Max Homa, Lexi Thompson, Rose Zhang and Rory McIlroy pose for a photo prior to Capital One’s The Match IX at The Park West Palm on February 26, 2024 in West Palm Beach, Florida.
“The exposure for the women is long overdue,” said Max Homa last week in a press conference previewing the 2024 edition of Capital One’s The Match, which for the first time in the franchise’s history will feature women competing alongside the men in the made-for-TV event.
LPGA Tour winners Lexi Thompson and Rose Zhang are set to tee it up with Homa and major champion Rory McIlroy in a skins-game format at The Park golf course in West Palm Beach, Fla., with all proceeds going to charity on behalf of the winner of each of the 12 holes.
The PGA Tour champion’s response came in regard to a question that was asked about why including women in these kinds of events was important for growing the game of golf, and Homa spoke at length about his admiration of the skills that the LPGA Tour’s top talent possess, voicing just how impressive their accuracy and precision with their longer clubs is to him and explaining how he pushes his amateur friends to learn from the best in the women’s game.
“It’s quite fascinating to watch,” said Homa. “There are completely different skill sets I feel like in the men’s and women’s game, but that doesn’t make one better than the other. I feel like if people can be more exposed to that and tune into it, they would find a beauty in the uniqueness, the differences in the games.”
McIlroy then chimed in, pointing out how significant it is to have men and women competing together, even if it’s not always on the same playing field. “I think it’s just all about the platform,” he said. “If we can give the women a great platform to showcase their skills, whether it be the Grant Thornton Invitational, or whether it be matches like this, or whether it be combined U.S. Opens like we did at Pinehurst, things like that, it can only be good for the game of golf as a whole.”
While the U.S. Opens at Pinehurst in 2014 seem like a long time ago, it was just last December that the LPGA and PGA Tours teamed up for the inaugural Grant Thornton Invitational, a mixed-gender team event held at Tiburón Golf Club that was the first of its kind since the 1999 JC Penney Classic over two decades ago.
Compliments abounded as players from the two Tours fawned over each other’s golf games that week, each singing the praises of how far their teammate hit it or how good their wedge game is, and the tournament – all metrics aside – felt like a resounding success simply because of how much fun the world’s best players from each organization had playing alongside each other. It also showed fans that the LPGA Tour’s top players are just as good at golf as their PGA Tour counterparts, even with the slight differences in styles of play.
Fresh off the heels of Caitlin Clark breaking the all-time scoring record in women’s college basketball on February 15 and Sabrina Ionescu’s inclusion in the NBA vs. WNBA 3-Point Challenge at the State Farm All-Star Saturday Night on February 17, sports fans are chattering maybe more than ever about what can happen if you set the stage for female athletes to shine.
And few know more about that than Lexi Thompson, who had the golf world buzzing when she nearly made the cut on the PGA Tour at the Shriners Children’s Open last October, or Rose Zhang, whose historic win at the Mizuho Americas Open in June of 2023 caught even Tiger Woods’ attention.
“As a woman golfer, we’re really just trying to grow the game, and I think we’re moving in the right direction,” Thompson said. “I think moments like this for Rose and myself to be able to tee it up with the guys and grow our fanbase even more and grow the game – as athletes, we want to leave the sport in a better place than it was when we first stepped out here.”
Zhang feels the same way. “There’s just so much momentum right now in women’s sports in general,” said the 2023 LPGA Tour rookie. “If you look at Caitlin Clark breaking the scoring record and the three-point contest with Steph (Curry) and Sabrina (Ionescu), like these are all events that everyone is tuned into because it’s so different from previous years of the men individually playing and the women individually playing.
“The Match essentially is just all about having fun, and our purpose is to give back to charity. It’s almost kind of a perfect combination of the men and women growing the game together but also having a good time, and that appeals to a different sort of audience.”
With four of golf’s best ambassadors teaming up in an effort to grow the game, tonight’s Capital One’s The Match should serve as just another example of what can happen when female athletes are given the same exposure as their male counterparts on the sports world’s biggest stages.
BY: Nadeem Faisal Baiga
