Jennifer Kupcho cruises to Chevron Championship in Mission Hills’ major finale
Jennifer Kupcho made the final leap into Poppie's Pond following her win at Mission Hills Country Club on Sunday, cruising to win the 51st Chevron Championship, golf's first major of the year.
The Last Leap.
— LPGA (@LPGA) April 4, 2022
What a moment for @jenniferkupcho. 🏆💦 pic.twitter.com/3U9utQ8ahu
Kupcho's win came relatively stress-free, securing the victory by two shots (-14), picking up her first win on the LPGA Tour.
A moment @jenniferkupcho will never forget. pic.twitter.com/efvxjmUjrk
— LPGA (@LPGA) April 4, 2022
The 24-year-old from Littleton, Co. started her final round with a 6-shot lead on the field after setting the 54-hole tournament scoring record at 16-under par.
Jennifer Kupcho. @Chevron_Golf champion. @KESQ @BaileyKESQ pic.twitter.com/QFfTvrkuQ4
— Blake Arthur (@BlakeArthur24) April 4, 2022
This marks the end of this major championship in our valley as it will move to Houston after 51 years. The famed Dinah Shore Tournament Course has hosted this event since 1972.
Chevron took over as title sponsor in 2022, raising the purse to $5 million dollars but one of the costs was re-locating the tournament from one of the most historic and iconic venues in the game of golf.
𝘚𝘶𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘦 until the end.#TheChevronChampionship pic.twitter.com/FYSJcUEq6o
— The Chevron Championship (@Chevron_Golf) April 4, 2022
Despite the major moving, according to reports, the LPGA Legends Tour is hoping to have an event in the valley in the future. Negotiations are still in the works, including securing a tournament sponsor and host golf course.
LPGA NOTES
KUPCHO MATURITY LEADS TO MAJOR WIN
One of the best parts of the job is seeing them grow. The LPGA Tour has, for years, been about youth and moxie, teenaged winners and the fearlessness of youth. But if you’re out here long enough, you get to see the kids mature and develop. You get to witness the growth of a person, not just a pro. We’ve watched it with Lydia Ko, who we met as a precocious 15-year-old and who set every youngest-ever record on the books. Today, Lydia is an LPGA Tour leader, a board member who is a voice of wisdom at age 24.
We’ve seen it with the Kordas, who also won in their teens and who, now, have matured into seasoned champions, who win with panache and lose with dignity and grace.
And we’ve seen it with our latest major champion, Jennifer Kupcho, who hung on to win the final Chevron Championship played at Mission Hills Country Club. Despite a closing 74, a round that included five birdies and seven bogeys (although the last one, a three-putt bogey on 18, didn’t matter to the outcome), Kupcho not only defeated the field to become the second player in a row to make this major her first career LPGA Tour victory, she beat back her biggest challenger – her own volatility.
The knock on Kupcho has always been the knocks she puts on herself. When she first came out, she would bang her putter against her foot if she missed a 30-footer, a look that didn’t win her many friends among her peers or the fans who saw it. High expectations are one thing: flashes of temper on a semi-regular basis are far more destructive than good.
But whether it’s her newlywed status – Kupcho and her husband Jay Monahan, who caddies for Sarah Schmelzel, tied the knot in February – or a couple of years of maturity, the 24-year-old from Colorado seems to have found the right balance of fire and ice.
“I think I've matured a lot in the last year, and really ever since I've been out here,” she said. “I've been able to calm myself down a lot better. Obviously, I still have my spurts of anger. But I think that's how I get it out quickly and then move on. I think my whole mental game has gotten stronger.”
For read more on Jennifer Kupcho’s win, go to www.LPGA.com
CME GROUP CARES CHALLENGE—SCORE 1 FOR ST. JUDE
The CME Group Cares Challenge is a season-long charitable giving program that turns aces into donations. CME Group donates $20,000 for each hole-in-one made on the LPGA Tour in 2022, with a minimum guaranteed donation of $500,000 to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, which is leading the way in how the world understands, treats and defeats childhood cancer and life-threatening diseases. The Chevron Championship saw its 28th and 29th aces in the event’s history occur Sunday on No. 5 by 2018 champion Pernilla Lindberg and No. 17 by Chella Choi.
The 2021 LPGA Tour season saw 17 aces from 15 different players, while the 2019 campaign had 32 total aces from 31 different competitors for a total of $640,000. That more than covered the average cost of $425,000 needed to treat a pediatric cancer patient.
Through seven tournaments in the 2022 LPGA Tour season, nine holes-in-one have been made, with the season’s donation total hitting $180,000.
PLAYER NOTES
Rolex Rankings No. 53 Jennifer Kupcho (1, 66-70-64-74)
- She hit 9 of 14 fairways and 11 of 18 greens, with 31 putts
- Kupcho becomes the fourth Rolex First-Time Winner of the season, following Leona Maguire (LPGA Drive On Championship), Nanna Koerstz Madsen (Honda LPGA Thailand) and Atthaya Thitikul (JTBC Classic presented by Barbasol
- She is the seventh player to make The Chevron Championship their first win on Tour, and is the 20th to make the championship their first major title
- Kupcho is the first American to make the leap into Poppie’s Pond since Brittany Lincicome in 2015
- She was a member of the 2021 U.S. Solheim Cup Team
- Kupcho won the inaugural Augusta National Women’s Amateur in 2019
- She graduated from Wake Forest University in 2019 with a degree in Communications; She won the 2018 NCAA Division I Individual National Champion, and was the first wire-to-wire NCAA champion since 2002
- Kupcho was also the 2018 NCAA Player of the Year
- Played on the victorious 2018 U.S. Curtis Cup, Women’s World Amateur and Palmer Cup teams
