PINE NEEDLES, N.C. — A lasting memory from the 2021 U.S. Women’s Open is that of Lexi Thompson losing a five-shot lead down the back nine at Olympic Club, causing her to miss out on a second major title and her first U.S. Women’s Open championship in 15 starts.

“I always say there’s really no feeling,” Thompson said. “You’re always learning. Every time I tee it up, there’s something to be processed, to learn. Yeah, it didn’t go my way. It was frustrating, but it happens. I’m here.”

Thompson wasn’t the only past major champion to let a five-shot lead slip in nine holes on the Sunday of a major championship last year.

Heading into the final round of the Amundi Evian Championship in July, Jeongeun Lee6 led the pack by five shots despite experimenting with changes to her backswing in the two months leading up to the tournament. Lee6 unraveled early that Sunday, shooting a four-over par 39 on the front nine and making room for Minjee Lee to catch her with a three-under 32.

Lee6 fought back into contention with three birdies in a row to close her final 18 and force a playoff with Lee. That’s when Lee6 took a swing she still wishes she could have back.

Setting up for her second shot on the playoff hole from 181 yards out in the center of the fairway, Lee6’s five iron found the water in front of the par-5 18th green, sinking any hope of a second major title. After Lee6 missed a par putt, her final opportunity to put pressure on Lee, the Australian completed the seven-stroke comeback to win her first major championship.

“I didn’t want to remember that shot, that second shot. It’s not easy,” Lee6 said. “I can’t do nothing, so I just practice.”

Morgan Pressel, a major champion herself and witness to two five-shot collapses last summer, put Lee6’s performance at Evian into perspective that day.

“It’s just not easy to play under major championship pressure with a five-shot lead,” Pressel said. “Everyone expects you to win, you expect yourself to win, and when things start going sideways, you get tight and tense, and we saw that from Lee6 today.

“The way she battled back, even to get into this playoff, she has to be proud of herself because she showed a lot of heart today.”

From there, Lee6 took about a month to reset and spend time with friends, family and coaches. Her mental coach reinforced the positives from the runner-up result, notably how well she’d played while working on her swing.

“I won U.S. Open, so you have a lot of talent,” Lee6, the 2019 U.S. Women’s Open champion, said her mental coach reminded her. “You have talent, trust myself, just keep going.”

2019 #USWomensOpen champion Jeongeun Lee6 with a beauty of a shot at @TheOlympicClub's iconic par-3 8th hole. pic.twitter.com/sVkVNdhySI

— U.S. Women's Open (USGA) (@uswomensopen) June 5, 2021

The South Korean continued to focus on getting her hands higher in her backswing during the time she spent away from the tour. And her team reminded her that, with her talent at age 26, she’d have more opportunities to win as long as she kept working on her game.

Once Lee6 let the playoff shot go, the consistency she showed during her 2019 Rookie of the Year campaign returned. She rattled off three straight top-10 finishes from September through early October, and concluded the year with a T-15 at the CME Group Tour Championship.

After getting in more swing training in Palm Springs during the offseason, Lee6 started the 2022 season again with three top-10 finishes in a row from February through March. Even after missing the cut at the Chevron Championship and failing to advance out of pool play at the Bank of Hope LPGA Match Play last week, Lee6 said her backswing feels much better now than it did a year ago.

Lee6 brings her improved swing to what’s arguably been her best tournament on the LPGA circuit. In five career starts at the U.S. Women’s Open dating back to 2017, she’s hoisted the Harton S. Semple Trophy in 2019, finished in the top-6 in 2017 (T-5) and 2020 (T-6), and posted a T-17 finish in 2018 and a T-12 at Olympic Club last year. The challenge the USGA presents with its tournament every year brings out the best out in Lee6.

“I like tricky golf courses because easy golf courses, we have to make a lot of birdies. Difficult course, we just play for par. If we have chance to make birdie, I like that. I like that playing,” she said.

“That’s why U.S. Open, a lot of majors, that’s why I like it.”

Lee6 has a chance this week to become the first player to win two U.S. Women’s Opens in a four-year span since Karrie Webb won back-to-back titles in 2000 and 2001. With much attention being paid to Thompson and whether she can rebound from last year’s collapse, Lee6 will look to apply the patience she learned across the Atlantic Ocean to another winning campaign at the U.S. Open.

“I need to just wait for my second win,” Lee6 said. “I think this year, if I try my best, I am going to have a chance.”

Kent Paisley is a contributing writer at Just Women’s Sports covering golf and the LPGA. He also contributes to Golf Digest. Follow him on Twitter @KentPaisley.

Led by undefeated overall No. 1-seed Nebraska, the college volleyball elite will begin their quest for the 2025 national championship on Thursday, when the first round of the 64-team NCAA Division I tournament hits courts nationwide.

The Huskers are still chasing a perfect season, entering the 2025 title hunt on a 30-0 run having dropped just six sets all season — including losing just one set since September 16th.

"I was expecting us to be great, but certainly not undefeated," said Nebraska alumna and first-year Cornhusker head coach Dani Busboom Kelly on a recent episode of the Welcome to the Party podcast. "They continue to exceed our expectations."

Busboom Kelly's roster is loaded with the kind of experienced connection that only comes when the core of players have competed together for three straight seasons — an increasing rarity in the transfer portal and NIL era.

That said, this core has unfinished business on the national stage, with the superstar junior trio of middle blocker Andi Jackson, outside hitter Harper Murray, and setter Bergen Reilly — all AVCA Player of the Year semifinalists — looking to bring the first NCAA trophy in eight years back to Lincoln.

