What’s so great about golf’s U.S. Women’s Open is the meritocracy of it. The egalitarianism. That it’s how you play and not whom you know. That every year, any women’s golfer – professional or amateur – with a handicap lower than 2.4 is invited to step right up and try and qualify for this major championship.
Sports’ version of “American Idol,” it’s a delicious recipe for surprises, for Cinderella stories, for us to discover new faces in the crowd.
Like 18-year-old Katelyn Kong, a Sherman Oaks Notre Dame graduate and rising sophomore at UC Irvine.
She played the rounds of her life so far – shooting 69 and 66 to finish at 9-under-par 135 – to win an open audition on May 7 at Soule Park Golf Club in Ojai. Now, instead of going to Hollywood, the North Hills native is in Erin, Wisconsin, where instead of singing for stardom she’ll be swinging for another magical score, starting on the 10th tee on Thursday at 8:57 a.m.
Actually, maybe she’ll be singing in between swinging?
It will be her caddy-boyfriend Jared Abercrombie on the bag and on the request line again this week. And he knows that songs – all kinds of, a different one every hole if necessary – are the best way to keep Kong loose and happy and from thinking too much about the fact that she’ll be among the 156 golfers at the most prestigious tournament in women’s golf, “the biggest event a girl can play,” as he put it.
It’ll be the thrill of Kong’s young life to play in the 80th edition of this great event, to tee it up in the same field as Nelly Korda, the world’s top-ranked women’s golfer, and Lydia Ko and Anna Nordqvist, women who could complete a career grand slam with a win this week.
An honor to test herself against the daunting Erin Hills course, a hilly 6,829 yards. To represent UC Irvine, following her All-Big West honorable mention recognition by making history as just the second Anteater women’s golfer to qualify, after Selanee Henderson in 2007.
And to represent Southern California along with the other local qualifiers, including Fullerton’s Gabriella Kano, Diamond Bar’s Kailie Vongsaga; Walnut’s Jude Lee and Riverside’s Amari Avery, as well as her fellow former USC golfer Gabriela Ruffels.
If only 8-year-old Katelyn, golfing in the platform Converse and wacky socks, could see herself now.
She wouldn’t believe it. No, the little girl who swam and did taekwondo, who played soccer and piano, who sampled every activity her parents could think to sign her up for before she found golf, “she’d be like, oh, really?’” Kong laughed. “Like, ‘I don’t see that.’”
Because once upon a time, she remembers thinking golf was boring – not yet realizing the more boring the game, the more beautiful, or what hitting it straight and close over and over and over again could do for her.
Not yet having met all the golfers who would become great friends … or her caddy. Having no idea then how much the game would teach her about being adaptable. How it would reward her with a scholarship to UC Irvine, after she decided, midway through high school, that she wanted to play college golf. At a Division I school. In California.
“Sophomore year of high school, she was telling me, ‘I want to play college golf,’” said mom Christa Sanhaphakdi, who, like her husband, Kim Kong, isn’t a golfer.
Still, Sanhaphakdi knew a girl who hadn’t spent most of her childhood traveling around the nation playing in all the right junior tournaments wasn’t likely to ping many college coaches’ radars.
“I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, Katelyn, a little late! This is going to be tough. We’ll see,’” Sanhaphakdi said. “But after that, she practiced every day. Just kept on doing it without us needing to tell her anything, she did it all on her own.”
It’s no accident that now Kong’s superpower is putting, knowing her lines, translating that skill into a dozen birdies and an eagle on 18 in the May 7 qualifier. “I think that got built over time,” said Abercrombie, a Cal Baptist golfer from Simi Valley. “All the practice, hours and hours, working her butt off, finding her rhythm.”
Kong on the beat on U.S. Women’s Open greens? I’m a little intrigued …
“She definitely has the game to catch fire,” Abercrombie said. “Especially on greens like they have on the U.S. Open, so smooth and so true, there’s no blaming bumpy greens for missing putts – and I think she can take advantage of that.”
Oh, she’s going to take advantage of this opportunity, all right – whether or not it’s reflected on the leaderboard. She’s treating the Open like an award show, as though she’s already won and being in the field is like being nominated, an honor unto itself.
“I’m just super-grateful,” she said. “It’s super-exciting to play there with, like, the best of the best – this is a tournament that like some pros can’t even get into! So it’s just going to be an incredible, incredible venue and event. I’m definitely nervous to be playing on such a big stage for the first time. But I think I just need to enjoy it and just cherish it.”
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