7 starts, four countries, 19 weeks: How Anna Davis parlayed her Augusta win into one incredible summer

Invoice Davis understood he wasn’t speaking to simply any golf mother or father on that Saturday night final April in Augusta, Ga. Rick Pano had years of expertise navigating the ins and outs of the junior/newbie golf scene, having been within the highlight since he and his daughter, Alexa, appeared within the 2013 documentary “The Quick Recreation” when she was 7. “A fairly neat man,” Davis says. “All he does is golf.”

On this night time, nevertheless, Davis’ daughter was the toast of the room at a celebration following the tip of the Augusta Nationwide Girls’s Newbie. Anna Davis, a 16-year-old highschool sophomore from the San Diego suburb of Spring Valley, who was No. 100 within the World Newbie Golf Rating, pulled off a surprising victory over a area laden with school stars. She celebrated the win that afternoon with Alexa and Megha Ganne, one other high-profile peer she was already near, underneath the famed oak tree outdoors Augusta’s clubhouse, and the enjoyable spilled into the night on the Crowne Plaza in North Augusta.

As the women goofed off elsewhere, the dads had an opportunity to unwind, and Invoice Davis vividly remembers Rick Pano’s face when he smiled, shook his head and uttered a prediction—or possibly a warning: “You don’t have any concept how a lot your life goes to alter.”

5 months later, Davis was the one with the wry expression, his daughter having simply wrapped up a surreal odyssey enjoying in a number of of the largest occasions in girls’s golf, newbie or skilled. Pano couldn’t have been extra proper.

With a powerful last spherical of three-under-par 69 at Augusta Nationwide Golf Membership that gave her a one-shot victory over LSU teammates Ingrid Lindblad and Latanna Stone, Anna Davis’ unique summer time plan of enjoying in top-level newbie tournaments went up in smoke.

Anna—a left-hander who immediately turned often known as the “woman with the bucket hat” after carrying a floppy lid throughout her closing spherical at Augusta—was shocked to be taught in her post-victory press convention that the win earned her a spot the U.S. Girls’s Open that June at Pine Needles. “That’s insane,” she stated with a smile. She would additionally get to journey abroad for the primary time in her life for 2 extra skilled majors, the Amundi Evian Championship in France and the AIG Girls’s Open, performed for the primary time ever at famed Muirfield in Scotland.

And the professional exemptions stored coming. In late April, Davis made her first LPGA Tour begin simply up the freeway from her San Diego-area dwelling, on the Palos Verdes Championship. Two weeks later, she was in New Jersey for the LPGA’s Cognizant Founders Cup. After an AJGA workforce occasion in Plymouth, Mass., and the journey to Europe, Davis was in Canada for the CP Girls’s Open in August. That was adopted by the Kroger Queen Metropolis Championship in Cincinnati.

The ultimate rely after the ANWA was seven skilled occasions in 4 nations over the span of 19 weeks for the woman who’s now the sixth-ranked newbie on the earth. Serving as each dad and journey agent, Invoice claims his head solely now has stopped spinning. “If I by no means must make a aircraft reservation or keep in mind my damned password to the American Airways web site, I’ll be glad,” he says.

If solely he knew that was true. The truth is that Invoice and his spouse Beatriz are probably going to have their palms full for fairly a while. In Anna’s first foray into the ladies’s skilled sport, she has proven that the ANWA triumph was no fluke.

Within the seven LPGA begins, Davis made the lower in 5. The one weekends missed had been within the U.S. Girls’s Open and AIG Girls’s Open, and she or he performed her first weekend in a serious on the Evian, the place she shot 69 within the third spherical and tied for sixty fifth.

Within the Founders Cup, Davis bested 70 professionals whereas ending in a tie for fiftieth—the highest results of her summer time tour. At her final cease in Cincinnati, along with her twin brother Billy on the bag, she shot her finest rating with a 66 and ultimately positioned 68th.

