Browsing: surprising

On a Sunday in May in 2017, a little girl stood on the final hole of the Senior PGA Championship in Virginia, watching Bernhard Langer win the event by a shot over Vijay Singh. The girl, Kai Trump, was beside her father, Donald Trump Jr., at a course owned by her paternal grandfather, Donald Trump, then in the first year of his first term as president of the United States. Kai Trump, wide-eyed and 10, looked happy to be there. She was already way into golf.

Eight years later, her grandfather is in the first year of his second term as president and Kai is captain of the girls’ golf team at the Benjamin School in South Florida. Her mother (Vanessa Trump) is dating Tiger Woods. On Tuesday, Kai announced that she has accepted an invitation to play in a mid-November LPGA event in Florida sponsored by Annika Sorenstam.

“What’s up, guys?” Kai said at the start of her 37-second poolside video announcement, posted on TikTok, where she has 3.4 million followers. “I am thrilled to announce that I will be making my LPGA debut in November at the Annika.”

Tuesday night, Kai did a 15-minute Sirius XM radio interview with Sorenstam and her husband, Mike McGee, son of Jerry McGee, a prominent PGA Tour player in the 1970s. McGee said that, according to his math, Kai had more than 8 million followers, combining her different social-media channels.

“I couldn’t do it without my team,” Kai noted.

“I could use some help on my content,” Sorenstam said.

Kai Trump is a good junior golfer with LPGA aspirations who has committed to play golf at the University of Miami, starting next year. There are hundreds of other female teenage golfers with similar profiles. Kai was invited to play in Sorenstam’s event because her paternal grandfather is president of the United States and because her social-media following is massive. Nobody is disputing that.

“I would imagine, since the Tuesday announcement, that this is one of the most talked-about women’s golf tournaments that has probably ever existed,” Justin Sheehan, chief operating officer of the tournament’s host club, Pelican Golf Club, said in a phone interview Thursday. “It’s on news channels and sports channels. The numbers of social-media impressions, I guess they call it, are staggering. Love it or hate it, it’s getting people to talk about the event.

“We’re on a mission to grow this game. Seeing the impact Caitlin had last year was fairly eye-opening.”

Caitlin Clark, the star point guard of the WNBA’s Indiana Fever, put her promising golf game on public display at last year’s tournament, playing in the pro-am with Sorenstam. Clark will play in this year’s pro-am again. Sheehan, a former teaching pro who has worked with LPGA players, described Clark as a single-digit golfer with unlimited upside.

Kai Trump with her grandfather at the 2025 Ryder Cup.

getty images

Sheehan, along with his teaching-pro wife, Nathalia Sheehan, played nine holes with Kai Trump at Pelican this year. Asked for a scouting report, Sheehan said that Kai had an impressive swing and LPGA length and, like all young players, was learning about shot selection. (Her caddie for the tournament will be her friend Allan Kournikova, the 21-year-old brother of the retired tennis player Anna Kournikova.) Sheehan declined to make any sort of prediction for what Kai might shoot in the four-day tournament, which begins Nov. 13.

Last year, the 36-hole cut was two over par, 142. Given Kai’s scoring in junior events, where her scores are often in the mid-70s or higher, making the cut would be an astonishing achievement. Sheehan noted that sponsor’s invitations at many professional tournaments go to players with a wide range of skills, including local pros and famous athletes.

Sheehan said that in the event’s first year, in 2020, his future wife, competing as Nathalie Filler, played in the tournament on a sponsor’s exemption. Filler’s main playing qualification was that she was the North Florida PGA Player of the Year. By any ordinary measure, she’s an excellent golfer. Competing against the best players in the world, Filler missed the cut by 12.

As Tiger Woods has often said, getting better at golf comes as a series of “baby steps.” His goal, rising in the game as an amateur, was to dominate at every level at which he played. But he did play in the 1992 Los Angeles Open, on a sponsor’s exemption, as a 16-year-old amateur — and the reigning U.S. Junior Amateur champion. Steph Curry has played in professional events as a sponsor’s exemption, as a scratch golfer and one of the best basketball players in history. Annika Sorenstam played in a PGA Tour event, the 2003 Colonial, on a sponsor’s exemption, and as the most dominant woman golfer in the game. Sheehan noted that Bryson DeChambeau’s social-media following — his videotaped efforts to break 50 on a short course in the company of people including Steph Curry and President Trump — has brought golf to an incalculable number of new-to-golf viewers. He expects Kai Trump’s participation in an LPGA event to do the same. The key numbers here are not her scorecard totals but her social-media reach.

