Mao Saigo won The Chevron Championship at The Club at Carlton Woods on Sunday after an epic five-way play-off.
Saigo got the better of Ruoning Yin, Hyo Joo Kim, Lindy Duncan and Ariya Jutanugarn.
The 23-year-old has six Japan Tour wins to her name, but was winless on the LPGA Tour before Sunday at The Chevron Championship.
World No.1 Nelly Korda was never in contention at The Chevron Championship after poor putting on day one prevented her from challenging.
It was a thrilling end to the tournament in Texas – one that was a really good advert for the LPGA Tour in general.
However, the event did not pass without controversy, with many people complaining about one very specific issue at The Club at Carlton Woods.
Dan Rapaport angry at what happened at The Chevron Championship on the LPGA Tour
The LPGA have been receiving criticism from numerous sources for something that happened on one hole at The Club at Carlton Woods.
Brandel Chamblee said he ‘hated to see’ the way the Chevron Championship ended, after numerous players smashed their second shots into the grandstand just behind the 18th green.
And golf journalist Dan Rapaport was thinking along exactly the same lines as Chamblee.
On The Dan on Golf live watch-along, Rapaport was visibly seething with anger when eventual winner Saigo clattered her second shot on the 18th hole in regulation play into the grandstands:
“Second shot for Saigo, does that look similar to you guys? I mean this backstop, we’ve got to address it. We have to address this backstop. It’s just the biggest no-brainer of all-time. We can’t have backstopping winning this tournament. Now she gets to place it, that’s going to roll forward again and now she gets to place it. It’s just, it’s not what you want to see on a 72nd hole of a major. I don’t know what the solution is but this is not what I want to see. Maybe move it 10 yards further back. There’s a reason why other tournaments don’t do this.“
The Japanese LPGA Tour pro birdied the final hole in the end to get into the play-off, and eventually walked off with the trophy and the $1.2 million winner’s cheque.
Possible solution for The Chevron Championship grandstand issue
The bottom line is that you cannot have a grandstand situated just 10 yards behind the back of a par five green where everyone is going for it in two.
With that in mind, there are two fairly straightforward solutions to the problem.
One, the grandstand could be moved back a further 10-20 yards, meaning that players would then not want to clatter their ball into it and be left with a 30-yard third shot into the green.
Secondly, and this would be slightly more difficult to implement, the LPGA Tour could shorten the final hole and change it to a par-4, whilst moving the pin right to the back of the green.
This way, every golfer in the field would be aiming to hit the green, rather than go long from where it would be an incredibly difficult up and down for them.
The reality is that something has to change. As Rapaport said, nobody wants to see what happened on Sunday on the final hole of a major championship.
Receive exclusive golf news and updates twice a week to your mailbox
