stand at number 17th Off the tee on Saturday, England's Lottie Ward was one stroke ahead of American golfer Bailey Shoemaker in the Augusta National Women's Amateur. Shoemaker shot a bogey-free 66 about an hour ago and remained loose on the practice range in case someone caught her and a playoff was needed.
Ward calmly made birdies on 17 and 18 to take the victory. When I say cool, I mean it. I was standing in front of the TV when she won. The gallery around the final hole was huge and exploded when the ball fell.
Something is happening in the world of sports. finally. And thankfully, there's no going back.
Advancement of women's sports
I watched more women's college basketball this year than men's. My transition began a few years ago when a high school friend's daughter decided to play for IU's Terri Molen as an All-Star. she was good The whole team was good. And the program has grown into something great.
And then February 22nd came.n.d. This year's. I would have loved to have seen IU play Iowa and Caitlin Clark in Bloomington. The cheapest tickets on the secondary market cost him $125 each for open seating on Thursday night. Students waited outside for hours to get in, but I was really lucky. A friend offered me a seat in the bleachers behind the basket. Watching our Hoosiers beatdown that night was one of the most memorable sporting events of my life. And I went to the Super Bowl.
For me, the biggest draw of watching games is the competition. But in my opinion, women's college basketball has long exemplified the fundamentals of the game better. Similar to how kids in Indiana are taught to play the game from the get-go. So when you see IU's Mackenzie Holmes moving without the ball, he kind of gets the nod. That looks familiar to me. That makes sense to me.
And as I watched her lead the entire team into the student section in a packed Simon Scott Assembly Hall to celebrate the team's trip to the Sweet Sixteen, I was reminded of the collective's hard-won victory. I am elated with joy.
Coach Moren is special. She is 2 years younger than me and we work at the same office. I saw her come into her room and I sat her straight. But she's not alone. South Carolina's Dawn Staley has a similar charisma. When she speaks, I listen. And then there's Iowa coach Lisa Bruder.
future
Bruder has coached the Hawkeyes for 24 years and is the winningest coach in Big Ten history. Memorably, she delivered the bad news to one of the other star players, Molly Davis, that she would miss out on a place in the Final Four due to her injury. It was a video that shouldn't have been made. It was an emotional and private moment. But it demonstrated the kind of connection that all coaches hope for when helping shape the lives of young people. Bruder then subbed her in at the end of her Sunday championship loss.
In February, I went to the Iowa game by myself. In front of me was a mother and her 12-year-old daughter, both passionate Hoosier fans. Her mother stood for the entire half of the match and she occasionally blocked my view. Her daughter persistently tugged at her mother's jacket, trying to get her mother to sit down and stop interfering with those behind her. I finally leaned over and said to the girl, “She doesn't care about us.” The smile on her face told me, “She embarrasses me.”
As the clock ticked down and it was clear that IU was trying to upset the Hawkeyes, I heard the little girl tell her mother that she was going to charge to the floor when she heard the final buzzer.
I said to her, “Are you going to run out there and not want your mom to block your view?'' She looked back at me with the brightest smile I've ever seen and said, “Yeah. “Yes,” he said in a stern tone.
So I said to her, “If you go, I'll go with you.''
A security guard was on duty. None of us charged the floor that night. Probably that's for the best.
Martha Burke led a now-famous protest in 2003 at Augusta National, once one of the world's most famous all-male clubs. Nine years later, the club admitted its first two female members. One of them is former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who presents the annual trophy to the Women's Amateur Champion, now in its fifth year.
Sports today are more advanced than they used to be. As expected, it was the women who made it happen.
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