At 18 over par, Kai Trump was putting the finishing touches on perhaps the round of her life.
The 18-year-old granddaughter of the president, making her LPGA debut at the Annika on a controversial sponsor’s exemption, hit her approach on Pelican Golf Club’s par-4 18th to a few feet. Trump would miss her birdie putt, but she made the comebacker and signed for a second-round, 5 over 75—an 8-shot improvement from her first round on Thursday.
In last place by six strokes on the 108-player leaderboard, Trump called Friday’s round “very calm and peaceful.” The first round, however, wasn’t quite that. And it's reflected on her scorecard.
“For the first day, I was definitely really nervous,” Trump said after Round 2. “I think the nerves just got to me.”
Trump added a tremendous amount of attention to the LPGA’s penultimate tournament of the season, which hosted by Hall of Famer Annika Sorenstam. Trump wasn’t necessarily granted the exemption because of her junior golf career. Yes, she’s talented and will play collegiately at the University of Miami next year. But she’s 461st in the American Junior Golf Association rankings and shot 52 over par in last year’s Junior Invitational, an exclusive, 24-player tournament.
So why was she teeing it up at Pelican with the world’s best players? Notoriety. Trump has millions of social media followers. Plus, her last name is, well … you know.
Tournament organizers didn’t shy away from the truth.
“The idea of the exemption, when you go into the history of exemptions, is to bring attention to an event,” Pelican Golf Club owner Don Doyle Jr. said earlier this week. “[Kai’s] a lovely—I mean, you got see her live. She’s lovely to speak to and she brought a lot of viewers through Instagram and things like that that normally don't watch women’s golf was the hope, and we’re seeing it now on Instagram and social media.
“So it’s created a buzz on top of the other great players that we have here.”
The Annika Effect
That’s a feeling Sorenstam can relate to. In 2003, at the Bank of America Colonial, the Swede was granted arguably the most notable exemption in golf history, becoming the first woman since 1945 to play alongside men in a PGA Tour event. Like Trump, Sorenstam had detractors. Unlike Trump, though, Sorenstam was the world No. 1 and already a major champion when she teed it up at Colonial.
That week, the biggest question was whether Sorenstam could make the cut (she missed it by four strokes). For Trump, advancing to the weekend was an extreme long shot. Heck, sportsbooks set the over/under for her first round score at 92.5.
This opportunity for Trump was about more than birdies and bogeys.
“I don’t think anybody here is thinking that she will be the one holding the trophy on Sunday,” Sorenstam, 55, said earlier this week. “It’s about opportunities and memories and lessons learned. I spoke to her a little bit yesterday. You know, just make the most out of this week. There will be lessons learned. Take them to the future and learn. That’s how we grow. I mean, she’s [18], right? I mean, there are so many lessons she's going to learn through life and today is—this week is going to be the biggest lesson learned.”
One thing Trump displayed was resilience. In Round 1, she had nine bogeys and two doubles with the weight of the golf world upon her. A day later, though, she carded another four bogeys, along with a double and triple, but had four birdies. For context, world No. 2 Nelly Korda had also zero birdies in Round 1, albeit seven on Friday.
When things went sideways for Trump, she laughed it off—literally. And that likely made Tiger Woods, her mother’s boyfriend, proud, as the 15-time major champion told Trump “to have fun and just go with the flow.” Ironically, that’s a mindset Woods didn't necessarily possess during the pinnacle of his career.
“Things are going to happen,” Trump said. “Once it happens, you can’t go back in time and fix it. The best thing I could do is move on. Like, told my caddie, Allan, kind of just started laughing (after a triple on No. 5). It is what it is. We got that out of the way, so let’s just move on. It was pretty easy to move on after that.”
What came afterward? Three birdies, including a near ace on the par-3 12th.
“I hit like a tight little draw into it,” she said. “Tried not to get too high because of the wind. Yeah, it was a great shot.”
It’s those moments that the high school senior will remember forever, rather than how far down on the leaderboard she was. Especially if she never makes an LPGA start again.
And for the LPGA, the hope is that those who tuned in on Thursday and Friday to watch Trump will return to Golf Channel this weekend to see the tournament’s finale. And perhaps they'll watch next week’s CME Group Tour Championship, too.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Kai Trump Misses LPGA Cut, But There's More to the Story Than Her Final Score.
