Lexi Thompson’s 2021 U.S. Women’s Open – a tale of two nines

The golf weather gods gave with one hand and took away with the other for today’s final round of the U.S. Women’s Open. The foggy, damp conditions of the previous three days were just a memory as Friday morning dawned sunny and bright—with brisk, blustery winds but otherwise picture-perfect conditions as the final pairing of the day— leader Lexi Thompson; Yuka Sosa, 19, of the Phillipines; and the Low Amateur leader, 17-year-old Megha Ganne—stepped up to the first tee.

Lexi Thompson hits her tee shot on the 12th hole during the final round at the 2021 U.S. Women's Open at The Olympic Club in San Francisco, Calif. on Sunday, June 6, 2021. (Darren Carroll/USGA)

As the pair of young, talented teenagers with whom she was paired struggled early in the round, Lexi Thompson, a veteran of 14 U.S. Women’s Opens and 36 other major championships, started out strong with a birdie on the par-5 first hole, then stuttering slightly with a bogey on #2. She made up the lost stroke with a birdie on five that was set up by a slingshot from the right rough that caught a good slope and rolled to near kick-in range.

Throughout the front nine Thompson looked cool, confident, and in command of her game, but on the second nine she resembled nothing so much as a front-running race car that was down on power, leaking oil, and struggling to hang on to an early lead.

That apparent command of her game started to drift away on the 11th hole. A wayward drive led to a hard chop out of the left rough that fell short, and was in turn followed by a duffed chip shot that came up short of the green, and a dead-push bogey putt. It was Thompson’s worst hole of the day, a double-bogey six that halved her (then) lead over China’s Shanshan Feng.

Not that her command of her game had totally left her—apparently unfazed by a flyer out of the right rough on #12 that raced through the green and over the back side, she rolled a long-range masterpiece of a putt to kick-in distance to save par.

After a fairly routine par on the par-three 13th hole, more trouble in the deep rough left of the 14th fairway left Thompson chipping on for her third and leaving nearly 16 feet for par—a putt that was spot-on for distance but misread for line by nearly a foot. The resulting bogey cut her lead, once again, to two strokes, now over the trio of Megan Khang, Nasa Hataoka, and Shanshan Feng.

On 15, with room to shoot at a back-center flag, Thompson played short, leaving herself 51 feet for a desperately needed birdie that, true to recent form, she didn’t get.

In the meantime, Thompson’s playing partner Yuka Saso had righted the ship after her par-double-double start, putting up four pars and a birdie to close out her front nine with a 3-over 38. Saso stumbled slightly at 11 with a bogey, but eventually closed strong with birdies on 16 and 17 to finish regulation play, and narrowly missed a potential tournament-winning putt at 18, to finish at four under.

Also moving up fast on the inside was Japan’s Nasa Hataoka, who put up six birdies against a double and a bogey to post 34-34–68, catching up to Thompson at four under as the Floridian approached the final hole.

The death knell for Thompson’s hopes of a 15th-time-lucky U.S. Women’s Open win was her second shot at the par-four 18th hole. From a good lie on the right-hand side of the fairway, she chili-dipped her approach into the deep, bowl-shaped right-front bunker. From a good lie on flat, groomed sand she overshot the tight-front flag, leaving herself a slippery, downhill 11-foot putt that she had to make to join Saso and Hataoka in a playoff.

She missed.

That putt was the climax to the latest in a long line of close calls and missed opportunities for Thompson, whose major championship record now includes three second-place finishes, four third-place finishes, 11 Top-5s, and 17 Top-10s. A certain five-letter word that starts with “c” is being thrown around in the commentary surrounding Lexi Thompson’s performance in this Women’s Open, and being as charitable as possible, it is still hard to argue with.

And those two young, talented teenagers that comprised the rest of Lexi Thompson’s group? Megha Ganne gamed up with a string of pars and one last bogey after a front-nine 41, making a got-to-have-it birdie at #17 to clinch Low Amateur honors. Yuka Saso went on to defeat Nasa Hataoka on the third hole of a playoff, stiffing her approach shot on their second time through #9 and sinking the birdie putt for the win. With this week’s effort she has made history as the first Filipino major champion in golf, and has exactly equaled Inbee Park’s age as youngest U.S. Women’s Open winner from her 2008 win in this event: 19 years, 11 months, 17 days.

Good going, ladies.

Friday – Cut Day at the U.S. Women’s Open

For most folks Friday is a day to celebrate. The weekend is almost here, and we are looking forward to knocking off of work and having a couple of days to relax and have fun—maybe play some golf. For tournament golfers, though, Friday has an entirely different meaning—Friday is Cut Day.

They call Saturday “Moving Day”, the day when players put the pedal to the metal and try to move up the scoreboard to be in position to make a run at a win on Sunday, but to get to Moving Day you have to get past Cut Day.

