In Gee Chun won the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship at Congressional Country Club on Sunday, coming from behind after surrendering a large lead early in the final round to win her third career major title. Here are five takeaways from Chun’s fourth career victory on tour.

1. In Gee Chun’s historic first round delivers title

Chun won the PGA Championship at five-under par, making her opening-round 64 — an eight-under strike at the recently renovated Congressional Blue Course — all the more impressive. No one else in the field even touched eight-under par over the weekend. Chun’s second-round 69 Friday gave her breathing room, and she used all of it from there, posting back-to-back rounds of 75 for a one-shot wire-to-wire victory.

“When I got a slump, I really wanted to quit the golf, but not because of them. I keep trying to play golf. That’s how I made win this week,” Chun said.

After a T-15 finish at the U.S. Women’s Open earlier this month, Chun called her sister and told her she missed home. Winless since 2018, Chun didn’t feel like she had any goals. Her sister kept it blunt and suggested she quit golf.

“When I heard what she said,” Chun said, “I don’t want to — I didn’t want to quit the golf. Then I believe I still have a spirit, and I [said], In Gee, you still want to play golf.”

Chun’s perseverance was rewarded with her third major title. The 27-year-old felt the support of her fans — particularly her dedicated fan club, nicknamed “The Flying Dumbos” — and her sponsors, all of whom stuck with her during her four years away from the winner’s circle.

“I want to keep saying thanks to everyone who believed in me and never gave up on me,” she said.

2. Lexi Thompson’s heartbreaking runner-up finish — again

Lexi Thompson’s final round at Congressional Country Club on Sunday felt all too familiar. Trailing by three strokes at the start of the round, the 27-year-old posted two birdies took the lead on the fourth hole as Chun scuffled early on. Thompson then recorded her first bogey in 20 holes on the seventh and entered the final nine holes with a two-shot lead.

The back nine became her undoing as her short game faltered. She hit a two-foot putt that spun out of the cup. She took four shots to get down from the greenside for a bogey on the par-5 16th. She had a 3-footer that never touched the hole on the 17th, keeping her square with Chun.

All would have been forgiven if Thompson had raised her second major championship trophy. After a towering approach shot on the 18th, she had to make a 12-foot, left-to-right breaking putt to force a playoff with Chun.

The putt fell short and to the right of the cup.

“Because I’m a player too, when I saw someone miss the short putt, my heart is hurt too because I understand everything,” Chun said of Thompson’s miss.

Thompson signed autographs for kids, and then left the course without speaking to the media after the round.

The major championship wounds continue to deepen for the 27-year-old. The runner-up finish Sunday was her fourth since she won her first and only major at the 2014 ANA Inspiration. The others came at the 2015 Evian Championship, the 2017 ANA Inspiration and the 2019 U.S. Women’s Open. The result also was just one year removed from her collapse at the 2021 U.S. Women’s Open, when she lost a five-shot lead with 10 holes to go.

Thompson last won on tour at the 2019 Shoprite LPGA Classic.

3. The backdrop of Supreme Court controversy

When the Supreme Court’s watershed decision overturning Roe v. Wade was handed down on Friday, the LPGA was playing its major championship just 12 miles from Washington, D.C. As leagues and athletes across women’s sports spoke out over the decision, the tour’s response came a day after the court’s ruling.

On Friday, the LPGA confirmed with Golf.com that it would not make a statement. On Saturday, it provided the following statement:

A message from the LPGA. pic.twitter.com/AC7oiVBR9j

— LPGA (@LPGA) June 25, 2022

The tour’s statement did not mention reproductive rights or abortion, central tenets of the decision. Players and caddies shared their frustrations over the LPGA’s response privately to Just Women’s Sports.

One player texted, “Well this is something, but really, it’s nothing. Just dancing around it.”

Marcoux Samaan appeared on NBC for an interview Saturday to discuss the state of the championship. The ruling was never brought up.

Charlotte Thomas and Su Oh shared on their Instagram stories that they participated in the protests at the Supreme Court.

LPGA layer-board member Amy Olson tweeted a Golfweek article in which she shared her perspective on the situation as a pro-life advocate.

Professional. Pro-woman. Pro-life. https://t.co/7y9asd49SO

— Amy Olson (@AmyOlsonGolf) June 26, 2022

“Now states have the opportunity to protect every life, they haven’t had the option to do that in almost 50 years,” Olson told Golfweek.

“For those who say this hurts women, my question to them is — when does a woman’s life begin? If we can’t answer that question, how can we even have a conversation about women’s rights?”

4. Why was the Congressional course so long?

Congressional Country Club played to a total of 6,894 yards this week, 200 yards longer than Pine Needles for the U.S. Women’s Open (6,638) and 53 yards longer than the PGA Tour’s TPC River Highlands this week.

