On the KPMG Ladies’s PGA, ladies’s golf is elevated in tangible methods

As one of many longest-tenured energetic gamers within the ladies’s recreation, Stacy Lewis holds lots of clout. The 39-year-old former World No. 1 has 13 victories on her resume, together with two main championships, and can captain the U.S. Solheim Cup staff for the second time this yr.

Lewis has been round lengthy sufficient to have a priceless perspective on the expansion of ladies’s golf. And as a longtime KPMG ambassador, she was an integral determine within the plans to raise the LPGA Championship into what’s now the KPMG Ladies’s PGA Championship, which celebrates its tenth version at Sahalee Nation Membership in Sammamish, Wash., this week.

“KPMG has picked my mind over time how we will get higher and what do we have to do to reinforce the championship,” Lewis mentioned Tuesday. “The whole lot I mentioned they did and proceed to do. So it’s been an awesome partnership for me personally and an amazing partnership for the Tour.”

Large certainly. KPMG’s involvement has elevated the championship in quite a few methods: staging the event at top-notch venues, growing purse sizes and introducing new know-how improvements. The KPMG Efficiency Insights know-how platform launched in 2021, enabling gamers to have entry to full-field, shot-level information, superior analytics, and statistics comparable to strokes gained, proximity averages, and efficiency indexing.

This yr, KPMG not solely raised the championship purse to $10.4 million (a $400,000 enhance), but in addition launched Champcast, introduced by T-Cell, which can function 3D imagery, radar information, shot trails, inexperienced views and particular person shot video highlights, enhancing the fan expertise with entry to this real-time information.

For Lewis, there’s satisfaction in witnessing the evolution of the ladies’s recreation, the place tournaments run just like the KPMG Ladies’s PGA Championship have gotten extra of the norm than the exception.

“It’s humorous. It’s wonderful to look at,” Lewis mentioned. “The gamers which were on tour perhaps seven or eight years, they count on this at main championships. They count on to stroll out and see the massive tents and see the golf course good. Fifteen years in the past, that was not the case. We have been getting on venues that simply hopefully needed to have us and perhaps they didn’t shut down the golf course forward of time and there have been divots in every single place. You bought what you bought principally. So simply I believe you’re feeling vital once you stroll on property, and that’s one thing that the brand new gamers haven’t needed to fear about that these of us that been out right here a little bit longer needed to fear about.”

Ladies’s golf is in an awesome place in the meanwhile, with the LPGA attracting funding from a number of big-name sponsors lately.

“You’ve acquired Ally, Chevron, AIG, KPMG, Ford. You bought some actually nice, I imply, high firms supporting us that we didn’t have ten years in the past,” Lewis mentioned. “I believe simply these firms seeing the worth of working with us and eager to convey their clients and their individuals they do enterprise with out to have this expertise to wine and dine and make it an awesome expertise for them. That’s finally what we’re making an attempt to do right here.”

It goes with out saying that the lifeblood of the LPGA is the gamers themselves — one thing Lewis is eager to not overlook.

“The standard of golf is so good now. I imply, so good. Like simply the expertise from high to backside. It’s tougher than ever to win,” she mentioned. “That’s what makes Nelly’s run a lot extra spectacular, is how good all people is now. You’ll be able to stroll that vary and the ball putting is off the charts.”

Given all of the progress of the final decade, what’s subsequent for the LPGA? Lewis mentioned it’s getting progressively tougher to high every year’s excellent news.

“Each time there’s an announcement it’s sort of like in my head I’m like, okay, what are they going to do subsequent yr to high this?” Lewis mentioned. “We’ve made lots of strides in ten years since this championship began. I’m excited to see the place we go.”

Golf.com Editor

As a four-year member of Columbia’s inaugural class of feminine varsity golfers, Jessica can out-birdie everybody on the masthead. She will be able to out-hustle them within the workplace, too, the place she’s primarily liable for producing each print and on-line options, and overseeing main particular tasks, comparable to GOLF’s inaugural Model Is­sue, which debuted in February 2018. Her origi­nal interview collection, “A Spherical With,” debuted in November of 2015, and appeared in each within the journal and in video type on GOLF.com.