The birth-certificate name of the November event is The ANNIKA driven by Gainbridge at Pelican, but players and fans call it the Annika, for the tournament host, the 55-year-old Swedish golf legend who lives in Orlando. Gainbridge, a financial services company, is the tournament sponsor, responsible for the event’s $3.25 million purse, 15 percent of which ($487,000) goes to the winner, if the winner is a pro. You can say, with near certainty, that the winner will be a pro — a Nelly Korda, a Charlie Hull. (Kai Trump will compete as an amateur.) The tournament will be played on the “reimagined” Donald Ross course at the Pelican Golf Club, near Clearwater, Fla. Justin Sheehan, a former teaching pro, is the club’s chief operating officer, and the invitation to Kai Trump comes at the behest of Pelican, which is granted one of the tournament’s three special exemptions.

Why is the White House carting dirt to a golf course? It’s a D.C. mystery

By:

Alan Bastable

Ryan Dever, the tournament director, said in an interview that he extended the invitation to Kai via her agent and that “the communication has been through Kai’s team.”

The event is the last full-field event of the LPGA season, four rounds with a 36-hole cut and 108 players, three of whom are in the field by special invitation.

One spot is reserved annually for a member of the winning team of a collegiate event sponsored by Sorenstam, the Annika Intercollegiate. The winning team was Wake Forest and the team decided that Anne-Sterre den Dunnen of the Netherlands, a senior, would represent the team at Sorenstam’s LPGA event.

A second spot is given by Gainbridge and went to Lauryn Nguyen, a promising Northwestern University golfer. Like Kai Trump, Lauryn Nguyen is making her LPGA pro debut. But, unlike Kai, she did not announce her participation in the event by way of a TikTok posting that traveled the world reaching hundreds of thousands of people.

It really is an extraordinary 37-second clip. In it, Kai is standing beside a golf net beside a backyard pool with a little putting green and chipping area on the side. The pool has a basketball rim for pool dunking and the hedge behind the pool is trimmed to perfection. She is wearing a TaylorMade hat (her grandfather’s preferred brand) and a sky-blue Benjamin School golf shirt that matches the sky above her. The final punctuation of the video is a nothing-but-net iron shot with a smooth, controlled backswing and finishing with good balance. She’s wearing little white ankle socks. She has an interesting speaking style, by which she throws down her right hand to emphasize certain syllables. Millions have seen it. Pretty soon here, millions will see her swing in an LPGA event.

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com.

Mickie James is finally breaking it all down—what really happened when WWE shipped her belongings in a trash bag after her 2021 release, and how it led to one of the most embarrassing internal shakeups in recent company history.

Speaking with Chris Van Vliet on Insight, the former WWE Womenâ€s Champion said she wasnâ€t as upset as fans were when she first received the bag. In fact, sheâ€d been through it before.

“I wasnâ€t as offended as the fans were when it happened, because I donâ€t think you realize how many times weâ€ve been offended,†she said. “Iâ€m so numb to getting my feelings hurt, or Iâ€m so used to, ‘Oh, you got to separate your ego from it, and donâ€t take it personal. Itâ€s just business.â€â€

James said the now-infamous post was driven by sarcasm, and a way to spotlight just how disposable wrestlers can feel.

“So I posted, because Iâ€m a sarcastic person, and if I was to be honest, I got two boxes with two trash bags. I still have the trash bags because Iâ€m keeping them—receipts,†she said. “I remembered in 2010 when I got my stuff back and I got it the same way, and 2010 me was devastated… This time, I didnâ€t take it personally. Iâ€m like, of course. Itâ€s more about the lack of thought of how youâ€re so disposable…â€

The post exploded online. Top WWE executives immediately reached out, including Triple H, Stephanie McMahon, and John Laurinaitis.

“Then Hunter called me, Stephanie text me, Johnny called me. Everybody called me,†she recalled.

The fallout led to the firing of longtime Head of Talent Relations Mark Carrano—something James didnâ€t intend or celebrate.

“I still feel bad for Mark Carrano, who got fired for it, because Mark was always good to me… heâ€s the one who got fired. But it was just a testament to that was like a company thing of like, they just didnâ€t really think of how that would affect [you]…â€

Then came the biggest surprise—Vince McMahon personally picked up the phone to apologize.

“Vince called me and I spoke to him on the phone… Because I was like, Vince has never called me before,†she said. “But he was genuine. He was like, ‘You know Iâ€ve never thought that of you, and Iâ€ve always thought highly of you, and Iâ€m so sorry that happened and that person is not here anymore.†And then I was like, Oh no. Felt bad for Mark Carrano.â€

James said she doesnâ€t think the trash bag practice is used anymore and believes the incident woke WWE up to how careless it looked from the outside.

“I donâ€t think anybody else will get their stuff that way anymore… I donâ€t think they come in Gucci bags, but they certainly donâ€t come in hefty bags.â€

Mickie James didnâ€t ask for drama—she simply showed fans what happens behind the curtain. And whether it was sarcasm or a silent protest, it sure got the industryâ€s attention.

