LPGA's major championship greenside plunge pool is preposterous in every way

The Chevron Championship, the first major on the LPGA schedule, has had a longstanding tradition of the winner jumping into a body of water nicknamed Poppie’s Pond next to the 18th green. This year’s event, which will take place in Houston this week, will be contested at a new venue, and while the tradition will continue, everything involved with it is absolutely preposterous.

Memorial Park will play host to The Chevron for the first time after the major was held each of the last three years at The Club at Carlton Woods in The Woodlands. When the golf event was originally moved to Carlton Woods in 2023, a lake located between the ninth and 18th holes was dredged, cleaned out, and netting was even installed to keep animals, including alligators, out of it so the winner could jump in after securing victory.

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Cleaning out a lake and protecting it from deadly animals taking it over all for a player to quickly jump in and out of it feels like a lot...because it is. This now brings us to Memorial Park, and an entirely new project the LPGA decided to take on for The Chevron winner’s quick dip into yet another makeshift version of Poppie’s Pond.

The 18th hole at Memorial Park does not include a water feature, so after the PGA Tour’s Texas Children’s Houston Open wrapped up on the same golf course at the end of March, Chevron organizers began digging, literally.

The result they landed on was digging a plunge pool just right of the 18th green that is 15 feet by 10 feet and 4 ½ feet deep. A photo shared less than two weeks ago not only exemplifies the quirkiness of the pool, but also shows that the man-made body of water is very much in play for players who may lose their approach shots right of the green.

Now that the scene has been set, we can address the most ridiculous fact about the pool: If a player does hit their golf ball into the water, they will not be penalized and will be granted free relief.

Golfweek's Beth Ann Nichols reported that the pool is considered to be a temporary immovable obstruction (TIO), which is governed by a Local Rule. Typically, TIO includes grandstands, tents, a temporary bathroom, or a scoreboard, but for Chevron week, it includes a body of water.

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Categorizing the plunge pool as TIO for something like a charity scramble or regular public play would be one thing, but to do so in a major championship with a purse of $9 million seems fundamentally wrong and also insane.

Amy Alcott, a three-time winner of The Chevron, spontaneously jumped into a pond near the 18th green when she won the event in 1988 at Mission Hills Country Club. So, we've gone from a spontaneous, great celebration to digging out a tiny pool at a new venue that doesn't bear any consequences if a player hits a shot into it. Make it make sense.