LPGA players support Paula Creamer's call for 'Women's Masters' at Augusta National

Brittany Lincicome was among a quartet of major champions who would love to compete in a Women’s Masters tournament at Augusta National.

Brittany Lincicome was still walking on air two weeks after capturing the first major of the season on the iconic Mission Hills course, but the idea of competing in a Women’s Masters at Augusta National would be other-worldly for the two-time ANA Inspiration winner.

"I’m still on Cloud Nine," Lincicome said prior to finishing in a seven-way tie for 18th at last week’s Lotte Championship that Sei Young Kim won in thrilling fashion with a hole-out eagle on the first playoff hole. "Just coming out this week and all of my fellow friends out here congratulating me and giving me hugs obviously makes it feel very special that they were rooting for me."

Among those in the T18 logjam in Hawaii was Paula Creamer. The 2010 U.S. Women’s Open champ may never have jumped into Poppie’s Pond to celebrate a win on the Dinah Shore Tournament Course but she made a splash of her own after Jordan Spieth’s record-breaking Masters victory.

Two days after Spieth walked away with his first green jacket, the popular tour player tweeted about her desire to be part of a women’s version of the most prestigious tournament in golf.

I hope The Masters will consider a Women's Masters soon. They do so much to grow the game. Fastest area of golf growth is women! #6Majors?

— Paula Creamer (@ThePCreamer) April 14, 2015

After arriving at Ko Olina for last week’s contest, Creamer reiterated her eagerness to reach emerging markets in golf via a Women’s Masters at Augusta National.

"It is 2015. I think it's time that we can do something with that. The Masters does such a great job of growing the game. In Augusta, just in that area, they're so big of making golf bigger in all genres, whether it's junior golf or just the excitement of it," Creamer said. "There is no reason why we can't use that to grow women's golf. We're just as much a part of it as the men are."

At least a handful of her colleagues, including Lincicome, supported Creamer’s avidity to compete on Golf Digest’s No. 1 Greatest Golf Course, though they were less optimistic than Creamer that they ever would.

"That would be a dream come true," Lincicome said Friday from Honolulu. "There’s not really a lot of golf courses that super impress me, I guess, and I kind of feel like to play at Augusta, I would be in heaven.

"We get to play a lot of really nice places but for some reason that one’s on my bucket list of places to play because I’ve never actually played it," she added. "To get an event there, it would mean women’s golf has come so far. It would be incredible to get to play where men play on the big stage. I think it would be awesome."

Morgan Pressel, one of the T18 finishers last week, was 100 percent  behind the concept.

"I fully support it," said the 2007 Kraft Nabisco champion, who noted that several of her friends had reached out to her to back Creamer’s original tweet.

"I think the world’s about ready for it," she said. "I don’t know if Augusta National is quite ready for it yet but I think the rest of the world is ready to see a Women’s Masters, and I certainly hope that we’ll have the opportunity to compete there before too long."

Cristie Kerr, who tied for seventh at the Lotte, added her vote for a women’s version of the Masters but was not about to pencil it into her short- or long-term itinerary.

"I don’t think it’ll ever happen; I’m being realistic here," stated the two-time major victor, who pointed to recent history as a guide. "It would be great if it happened but they just let females members in so I don’t see them having a women’s tournament in any near future."

The formerly all-male club admitted its first two women members in 2012 and added a third last year. And while the membership hosted the second annual Drive, Chip & Putt contest the Sunday before Masters week, LPGA commissioner Mike Whan’s lobbying efforts on behalf of a women’s event at Augusta have fallen on deaf ears.

Augusta chair Billy Payne made that fact painfully clear during his annual pre-Masters press conference when he disposed of such a notion in a few terse sentences.

"We have a very short member season at Augusta National, it’s seven months only," Payne said in response to a question he clearly found distasteful and a waste of his time. "The time that we dedicate to the preparation and conduct of the tournament is already extensive. I don’t think that we would ever host another tournament here." Despite such naysaying, Women’s Masters fever is spreading.

"Probably never," Lincicome said about chances that Augusta would stage such a tourney, "but they allowed … female members which is pretty incredible, so I guess never say never.

"Unfortunately, I don’t know that it will be during my time," she said. "But it would be so huge for women’s golf to be able to have an event there."

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