Do you think WWE has really changed how it treats talent behind the scenes, or are gestures like this just PR fixes? Let us know in the comments below.

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Earning a PGA Tour card is a tremendously difficult task. But keeping it is no cake walk, either. Harder still? Winning back your card after losing it. Three PGA Tour veterans proved that the hard way on Sunday at the Korn Ferry Tour Championship, where they just missed out on reclaiming their Tour privileges.

After changes to qualification rules in recent years, only the top 20 finishers at the Korn Ferry Tour Championship earned PGA Tour cards for the 2026 season. You can read all about the fortunate few who punched their Tour tickets on Sunday here.

But in this space we’re concerned with the other side of the equation, the players who have lived the life of a PGA Tour pro, fought all year on the Korn Ferry Tour to get back and came up painfully short on Sunday.

The silver lining for these three pros? They all finished high enough in the Korn Ferry standings to earn full status there in 2026, where they’ll mount new campaigns to reclaim their cards.

PGA Tour pros who missed cards at KFT Championship

Justin Suh

Justin Suh, a 28-year-old former PGA Tour pro from San Jose, has played in 90 PGA Tour events in his pro golf career, earning two top-5 and five top-10 finishes.

These 20 Korn Ferry Tour players just earned their 2026 PGA Tour cards

By:

Josh Schrock

Suh played full season of 29 Tour events in 2024. But he only made 12 cuts and failed to record any top 10s. As a result, he finished 162nd in the FedEx Cup standings to lose his playing privileges and drop back to the Korn Ferry Tour.

On the Korn Ferry Tour this season, he won the Argentina Open in March and collected two other top 10s. But it wasn’t enough to move back to the big leagues.

Entering the Korn Ferry Tour Championship at 24th in the standings, just outside the top 20 who earns cards, Suh finished T31 to remain tantalizingly close but, ultimately, short of getting his card back.

Russell Knox

A 40-year-old Scottish pro, Russell Knox played successfully on the PGA Tour for several years, earning two victories at the 2015 WGC-HSBC Championship and the 2016 Travelers Championship.

But his last full season was 2022-23, when he made 23 of 37 cuts to finish 144th in the Fedex Cup standings and lose his Tour card.

He played in 10 Tour events in 2024 and then received three sponsor invites in 2025, missing two cuts and finishing 68th at the Corales Puntacana Championship.

Knox made 21 Korn Ferry Tour starts in 2025, earning a runner-up early in the season at the Bahamas Great Abaco Classic along with three other top 10s.

But a disappointing T55 finish at the Korn Ferry Tour Championship Sunday dropped Knox from 34th to 36th place in the final KFT standings, leaving him 16 spots short of reclaiming his PGA Tour card.

Dylan Wu

Twenty-nine-year-old Oregon native Dylan Wu should be familiar to many golf fans. He played 33 PGA Tour events in 2022-23, finishing 86th in the standings to maintain his card.

But in 28 starts in 2024, Wu only managed one top 10 and dropped to 119th in the FedEx Cup standings, losing his Tour card in the process. Though he got into 13 Tour events this past season and recorded some good finishes, he only got enough points to finish 170th in the standings.

He only played eight events on the Korn Ferry Tour in 2025, so a T31-finish on Sunday could only improve his position from 71st to 69th, well short of the Tour card cutoff.

Although she may currently be sidelined healing a broken arm, Shotzi has been a prominent figure on the independent circuit since her release from WWE back in May. Speaking with Saraya on “Rulebreakers”, Shotzi revealed whether or not she was surprised after her release.

“Well, yes and no. I had just [come] back from an ACL tear,” she said. “So coming back from [a] huge injury and not being on TV for almost a year, I was kind of not surprised.”

While Shotzi’s surprise of her release didn’t stem from her return from injury, she did add that she felt WWE CCO Triple H had always believed in her and left her a little disappointed after receiving the news.

“I just felt like dang, they gave up on me,” Shotzi said. “I was just in such a bad space for a few years, you know, just like everything that I was going through and I was coming back from injury so much stronger and not just physically but mentally too.”

Looking ahead to the future, Shotzi expressed her eagerness as she’s built up an ongoing storyline with current TNA star Matt Cardona in GCW. The pair have had a number of heated interactions with one another on their respective social media platforms, later meeting one another in three GCW matches throughout the months of July and August.

“Yeah. No, we’re having so much fun. And that’s what I like too. I never really got like a good feud at WWE. So I’m taking control of that now that I’m independent and luckily Matt [Cardona] is on the same page as me. He wants to go the distance.”

If you use any quotes from this article, please credit “Rulebreakers” with an h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.

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