Is The No. 1 Ranking a Double-Edged Sword?

Everybody wants a face of women’s golf. A star to rally around. A name big enough to carry the game forward. What we don’t talk about enough is what that job actually costs—especially when you’re ranked No. 1 in the world.

Because being the best doesn’t just come with trophies alone. It comes with expectations, obligations, appearances, opinions, and an unspoken responsibility to be everywhere, for everyone, all the time. And for the players living at the very top, that weight is only getting heavier.

That tension has been easy to feel this week as the LPGA kicked off its 2026 season with its unique and high-energy season opener—the Hilton Grand Vacations Tournament of Champions.

TOC is a showcase of talent that features a variety of celebrity/special guest talent, mixed in with the top players and winners from the past two seasons on Tour. Skratch has been boots on the ground this week capturing some of the action inside the ropes.

ICYMI: Skratch and the LPGA Have Teamed Up

Because despite the celebratory setting, the noise around professional golf has been loud and distracting this week. It was already going to be a bit of a gauntlet with Brooks Koepka's return at Torrey Pines, but then came the news about Patrick Reed departing from LIV—and even after years of the saga, LIV x PGA TOUR news is always going to be the commanding headline. There's nothing the LPGA or its stars can do—it's just the luck of the draw sometimes.

Though, there has been one storyline that's persisted through the noise—and that's WTGL. Or at least what Nelly Korda had to say about the whole thing. The world No. 2 spoke to Golfweek about her thoughts on the matter, citing "mixed feelings" about the creation of a separate league.

Naturally that response caught on like wildfire, and from Korda voicing her opinion, the general consensus that fans, media, and players can all agree on is that in order for the league to be a success, TGL and the Tour need all of its biggest names signed on, and that includes having the 27-year-old star in the mix.

She didn't allude to whether or not she's joining, and said that she's still weighing her options—because real talk—the LPGA Tour's schedule is grueling. With two Asia swings, zig-zagging across the U.S. and the globe at some points, those 33 events add up and throwing another obligation isn't a small task.

Yes, the guys have been doing it for about a year now, but that doesn't make it any less taxing and the PGA TOUR schedule and routing isn't as demanding of its players. I hear Korda, and I understand the place she's coming from. She's consistently among the best at conserving her energy and being pro-active in injury prevention. She chooses her schedule wisely, and I truly believe she is considering the best course of action for her.

And yet, a small part of me wishes that she would have agreed already.

The writing is on the wall that the golf world wants to anoint her as the golfer of her generation, the face of women's golf, but I think placing that kind of attention and pressure solely on one player's shoulders isn't going to work. She can't quarterback the whole thing—no one can.

The current world No. 1, and truly the best player in the women's game right now, Jeeno Thitikul, is making her first appearance at TOC this week. Despite being a seven-time winner, this is her first trip to Lake Nona—so why now? Why this year?

In her Wednesday press conference, she was asked if her rank had anything to do with her decision to play, to which she simply said, "The sponsors did a lot [for us] to be able to, you know, in organizing, to be able to connect with people, connect with the celebrities who [are] going to come."

She continued with, "It's just really important for us to show what we have, to show what I have to be able to come overseas to play only for a week. It's just give and take for me."

Thitikul lives and trains in Dallas, Texas during the season but spends her offseason in her native country, Thailand, a trek that isn't easy to central Florida, but you also can't have your event coined "Tournament of Champions" without the one player who won the most on Tour last season. The field should be comprised of your best players, especially when they're in winning form.

RELATED: The LPGA Records 29 Different Winners in 2025

Seeing her and her commitment to growing women's golf is important—fans need to know who the best player in the world is and watch her play as much as possible. The Tour knows this, and Jeeno does, too. But she's human and she worries about overextending herself.

"I feel like being like on top of the world, this thing is really important to us to, balancing the time of practicing and then sponsor service, especially we [being] Asian [player], we have more sponsor services than American [players] do, I think. [I] need like my own time sometimes to recharging myself from outsiders, the people outside," she said in regards to having more on her plate, including the upcoming WTGL schedule later in the year.

"Sometimes I think it's a time to say no to some things that kind of, you know, don't let us do our job. I know people really want to see us, all the medias want our time, but sometimes I feel like what got us here is practicing. I do have my own time and I think sometime we need [everybody] understand that we have to practice to be able to showing the performance."

Hearing both her and Korda speak so candidly this week has been great, I hope more players continue to speak up and out about how they feel! It's so good for all of us to hear these conversations that are being held in private move to more open forums. That's how the needle gets pushed, and that's how we create more faces within the space.

Not every voice has to come from the top, and it shouldn't. Placing all eggs into one basket is damning. But we need the players to be vocal, to be open. It can be scary but taking the leap is what made the legends before them household names.

Because at the top of the game, the same visibility that elevates players can just as easily exhaust them—and that’s the edge we rarely acknowledge.

We need more of that old school gumption, ASAP.