"It's such a special row, because we just know that all of us have been through thick and thin together and our bond is so strong," Jackson told USA Today Sports earlier this week. "[And Busboom Kelly] gives us so much confidence and we know that with her as our coach, we just can play fearless."

Stacked tournament field looks to spoil Nebraska's season

Even with their "fearless" play, a host of stellar opponents await Nebraska in the NCAA tournament gauntlet, hoping to play spoiler — including Busboom Kelly's previous program, the Louisville Cardinals, who await the Cornhuskers as the No. 2-seed in their own regional quadrant.

Fellow No. 1 seeds Texas, Kentucky, and Pitt will also chase their eventual chance at the Huskers via their own regionals, where the Longhorns could see arguably the stiffest competition from both No. 2-seed Stanford — the winningest program in NCAA volleyball history — and defending champion and No. 8-seed Penn State.

With tickets to the 2025 Final Four in Kansas City on the line, the NCAA volleyball bracket's 64 squads will start serving at 16 campus sites on Thursday.

How to watch the first round of the 2025 NCAA volleyball tournament

This year's NCAA volleyball finale begins when No. 5-seed Colorado takes on unseeded American University at 3 PM ET on Thursday, kicking off a two-day first round of 32 matches — with No. 1 Nebraska looking to handle Long Island University in their initial tournament tilt at 8 PM ET on Friday.

All games in the early rounds of the 2025 Division I tournament will air live on ESPN+.

US tennis star Coco Gauff continues to win off the court, with the 2025 French Open champion topping Sportico's list of the 15 Highest-Paid Female Athletes for the third consecutive year.

Fueled by $23 million in off-court endorsements, the $31 million earned by the 21-year-old world No. 3 WTA player edged out the $30 million total income that fellow tennis star and world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka garnered in 2025.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Just Women’s Sports (@justwomenssports)

Unsurprisingly, a full 10 athletes on the Sportico Top 15 list are tennis stars, a direct result of the fact that all four Grand Slams and the Masters 1000 tournaments boast equal prize money between the men's and women's competitions — a shift that began with the 1973 US Open.

That established expectation of gender equity in prize money has tennis far outpacing salaries in most other women's sports.

Also making the Top 15 are two LPGA golfers — world No. 1 Jeeno Thitikul (No. 15 on the Highest-Paid Female Athletes list) and US star No. 2 Nelly Korda (No. 7) — as well as popular Olympic skiier Eileen Gu (No. 4), WNBA superstar Caitlin Clark (No. 6), and USA gymnastics legend Simone Biles (No. 11).

Notably, Gu, Clark, and Biles as well as Venus Williams (No. 14) all proved the power of endorsements on this year's list, with nearly all of the quartet's earnings coming from sponsorship deals.

As WNBA CBA negotiations rage on, revenue sharing continues to be a wedge issue for both sides of the table, with the league office and the WNBPA eyeing the terms of the most recent proposal from differing viewpoints.

The Athletic reported on Wednesday that the WNBA believes it has offered the revenue-sharing salary model that the players have pushed for throughout the CBA talks, leaving athletes to claim 50% of the "sharable" portion of league revenue.

How the WNBA will determine the "sharable" cut is uncertain, though sources claim the compensation structure on offer will result in players taking home less than 15% of the league's total earnings.

That percentage is likely to take a further hit over the lifetime of a new CBA, according to the league's multi-year earning projections.

"I don't feel like there's any cultivation of a culture of trust [in the CBA talks]," WNBPA president and Seattle Storm star Nneka Ogwumike told The Athletic. "I feel like we've been heard, but not listened to, and I'm hoping that that changes in this 40-day extension, because what we want to do is get a good deal done."

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Just Women’s Sports (@justwomenssports)

Parental leave, draft combine, and more enters the WNBA CBA talks

Along with the issue of revenue sharing, the latest WNBA offer also reportedly outlined other proposals, such as the institution of a required offseason draft combine, the elimination of team housing, and the possible extension of the competition calendar by starting earlier and/or finishing the season later.

As for the WNBPA's Tuesday counteroffer, the players union is seeking to eliminate the core designation and shorten the current four-year rookie contract to three years.

The WNBPA is also asking to add non-birthing parental leave, retirement benefits, and reimbursements for mental healthcare.

The WNBA and WNBPA will meet again to negotiate sometime this week, with talks racing toward the second-extension deadline of January 9th, 2026.

After setting a new NCAA basketball record by scoring 100+ points in eight consecutive games, the No. 5 LSU Tigers will face their season's first true test when they visit the preseason-No. 7 Duke Blue Devils as part of the 2025 ACC/SEC Challenge on Thursday night.

"We don't play nobody in our nonconference schedule," senior guard Flau'jae Johnson told JWS in November. "From December on out, that's when it gets really [exciting]."

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Just Women’s Sports (@justwomenssports)

With their history-making string of lopsided wins under their belt, the Tigers will try to keep the streak alive against a now-unranked Duke side on a three-game losing skid.

The Blue Devils will rely on leading scorer and rebounder Toby Fournier for a spark, with the sophomore forward averaging 15.8 points per game despite Duke's 3-5 start.

As for LSU, the title-hunting Tigers will look to stat undefeated behind Johnson's team-leading 17.0 scoring average, as well as the 16.1 points per game put up by junior star transfer MiLaysia Fulwiley.

"Ballers just want to ball, like hoopers just want to hoop," Johnson said of LSU's quick cohesion this season. "You find different ways to bond and gel with teammates."

How to watch LSU vs. Duke on Thursday

Duke will host No. 5 LSU in the 2025 ACC/SEC Challenge at 9 PM ET, with live coverage airing on ESPN.