Pretty exhausted and able to get pleasure from certainly one of her favourite pastimes—lounging in mattress—Davis was glad to be dwelling by mid-September. On the identical time, on a current weekday at her dwelling course of Steele Canyon Golf Membership within the rural San Diego suburb of Jamul, she lamented operating out of LPGA exemptions for the yr.

“All I’ve ever needed was to be a tour professional,” she stated whereas sipping from a glass of water at a sales space within the clubhouse. “I don’t suppose that’s modified a lot. If something, it made me wish to go on tour extra, simply because I performed properly within the occasions. It made me wish to get my tour card.”

Perceive, Davis, who doesn’t flip 17 till March, was talking about it on a day through which she’d taken a driving lesson—not with a membership in her palms, however a steering wheel. The summer time schedule wrecked her plans for getting ready for the driving force’s check, however she was now bent on ending the job.

(In a late-breaking replace, Davis handed the check. “Lastly can inform the press I’ve my license,” she quipped in a textual content.)

The purpose being that she remains to be solely a junior in highschool (she takes courses on-line), and since the ANWA win and the professional begins got here in such a whirlwind, the Davis household doesn’t even know what the rapid golf future holds. They do know that Anna is not going to be within the LPGA Q-Collection in December, and that she has already been on one school recruiting journey, with just a few extra deliberate.

However an informed observer would possibly conclude that Anna, who has an NIL take care of Titleist for an undisclosed sum, might have larger aspirations than spending 4 years on a campus.

“I’m not likely certain,” Davis stated of when she would possibly flip professional. “I’m protecting my choices open. Even earlier than I received Augusta, I at all times considered the choice of going professional after highschool. It’s such a tough resolution. I’ve two extra years to determine. We’ll see how the following few years go.”

Those that are near Davis acknowledge a maturity and independence in contrast to most youngsters. Her dad, who’s a profession highschool Spanish instructor, remembers having to persuade a younger Anna to go to the course with him and Billy, and that she generally performed as if she didn’t care. She’d hit a ball into the bushes and seemingly attempt to hit one other trunk on her means out. “Anna, listen!” her dad would bark. Solely later did she admit doing that on objective simply to make him mad. “You’re so dumb,” she informed them.

Over the summer time, Davis traveled alone to Clifton, N.J., for the Founders Cup and ended up enjoying a spherical at famed Pine Valley with a high-profile sports activities agent and former main champion Morgan Pressel. She checked one other course off her bucket listing with an outing at North Berwick in Scotland, and on the Girls’s Open she stayed with a number household whereas her dad roomed elsewhere.

San Diego educating professional Invoice Barrett, who has labored with the Davis youngsters since they had been little, stated they each are the toughest working golfers he’s coached, and that Anna is an especially fast examine with a eager information of her swing.

“Earlier than the ultimate spherical at Augusta, we had been on the vary and she or he was not hitting it nice,” Barrett stated. “She seldom asks me something, however she stated, ‘Does my backswing look too quick?’ I stated, ‘No, it’s too quick. Clean out your backswing and let’s go have some enjoyable.’ She checked out me, slowed her backswing down and didn’t say a phrase.”

That day at Augusta, whereas making birdies at Nos. 2, 9, 12 and 13, and solely a bogey at 3, Davis missed simply three greens in regulation and produced large up-and-downs on nervy greenside chips on the 14th and seventeenth to tug out the win after beginning the day two photographs off the lead.

Davis admitted not being overly nervous at Augusta Nationwide, apart from on the primary tee—”I did not know there could be that many individuals!”—as a result of she knew just about nothing concerning the historical past of the Masters or the famend grounds on which it’s performed. She laughingly revealed in her winner’s press convention—to the utter shock of some veteran reporters—that the one photographs she’d ever seen of the Masters had been Tiger Woods’ last two putts in his 2019 victory.

