overtime session that also included another South Korean superstar in So Yeon Ryu at Kemper Lakes Golf Club in suburban Chicago.

   In addition to that near-miss at Kemper Lakes, Hataoka already has three LPGA Tour victories on her resume.

   Hopefully, I’ll still get a chance to chat with Green about her memories of Rolling Green and the successful pro career that has followed.

   Not sure how many alums from the 2016 Women’s Amateur will make the field for the KPMG Women’s PGA, but you can get a pretty good idea by revisiting the post I did in December on some of the success stories that have emerged from Rolling Green.

   The KPMG Women’s PGA is the direct descendant of one of the oldest major championships in women’s golf, for years known as the LPGA Championship.

   Those of us who follow women’s golf were fortunate enough to have that major championship played in our backyard from 1994 to 2004 when McDonald’s teamed up with the LPGA Tour to stage the McDonald’s LPGA Championship at DuPont Country Club just north of Wilmington, Del.

   McDonald’s got involved in women’s golf when it staged the McDonald’s Kids Championship at White Manor Country Club in Willistown Township, Chester County, beginning in 1981. That event was such a success that the decision was made by McDonald’s to move it to DuPont, making it one of the biggest sporting events in Delaware.

   Beginning in 1994, the McDonald’s Championship morphed into the McDonald’s LPGA Championship and suddenly there was an LPGA major on the schedule each summer in the Philadelphia area. It was a marriage of one of the LPGA’s premier events, which had moved around to different sites over the years, with one of the tour’s most successful events.

   I covered most, if not all, of the McDonald’s Kids Championships at White Manor and the McDonald’s Championships at DuPont before my 15-year career at The Mercury in Pottstown came to a sudden end in the spring of 1994.

   I was hired as an editor in the sports department and the backup to the backup golf writer when I arrived at the Delaware County Daily Times late in 1995. But I could get free tickets to the McDonald’s LPGA Championship and went as a fan most years. Tickets to the McDonald’s LPGA Championship were in plentiful supply as door prizes at the annual All-Delco Awards Banquet the Daily Times used to stage to honor the top high school athletes in the county each year.

   The most dramatic and exciting golf tournament I’ve ever seen live unfolded at DuPont with the playing of the 1999 McDonald’s LPGA Championship.

   The record says it was a ho-hum four-shot victory for World Golf Hall of Famer Juli Inkster, the fifth of the seven professional majors for the product of San Jose State and Pasatiempo Golf Club in Santa Cruz, Calif.

   Doing some Google searches yielded precious few details on Inkster’s remarkable finish. My memory is that she arrived on the tee at the par-5 16^th hole with the championship still very much in doubt. Inkster proceeded to reach the green in two and make the putt for an eagle. She then stiffed her tee shot at the par-3 17^th hole and made the birdie putt. The outcome of the tournament was no longer in doubt.

   Inkster played her approach to the 18^th green safely in the middle and didn’t she then proceeded to drain, oh, I don’t know, like a 35-footer for a closing birdie. Inkster had gone 4-under on the final three holes for a closing 6-under 65 that gave her a four-shot victory in a major championship.

   It’s hard to argue that a World Golf Hall of Famer is underrated, but I have often made the point that if Tiger Woods had ever gone eagle-birdie-birdie to close out a major championship it would be considered the greatest three holes in the history of the game.

   Well, it was the greatest three holes of golf I’ve ever seen in a major championship and Inkster will never be underrated in my book. I left DuPont that day with the kind of buzz you usually get from a Springsteen concert or whomever your favorite live performance artist is. Because it was more than golf, it was performance art.

   It promises to be a very busy fall sports calendar, but if they let fans attend, it might be worth your while to check out the best female golfers in the planet at Aronimink in October. You just never know when greatness might suddenly happen right in front of you.