The AIG Women's Open Is Acting Like a Major, and the Rest of Golf Should Take the Hint

Image: The R&A

The smartest thing about the AIG Women’s Open announcement on April 28 is that it did not ask for patience.

It just acted bigger.

That is the move.

The championship is going to $10 million in prize money for its 2026 edition, and The R&A says the tournament will now get 34 hours of live coverage across four days, including expanded early windows on Thursday and Friday. If you missed the hard-news version, start with our straight recap of the announcement.

What I like here is not just the number. It is the attitude behind it.

This is what a major is supposed to do:

• pay like a major
• broadcast like a major
• stop behaving as if visibility is some future reward the product has to earn

Women’s golf does not need more polite excuses

The old trap in golf is pretending growth only happens in theory.

People say they want women’s golf to get bigger, then act weird whenever the sport asks for the two things that actually make that happen:

• money
• access

Not inspirational slogans. Not panel discussions. Not another round of fake concern about whether the audience is “ready.”

Just money and access.

The AIG Women’s Open is getting both.

The R&A said this is the sixth consecutive purse increase, and that the event’s live coverage is jumping 20% year over year. It also said the championship will now have more linear television hours in the UK and US than any other women’s golf major.

Good. That should be the goal.

A major should not be hard to find

This part sounds obvious, but golf still screws it up more than it should.

If a major championship is meaningful, it should be easy to watch for more than one convenient afternoon block. The new Thursday-Friday setup gives the event a real morning-to-afternoon spine instead of the usual half-glimpsed version of women’s golf that too often makes a tournament feel smaller than it is.

That matters because stars get built through repetition.

You do not create attachment by showing a few late holes and then wondering why casual viewers do not know the contenders. You create attachment by letting people watch rounds breathe. Let them see a start, a wobble, a charge, a weird bounce, a recovery, a leaderboard that changes shape over six hours instead of eighteen minutes.

That is how sports become familiar enough to matter.

This is also how you stop underselling the product

Women’s golf is already good enough. That part has been settled for a while.

The better question is whether the sport presents it with enough confidence.

This season alone has already given us Nelly Korda looking like the best player in the world again, which we covered after the Chevron in our April 27 column. The talent is not the issue. The issue is whether golf’s institutions are willing to put the same seriousness behind the showcase events that they keep claiming those events deserve.

The AIG Women’s Open just did.

Not perfectly. Not finally and forever. But meaningfully.

The rest of golf should copy the part that is obvious

Here is the simplest version:

If you want a championship to feel important, stop packaging it like a side room.

Raise the purse. Expand the windows. Put the thing on real channels. Treat the audience like it exists. Treat the players like the event is a premier stop in the sport instead of a nice cause everybody is supposed to clap for.

That is not radical. It is just competent.

And honestly, it is refreshing to see a major do the obvious thing instead of spending five more years pretending the obvious thing is too ambitious.

Bottom line

The AIG Women’s Open did not just announce a bigger purse and more coverage. It announced that one of women’s golf’s biggest events is done acting small.

That is good for the championship, good for the players, and good for anyone who is tired of golf talking about growth like it is some abstract future project instead of a thing you build by putting better events in front of more people.

More of this, please.