Lexi Thompson next week will become the seventh woman to play in a PGA Tour event after receiving a sponsor exemption into the Shriners Children’s Open in Las Vegas.
Thompson, 28, will join the likes of Annika Sorenstam and Michelle Wie West to compete against the men at the Tour level. She’s the first to do since Brittany Lincicome at the 2018 Barbasol Championship.
“I just learned actually Sunday after my round at Walmart (last week’s LPGA tournament in Arkansas). Just kind of a little blindsided, but obviously very honored just to have the thought that they wanted me to be there,” Thompson said Wednesday at The Ascendant LPGA event in Texas.
“It’s just a very cool opportunity for me to, of course, play alongside the men. That’s one thing. But to leave more of a message to the little girls and boys that no dream is too big. If you put your mind too it, you can accomplish anything.”
It’s been a rough year on the course for Thompson, an 11-time tour winner who enters this week at No. 114 on the LPGA’s season-long points standings and is in danger of losing her card.
Thompson has shown flashes of improved play of late, however, with a 3-1 performance at the Solheim Cup and a tie for eighth in her most recent LPGA start.
“I know my game and how I’m playing right now and how much work I’ve been putting in, so playing within myself and my game is all I can do. Not try to force anything on a longer golf course,” she said.
“I’ve never played there, so will be my first time. Get a few practice rounds in and probably be hitting driver a lot, which is nice.”
Last year, TPC Summerlin played to 7,255 yards and a par 71. Tom Kim won the event at 24 under par.
Thompson has long blazed her own path, competing against the men in the QBE Shootout, a silly-season event in which last year she teamed up with Maverick McNealy. She qualified for the U.S. Women’s Open at age 12, and she became, at the time, the youngest winner in LPGA history when she captured the 2011 Navistar LPGA Classic as a 16-year-old. Her two brothers, Nicolas and Curtis, have held Tour cards.
Babe Zaharias in 1945 remains the only female to make a cut in a Tour event.