She wasn’t joking. Invoice Davis says Anna has had zero curiosity in watching sports activities of any form, together with golf. In elementary faculty, he says, the children had been speaking concerning the large soccer sport developing. “What’s the Tremendous Bowl?” Anna requested.

Anna principally went into the summer time’s LPGA expertise with the identical blissful naivete. In a video posted by Titleist in Could, she meets Jessica Korda and Danielle Kang on a golf course, and although she is cheerful and respectful, Davis hardly appears awestruck.

Her dad stated there was that very same vibe through the LPGA occasions he attended. Whereas they acknowledged the standard of play, they didn’t see Anna’s sport as being a lot totally different or inferior. Barrett, her coach, stated, “She believes she will win, and win proper now, which is the suitable angle.”

“Being inexperienced made me really feel younger on the market [on the LPGA],” Anna says, “however I carry myself as if I used to be a tour professional. And I believe I can sustain with them. They had been all very welcoming. You simply exit on the vary … it wasn’t a lot totally different.”

If something, Anna famous the largest variance among the many professionals was with their psychological approaches. “It’s simply so big,” she says. “I play in junior and am occasions and I’m fairly assured on the golf course. I get out to tour occasions and it’s scary [how assured they are]. I don’t normally really feel like that. I’ve by no means been uncertain of what I’m doing, when in actuality, I do know I can hit that shot. But it surely’s as a result of I’ve stepped on this large stage.”

Anna stated her favourite expertise of your entire LPGA run was enjoying a observe spherical earlier than the U.S. Girls’s Open with Jessica and Nelly Korda. How’d she get such a major alternative?

“I used to be most likely one of many first amateurs to join observe rounds,” Davis stated, “and after I noticed them paired collectively, I figured I’d enroll with them.”

Davis stated she discovered them “tremendous chill and laid again,” whereas being equally poised {and professional}.

“The way in which they carry themselves is de facto spectacular,” Davis stated. “I believe I’m fairly just like them, in the way in which we supply ourselves on the golf course and the way in which we play normally.”

Any dialog about this fantastical season has to incorporate the bucket hat.

Anna already had taken a liking to bucket hats—as soon as seemingly reserved for outdated guys attempting to stave off pores and skin most cancers—when she received the 2021 Ladies Junior PGA Championship by seven photographs at Valhalla. However, having not worn one within the first two rounds of the ANWA performed at Champions Retreat, it was principally on a whim that she picked it out from her assortment for a last spherical that might be televised around the globe. The emblem was that of seahorse that represents Florida’s Ponte Vedra Seashore & Membership.

Davis by no means fathomed that by the tip of the day it will develop into her “signature” and invoke spirited debates concerning the style deserves of the golf bucket hat. “Folks acknowledge me a lot faster when I’ve it, on,” Davis stated. “‘You’re the woman with the bucket hat!’ I’m nonetheless remembered for that.”

On the primary tee in Canada, she stated somebody requested, “The place’s the bucket hat?” Anna smiled. “Sorry guys, not at present.”

But, she has by no means seen the hat as one thing she needed linked with and even earn money from. She dutifully acquiesced when Titleist and some LPGA sponsors requested her to don the bucket in rounds—probably the most memorable being one with a rubber ducky on the Founders Cup to honor the lately handed legend Shirley Spork. However identical to her dad suggesting she publish extra incessantly on Instagram when she would not care about it, Anna can’t be pushed into it. She’s not going to do it merely to be widespread or please others.

“I form of performed together with it in the beginning of this complete bucket hat factor,” Anna says with a shrug. “However I simply put on it after I wish to.”

Subsequent April, Davis is anticipated to be the primary ANWA champion to try to defend her title. Jennifer Kupcho turned professional after her victory on the inaugural occasion in 2019, and the 2021 champion, Tsubasa Kajitani, selected to not return this yr.

Davis says she excited concerning the alternative, however followers must wait to see if the bucket hat returns. It’s simply as properly, as a result of there’s way more to the golfer than what she’s carrying on her head.