PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. – There’s a statue at Riviera Country Club that rules the land. From atop her perch, just outside the clubhouse on a hill, a dark brown bust of Ben Hogan oversees the 18th green. The course is nicknamed Hogan’s Alley, for his three different victories here in the 1940s, and at the base of that statue are the names of other winners at the Riv. In a few months, here on the club’s 100th anniversary, that statue will finally add a woman’s name to the plaque. This is the first women’s tournament to be played at Riviera Country Club.
“I say it all the time,” Morgan Pressel said Wednesday morning along the first fairway. “I say it literally every chance I get. I’m a big believer in how important places are.”
It’s been a bit of a crusade for Pressel, the idea that some of the biggest events in women’s golf have long struggled to enter fields where men have made golf history. That’s why Pressel pulled out of her analysis week on NBC’s USWO 2021 broadcast in such a crazy mood. She had just watched Yuka Saso chase Lexi Thompson at the Olympic Club, which has hosted five US Opens but never the women’s.
“To add our story to the story already told at the Olympic Club — it was a really special week … I remember when Pebble Beach was announced (as the 2023 host). I was like, ‘Ohmygoodness. We can play Pebble Beach.'”
Pressel would have in love to compete in the Riv during its days at the top of the pro game. But she played during an era when the biggest event in women’s golf was played on less heralded courses. The reason why would never be clear, but instead we played Pebble beachin Northern California, the USWO went to nearby Cordevalle. Instead of the best game taking Merion, where The most famous photo of competitive golf snapped – yes, more Hogan – the ladies played 70 miles west in Lancaster. Instead of taking on big and bulky Shinnecock in 2013, they went further afield on Long Island in Sebonack. And instead of making that weird distinction forever and ever, the USGA made a pivot.
“Eight or nine years ago, our strategies changed,” John Bodenhamer, the USGA’s head of championships, said Wednesday. “We put at the top of our pyramid that goes to America’s greatest places. When we say that, we mean it, and we start with the golf course, and (Riviera) is one of America’s greatest places.”
Implementation has been somewhat sporadic, with Lancaster hosting again in 2024 and Erin Hills last summer, but the USGA’s push to bring women to the game’s most iconic haunts begins in earnest this week.
From the Riviera, the ladies will head to the Inverness Club, a Donald Ross Classic in Toledo that has hosted six men’s majors, zero for women. Then it goes to Oakmont, where last summer JJ Spaun did one of the most memorable shots in USGA history. Next up is Pinehurst in 2029, the week directly after the men’s US Open – an extremely deliberate attempt to elevate the women’s game. Oh, you tuned in to see Rory and the boys tear up the junkyards? Nelly and the girls will be doing the same in just a few days.
The USGA has announced 17 of the next 22 USWO sites, a number of which will host women for the first time after decades of hosting men. We’re talking Oakland Hills, Merion, Shinnecock.
“If we’re going to talk about equality and equity, we have to talk about the playing fields,” Pressel continued. “When you talk about golf specifically, there are historical places that stand the test of time. They are far more famous than any single player and any era. Every era has its moments, its history and its fame.”
In Riv, she goes back to that statue on the hill. Hogan’s 18-month run at the 1947 LA Open, the 1948 LA Open and then the 1948 US Open. But in modern years it’s much more than Hogan or the majors — it’s been the Genesis Invitational, every year one of the main events on the PGA Tour, where Dustin Johnson seemed to perfect the sport in 2017, and where Hideki Matsuyama shot 63 in 2024, and where Adam Scott and Phil Mickelson.
The ladies are experiencing what all their peers have been able to do for decades – using the same locker room, the same training facility, planning their way around the devilish 10 in similar and different ways than men ever do. Some of them have asked their PGA Tour friends how to work the course. They’ll take pictures of Riviera’s epic first tee, where a 16-year-old Tiger Woods hit his first shot in a professional event. And at the end of their week they’ll climb that stairwell behind the 18th hole, where each of those winners was announced seconds before they signed their scorecards. Yuka Saso carried her sticks up that hill Monday afternoon, almost out of breath but still having enough to shout, “I just climbed Mount Everest!”
This is what the women’s game has finally been allowed to do, to slowly but surely change its height. Royal Troon, in Scotland, hosted the Women’s Open for the first time in 2020. Muirfield, on the other side of the old site, made their debut in 2022. Both clubs had existed for more than a century without female members, let alone hosting major women’s championships. It still took the Old Course at St. Andrews until 2007, during Pressel’s second year as a professional, hosting the Women’s Open. It’s done so three times now, and produced three legendary winners: Lorena Ochoa, Stacy Lewis and Lydia Ko.
Pressel calls it all an “arms race” between golf’s governing bodies — both the recent history and the future lineup. The PGA of America has Congressional, Hazeltine and Bethpage Black on tap. In 2027, the R&A will bring women to Royal St.
Pressel believes in the connection between the winner and the venue. She thinks about the feeling NBA players get at Madison Square Garden. She thinks back to the time she flew to see Taylor Swift play at Wembley Stadium. She thinks about her friend, Paula Creamer, not only winning a US Open, but winning an Open at Oakmont.
“Everybody wants to be either the competitor there, or the person watching it,” she said. “All of this just elevates women’s golf so much more that they can be on that playing field.”
