Slow game? The bathrooms? One of the LPGA’s brightest personalities is a great listener

NAPLES, Fla. – Eavesdropping on Angel Yin, you hear thoughts about…Teslas. She had seen a luxury car drive by, and she brings up the subject.

She also has questions about…Roger Clemens. Her caddy has been looking for the former pitcher and Yin was curious.

And then there is a conversation about drivers. But that’s a given. Yin is one of the best players on the planet and this week, she is among 60 to reach the CME Group Tour Championship, the LPGA’s season finale.

She is also a lively thinker. And a personality, arguably the brightest in the tournament. You’ve probably seen it channel Deion Sanders. You’ve probably heard her session with journalists last year at CME, where she discussed, well, a little bit of everything. So it’s worth catching it this year, if only to hear, well, a little more.

Author questions are in italics. Although you can probably guess who is who.

Raw material? Her thoughts on the record Tour Championship prize.

What would $4 million mean to you if you won?

“A lot of money, a lot of taxes, but a lot of cushion for my career, for the year and the year after, so I can have more freedom in who I want to hire and what I want in my team. It creates a lot of financial freedom. We want sponsorships because we want them to support our career and we need them sometimes because our profession is such a game at times. It just gives us more freedom as a player and as a person.”

What would be the most fun thing you would spend it on?

“I don’t know. Stock control. I recently got into stocks. Maybe that would be more of my fun. Invest it.”

I think this year, in pro golf in general, there seems to be a lot of suggestions, a lot of ideas on the table. There is a difference. There are adjustments in the men’s tournament, in the women’s tournament. If you were in charge of the LPGA, what is one big thing you would change?

“That’s a pretty loaded question because I don’t know if there’s any one big item that I would change because I think the direction we’re in right now is good. We have a great wave of women’s sports that is on the rise. Perhaps my main focus in all of this is not to find more sponsors, but to get us known. While women’s sports are growing, if you don’t surf, it just dies out and you have to catch that wave.”

Have you thought of a way that could happen?

“Oh, I don’t know. I think things like that, to get into the details, to be able to give an honest answer, is somebody able to look at all the numbers and all the strategies over the last five, six years and see where they can progress and benchmark against what other organizations are doing. If I had to give an answer now, it would be investing in players. For example, Nelly (Repeat). Nelly is doing a lot. Nelly won her seventh tournament, she took it Sports Illustrated swimsuit, she went to With Gala – she is doing a lot. And she’s getting her name out there. Whether she knows it or not, she is also representing all of us and so we really appreciate what she does and does well. And so yeah, just invest in the players.”

What is one real little thing you would change? To help you with the answer, I asked this question last year Jon Rahmand he said on the men’s tour, he would like to see more bathrooms on the course. So it could be something as small as that. But what would you change in a low voice?

“Man, I really haven’t thought about it because – let’s think about it. More bathrooms? No, I think we have enough bathrooms. And because you know why bathrooms aren’t a big deal? Because as girls, we can’t go anywhere to pee. And so that’s been an issue that we’ve addressed, and I think we’ve seen results on that. Honestly now, we’re good. … But overall, our tournament is very good at accommodating us.”

Along those lines, and you kind of mentioned, with Nelly, with women’s sports in general, the rise of Caitlin Clark in women’s basketball, that this has been an opportunity for the LPGA to capture that moment. Do you think they did this well?

“No.”

Why do you say that?

“God, I just don’t feel like it. It’s an opinion. Caitlin Clark coming to our tour created a crowd, created a buzz – it didn’t feel like it got out there enough. It went to a certain amount of people. But I don’t know, like I said, give you a detailed answer, I have to like – I want to be more responsible with my answers, so I just don’t want to talk. But if you have to ask me how I feel about it, I don’t think we’ve benefited that much. Just riding the wave that other people are doing and we’re just connected to women. Unfortunately, I don’t think we’ve done enough.”

A question about golf instruction I had. So mine 16 year old grandson is trying to break 80 and make his high school varsity team next year. What is one piece of advice you would give him?

“Hit through the ball and not at the ball. It’s simple. I think a lot of people try to hit the ball because it’s a ball game that you play that the ball is really stationary and you have to follow it. In football they throw you; tennis, the ball is coming at you – you are reacting. Where should you go, I don’t know, go after the ball. It’s a little different. You have to get the ball moving.”

One last question. Is slow play a problem on the LPGA Tour?

“So I have my own thoughts. i know Charley (Hull) provided an answer.”

I will look for your solution next.

“I just found out this morning. It was so funny and I joked about it on the golf course today. But if I have to be honest, over the years I’ve been touring, I think it’s been worse before. It was worse before, we expected more, and I think now we have a good mix of fast players and that’s when the slow players really start to show. Because most of the girls are playing much faster, where you can’t really be too slow or you start falling behind. Although we have more delays on the tees this year. But that could be the course setup this year, space and all. Our professionals are slower. This can also be a separation issue. So I don’t think it’s the players in particular.”

Like last week and the lack of daylight.

“Yes. I think it’s just a spacing problem because we walk up to the freight box and it’s already late and it’s a morning time. So how can this fall on a player? And that’s also going back to where I think we can improve as a tournament, a small matter. I can’t really point fingers, but there are certain types of people who I think should be able to manage this better. I think the easiest way to point fingers without thinking too deeply into it is slow player play, but it takes a lot for the schedules to align, and if the schedules don’t align, then we’re just sitting in a hole. And I think that’s where it’s showing. At the US Open, we had a slow hole where there were like four groups stacked up there. But that’s also because the pin was in a really funny state…”

Par-3.

“Yes. Nelly got a 10i think So things like that. It has nothing to do with the player. I’m sure Nelly is moving very fast. When you’re getting points and you’re doing this and that, there’s nothing we can do about it. Or for example, last week on the 18th, there’s a regulations officer sitting in that hole waiting for us. If a player makes a seven, he will get seven strokes and seven strokes in time. So it accumulates. So I think that’s where it’s going. And so my solution is better planning, better deployment. It should be tough. It doesn’t have to be stupid. But yeah, I think there are slow players out there, but I definitely don’t think it’s as bad as it used to be. Because when I first went on tour, I could take a nap. It was terrible. And they were really only getting warnings. So now they are much tougher. They are taking the right steps. But I think it’s always easy for everyone to point the finger at the players.”

“>