This U.S. Women’s Open is special for a much bigger reason

PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. — There’s a statue at Riviera Country Club that seems to lord over the entire place. From high on its perch, just outside the clubhouse on a hill, a dark brown bust of Ben Hogan overlooks the 18th green. The course is nicknamed Hogan’s Alley, for his three different wins here in the 1940s, and at the base of that statue are the names of other winners at Riv. In a few months, here in the club’s centennial year, that statue will finally add a woman’s name to the plaque. This is the first women’s tournament played at Riviera Country Club.

“I say it all the time,” Morgan Pressel said Wednesday morning, along the 1st fairway. “I say it literally every chance I get. I believe very strongly about how important venues are.”

It has been a bit of a crusade for Pressel, the idea that some of the biggest events in women’s golf have long struggled to access the courses where men have made golf history. It’s why Pressel signed off from her week of analysis on the 2021 USWO broadcast on NBC in such a giddy mood. She had just watched Yuka Saso chase down Lexi Thompson at Olympic Club, which had hosted five U.S. Opens, but never the women’s. 

“To add our own history to the already storied history at Olympic Club — it was a really special week … I remember when Pebble Beach was announced [as 2023 host]. I was like ‘Ohmygoodness. We get to play Pebble Beach.’” 

Pressel would have loved to compete at Riv during her days atop the pro game. But she played during an era where the biggest event in women’s golf was played at less-heralded courses. The reason why would never be clear, but instead of playing Pebble Beach, in Northern California, the USWO went to nearby Cordevalle in . Instead of the game’s best taking on Merion, where the most famous photo of competitive golf was snapped — yes, more Hogan — the ladies played 70 miles west in Lancaster. Instead of taking on big and burly Shinnecock in 2013, they were further out on Long Island at 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, USGA chief championship officer, said Wednesday. “We put at the top of our pyramid going to America’s greatest venues. When we say that, we mean it, and we start with the golf course, and [Riviera] is one of America’s greatest venues.”

The implementation has been somewhat sporadic, as Lancaster hosted again in 2024 and Erin Hills last summer, but the USGA’s run of bringing the women to the game’s most iconic haunts starts in earnest this week. 

From Riviera, the ladies will head to Inverness Club, a Donald Ross classic in Toledo that has hosted six men’s majors, zero women’s. Then it’s off to Oakmont, where last summer J.J. Spaun made one of the most memorable putts in USGA history. Then it’s Pinehurst in 2029, the week directly following the men’s U.S. Open — an extremely purposeful efford to elevate the women’s game. Oh, you tuned in to watch Rory and the boys rip around the waste areas? Nelly and the girls will do the same in just a couple days. 

The USGA has announced 17 of the next 22 USWO sites, a number of which will host the women for the first timeafter decades of hosting the 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 historic venues that withstand the test of time. They’re far more famous than any single player and any era. Every era they have their moments and their history and their fame.”

At Riv, it goes back to that statue on the hill. Hogan’s 18-month run through the 1947 LA Open, the 1948 LA Open and then the 1948 U.S. Open. But in modern years it’s much more than Hogan or majors — it’s been the Genesis Invitational, annually one of the top events on the PGA Tour, where Dustin Johnson seemed to perfect the sport in 2017, and where Hideki Matsuyama shot a winning 63 in 2024, and where Adam Scott and Phil Mickelson and Jon Rahm all won as well. 

The ladies are experiencing all their peers have been able to throughout the decades — using the same locker room, the same workout facility, scheming their way around the devilish 10th in similar and different ways than the men ever would. Some of them have been quizzing their PGA Tour friends about how to work their way around the course. They’ll get photos from Riviera’s epic 1st 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 summit that mountain of stairs behind the 18th hole, where each of those winners were heralded in the seconds before they signed their scorecards. Yuka Saso carried her clubs up that hill Monday afternoon, almost out of breath, but still having enough to shout, “I just climbed Mount Everest!” 

That’s what the women’s game has finally been allowed to do, slowly but surely change its elevation. Royal Troon, in Scotland, hosted their first Women’s Open in 2020. Muirfield, on the other side of the old country, made their debut in 2022. Both clubs existed for more than a century without female members, let alone host women’s majors. It still took the Old Course in St. Andrews until 2007, during Pressel’s second year as a pro, host the Women’s Open. It’s done so three times now, and has delivered 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 future lineup. The PGA of America has Congressional, Hazeltine and Bethpage Black on tap. In 2027, the R&A will bring the women to Royal St. George’s for the first time … after already hosting 15 men’s Opens — with victories from Vardon to Hagen to Norman. 

Pressel believes in the connection between winner and venue. She thinks about the feeling NBA players get winning at Madison Square Garden. She thinks about that time she flew to see Taylor Swift play at Wembley Stadium. She thinks about her friend, Paula Creamer, not just winning a U.S. Open, but winning an Open at Oakmont.

“Everybody wants to either be the competitor there, or be the person there watching it,” she said. “It all just elevates women’s golf the more they can be on that playing field.”