Indiana Fever basketball star Caitlin Clark will tee it up in the Annika Driven by Gainbridge at Pelican pro-am next week, and, per Sports Business Journal, the LPGA Tour and the Golf Channel will expand their coverage of the Pelican Golf Club event to include her involvement.
Clark will play in the pro-am on Wednesday 13 November, the day before the first round. She has a tee time of 7am and will get her challenge underway alongside World No.1 Nelly Korda before playing the back nine with 10-time Major winner Annika Sorenstam, who hosts the tournament.
The report states that the LPGA and the tournament’s social media handles will live stream Clark's warm-up on the range, while there will also be an in-round walk-and-talk interview. The Golf Channel will also amend its schedule, bringing its Golf Today show forward by 90 minutes to 11am ET to show highlights and live look-ins of Clark’s round.
The Annika Driven by Gainbridge at Pelican is one of the highest-profile events in the LPGA Tour schedule, partly because of its legendary host but also because it’s the final chance for players to confirm their place in the field for the season-closing CME Group Tour Championship. An indication of its status can also be found in its purse of $3.25m – one of the largest outside the five Majors and the season finale.
In Clark, the pro-am has a player worthy of that status. The 22-year-old, who also played in the pro-am for the 2023 John Deere Classic, has made a huge impact in the basketball world, where she is regarded as a generational talent.
She initially nade her name as part of the University of Iowa's women's basketball team, the Iowa Hawkeyes, where she became the NCAA Division I all-time leading scorer. In April, she was selected as the first overall pick of the 2024 Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) draft by Indiana Fever, and was named WNBA Rookie of the Year.
It’s not just basketball where Clark excels. She is also an accomplished golfer and said after her team’s season-ending defeat to Connecticut Sun in September: “I don’t know what I’m going to do tomorrow. I don’t know what I’m going to do the next day. Maybe play some golf. That’s what I’m gonna do until it gets too cold in Indiana. I’ll become a professional golfer.”
As well as the additional coverage of Clark’s appearance in the pro-am, Sports Business Journal also reports that her participation in a Women's Leadership Summit on Tuesday between 10am and 2pm ET will be streamed by NBCSports.com and the official LPGA Tour website.
