Megha Ganne has little arnie and tiger in her game. Ask her coach

If they start young and go long, elite players can spend months inside and around Augusta, only on an annual April visit. Viewed that way, Jack nicklaus It has recorded more than a year in Augusta, counting its days and nights over the past 66 years. Sergio Garcia should be over the semi-year sign.

But among the 25-and-nine crowd, the leader in this strange category is not Ludwig aberg or Tom Kim or Akshay Bhatia. it THERE To be Megha Ganne, a young Stanford now trying to win Augusta’s national amateur. This is her fifth rift in it. Before that, she played in Drive, Chip & Putt Finals National in Augusta in four different years.

Ganne is 20 years old and an eternal resident of Garden State. She went to Holmdel (Nj) High. Her swinging coach lives in Lower Manhattan and is a Golf coach for women in Columbia. Ganne is written by Asbury Park Press and other letters Jersey for a while now. In 2021, for example, when, at 17, Ganne was a low amateur at US Open. More inch columns are coming. On Wednesday, the first day of three rounds Augusta Women am, Ganne shot a nine-nine year old The withdrawal of champions.

This round of the course record gave Ganne a two -stroke lead going to Thursday’s second round, also in the withdrawal of champions. After Thursday’s round, the 72-player field will be shortened to low-30s and connections. Every player on the field is invited to play Augusta National Friday. The players who made the cut back to Augusta National on Saturday to play for the title.

“I think it’s the most exciting week in the amateur golf period, men or women,” Ganne said after her first round. “I think everyone in golf knows about it. People are tuned.”

If you don’t have it you are losing. This is a chance to see the best female amaters in Stroke Play, and, come on Saturday, to see Augusta’s national game like her architects, Bobby Jones and Alister Mackezie, intended to play. Thirteen, for example, par-5 iconic, at 450 yards. Driver, 5-Drui-If you dare! So much anxiety, so much fun! Ganne knows everything about this, after playing in the final in 2023 (T9 Finish) and 2024 (T20). So does her shaky coach, Katie Rudolph, who has caddded for Ganne on Anwa. This year, Rudolph is looking from the rope line.

“We’ve been working together since Megha was seven,” said Rudolph, a Golf player Wake Forest in the late 1990s, in a phone interview Wednesday afternoon. Rudolph met with Arnold Palmer on a walk in awakening. That was a player of the game. She met Ganne at a LPGA/USA children’s clinic. That was a player of the game. She met with her future wife – Jenn, described as a “recovered lawyer” – as a random game partner in a Van Cortland Park in New York City. that It was a player of the game. They got married in 2017. There is a interesting About Rudolph from Steve Eubanks on the LPGA website.

Rudolph chose something from Palmer’s gaze that she shared with Ganne (and other players). She said Palmer, in this awakening walk, was playing indifferent to the last couple’s holes, when a small crowd gathered to see. “And then he ignited him, like the performer he was, and he played a great golf,” Rudolph said. “And that’s what I say Megha. You’re performing there. You’re like an actor in Broadway, setting up a show eight times a week. There are days you may feel cute or your boyfriend broke up with you or whatever else. But you have to dig and find your best things.” Rudolph said a show can be for yourself, for teammates, for family members who are seeing. What matters is that you find something.

Ganne does this, Rudolph said. She digs deeply no matter where her game is on each given day. The 63rd rounds are from a magical hat, rare for any golf player. Happens what happens in the days you don’t have, makes all the difference. Tiger Woods said this repeatedly in his prime minister: the days they meant more about him were when he was swinging as if he was shooting 76, or fighting the flu, and rose to sign for 71.

Whenever Ganne played in Georgia – in the car, Chip & Putt, on Anwa – her family watched her. That is, her mother, an endocrinologist; her father, a technology boy; And her sister, a high school senior who will play Golf College. (Girls are first -generation Americans; parents were born in India.) Augusta has been their spring destination for a decade, again at the height of the day.

Ganne is expected to return to Stanford for the 2025-’26 school year and graduate in the spring. In other words, she is not turning in favor at all times soon, and the wall between the amateur Elite and the Early Pro career is never blurred. Ganne style dresses are being supplied this week by Ralph Lauren, a brand she mentioned by name at her press conference on Wednesday-afternoon. Okay okay. This is the way of the world. Nile has found anwa. Golf is golf.

Ganne’s trio became a pair because Rianne Malixi, who won both USA and Junior Girls’ Ameator titles last year, withdrew due to low injury. Wednesday’s round lasted five hours. Waiting to play her second shot in the 9th hole, Ganna sat down with cross-legged foot on the street. How much playful. She is 20 years old. She is a child. Millions of children around the world like to sit with their legs cross -laws. One in a million can come to Anwa and shoot a first round 63. Some performances. More to come.

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments in Michael.bamberger@golf.com.