While we recreational golfers pay to play, the pros play to get paid, and Friday is when it gets real. The field in most professional events—and USGA championships, too, though there are amateurs in the field—is around 150 to 156 players, and less than half of them get to play the weekend for a chance at a trophy and a paycheck (or just the trophy, in the case of the amateurs).

Friday is the day when you sink or swim. If you had a bad day on Thursday, in the first round, you had better step up on Friday; if you rocked the house in the first round, you better keep it up and stay in that Top-60-and-ties group.

Missing the cut was known as “trunk slamming” back in the days when Tour pros drove from tournament to tournament. I guess now they just slam the tailgate of the SUV courtesy car before they head to the airport—but it just doesn’t have the same ring to it, does it?

Who made a move today?

There were few big moves on Cut Day at the Olympic Club for the 76th U.S. Women’s Open—mostly just a lot of hanging on grimly to a position above the cut line.

Less than half of the players who occupied the top 20 spots on the leaderboard after the second round improved their scores from Thursday to Friday, and with few exceptions they improved, if at all, by one or two strokes.

Sarah Burnham, a second-year pro out of Michigan State, orchestrated a ten-stroke turnaround. After carding a 5-over 76 in the first round she came back and hammered out a 5-under 66 in the second. She turned her first round birdie/bogey of 1/6 count on its head, carding six birdies against one bogey and turning a T-84 and a likely missed cut into T-12 and playing on the weekend.

A little outside the Top 20, NorCal player Yealimi Noh, the winner of the 2018 U.S. Girls’ Junior at the NCGA’s home course, Poppy Hills, also made a dramatic move, as she went from a 5-over 76 in the first round to a 2-under 69 in the second. 

Noh’s seven-stroke turnaround came on the strength of five birdies against a bogey and a double, as opposed to her first-round count of three birdies against six bogeys and a double, floating her fifty-five spots up the leaderboard from T-84 to T-29.

San Francisco-born Danielle Kang made a four-stroke improvement from Round 1 to Round 2, obviously carrying no scar tissue from a triple-bogey 8—yes, the dreaded snowman—on the long par-five 16th hole in Round 1.

How did the rest of the NorCal players fare?

Between Danielle Kang at T-12 and Yealimi No at T-29, two more NorCal players made the cut. Lucy Li, the one-time girl wonder who qualified for the 2014 U.S. Women’s Open at age 11, posted 73-71–144 for T-20, tied with Monterey native daughter Mina Harigae with 71-72–144.

Harigae, whose round I followed today, missed a much higher finish by a cumulative 18 inches or so, based on the number of close-call putts that just didn’t drop for her today. If she figures out the mysteries of the Lake Course’s greens over the weekend she could well be a contender for the title.

In other news…

In other second-round news, anyone who was waiting for the Megha Ganne bubble to burst was disappointed. The 17-year-old amateur, whose biggest success previous to this event was in Augusta National’s Drive, Pitch, and Putt competitions, matched three bogeys with three birdies to card an even-par 71 and hold on to her 4-under score. She was dropped out of her co-leading position when Yuka Saso of the Phillippines added a second-round 67 to her first round 69 to take over the lead, and Korea’s Jeongeun Lee6 moved to 5-under and solo second after posting 70-67–137.

Ganne shares third place with Megan Khang, an LPGA pro since 2016. Khang, of Rockland, Massachusetts, can call on a familiarity with the local conditions based on having played in the 2012 U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship, which was held at nearby Lake Merced Golf Club.

Reid and a surprise player hold co-lead after Day One of 2021 U.S. Women’s Open

When the men last played the national championship at the Olympic Club, in 2012, some British golf fans took umbrage at the USGA’s course setup, claiming that the event was “spoiled” by a course setup “designed to expose stars” and “humiliate our heroes”. Well, I hope those same blokes were watching the first round of the 2021 U.S. Women’s Open from the Olympic Club, because one of the UK’s finest distaff players, Mel Reid, showed the fellas how it should be done.

Reid posted a 4-under 67 on the par 71 setup, with five birdies and a lone bogey on the par-4 eighteenth hole spoiling the fun, taking only 28 putts on greens which were running at 12 to 12-1/2 today.

Reid was chased down at the last by comes-out-of-nowhere amateur Megha Ganne, who carded 32-25–67 to tie for the lead in the clubhouse, while Canada’s Brooke Henderson sweated ice chips over a slippery 3-foot downhill putt on the 18th hole as the sun set into the Pacific, hoping to close her round as part of a three-way tie for the lead. She missed it, but sank the comebacker back to join the trio of Angel Yin, Megan Khang, and Lexi Thompson at 3-under, one off the lead.

Among the NorCal-affiliated players in the field Mina Harigae’s even-par 71 tops the list, with Lucy Li at +1 right behind. Danielle Kang survived a beating at the par-five 16th, holing out a chip to get away with only a triple-bogey eight, to finish the day at +2, and 2014 U.S. Women’s Open champ and new San Francisco resident Michelle Wie West came in at +4. Amateurs Rachel Heck and Claire Choi joined San José native Christina Kim at +4 on the day.