Rain drenched the course on Wednesday, slowing down the roll of the balls on the fairways and greens. Course officials did not move the tees from their original positions as a result.

Golfer Mariah Stackhouse compared the length to around 7,100 on Thursday due to the conditions, highlighting the extra challenge Chun faced when she shot an eight-under 64 in the first round.

Huge congratulations to @ingeechun_dumbo on a wire-to-wire victory at the @KPMGWomensPGA Championship. That 8-under Thursday was truly something special. (Course had to be playing minimum 7,100+ yds with wet conditions that day.) Great victory for a wonderful human.

— Mariah Stackhouse (@MoStacksBirdies) June 26, 2022

Travis Kreiter, the caddie and fiancé of U.S. Women’s Open runner-up Mina Harigae, expressed his concerns with the setup. He noticed that both Harigae and Jeongeun Lee6, who played in their group, could not reach a number of greens in regulation. With the new $9 million purse raising the stakes of the tournament, the importance placed on distance relative to other facets of the game came under question.

“There is no formula that says that the LPGA Tour should have been playing 6,900 yards,” Kreiter said, “There’s no formula. That or I would like to know what the formula was to get to that number, because it doesn’t make sense other than the fact that they just wanted to have the longest golf course in major championship history.”

Eight players finished the PGA Championship under par 72.

5. Life-changing money for the field

LPGA Commissioner Mollie Marcoux Samaan joked that once the news of the tournament’s purse increase hit players’ inboxes on Tuesday, they would trickle out of the dining area to work on their games.

The pressure was already high for Jennifer Chang, who was making her LPGA major debut in 2022 at the PGA Championship. With a strong performance, she could earn a spot in the next major of the season, the Amundi Evian Championship. If she faltered and missed that, she would move closer to another trip to Q-Series, the LPGA’s qualifying school.

The 22-year-old found something in her game Thursday that allowed her to pull the trigger more quickly over the ball. The adjustment resulted in a T-10 finish, Chang’s career-best finish at a major and a guaranteed spot in the field of the major in France. Perhaps most impactfully, she earned $156,315, the largest paycheck of her career by over $100,000.

“I mean, it’s a huge check,” Chang said. “Usually, in a regular event, third place might get that. It’s a big deal. I can’t even process what’s just happened yet.”

Twenty players earned more than $100,000 on Sunday. Lauren Coughlin and Stephanie Kyriacou also made the first six-figure checks of their careers.

“It really takes one week, right?” Chang said. “Kind of a huge eye-opening experience. And that was the case for me.”

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.

As the WNBA plans to implement league-wide charter flights, the NWSL is struggling with some travel issues of its own. 

Missed flights, inclement weather, and a stretch of midweek games have spurred workload and logistical concerns for a number of NWSL teams. Last week, three games were played Wednesday night, while another three games are set to be played tonight. 

"You can't play your best XI right now because of the amount of games you have," said Red Stars head coach Lorne Donaldson after last Wednesday's 4-2 loss to Washington. Donaldson emphasized the importance of rotating through the team’s depth so as to avoid injury.

"You have to get to about 16 deep where you can," he continued. "Or else your best XI is going to be injured or walk off the field and they can’t finish the season."

Kansas City has faced some of the league's most extreme turnaround times this season. On Sunday, the Current missed an evening flight to Seattle due to a multi-hour rain delay in Houston, throwing off their training schedule ahead of their midweek match against the Reign. The NWSL eventually gave them the green light to charter a plane, but not before frustration spread throughout the team.

"We lost the whole day of the opportunity to recover," said Current head coach Vlatko Andonovski after the Current's weekend draw against the Dash. "So the schedule, it's already challenging to begin with. We have by far the worst schedule in the league, and this just made it even worse.

"We don't have a hotel, we got to figure out a hotel. We don't have flights for tomorrow, we got to figure out flights. We had trainings for some players that we believe needed training time to be able to perform on Wednesday.”

While the team was given permission to charter a plane, navigating such approvals has proven difficult in the past. This past July, the NWSL fined Kansas City $55,000 over the unauthorized use of a charter flight.

Recently retired WNBA superstar Candace Parker has her next gig lined up: president of women’s basketball at Adidas.

Parker announced her retirement at the end of April, bringing a close to a 16-year professional career spanning three WNBA championship titles with three different teams. And now, she’s stepping into a slightly different role — this time off the court — with longtime sponsor Adidas.

"The brand and I have grown together, and we’ve done some amazing things," she told Fast Company in an exclusive interview published Wednesday morning. "I’m excited about what the future holds on this side of things, because I’m so passionate about growing the game of basketball."

Parker initially signed with Adidas at the end of her first professional season in 2008, going on to spend the vast majority of her illustrious WNBA career linked to the German athletic brand. In 2010, she became the first woman to receive a signature Adidas shoe: the ACE Commander.

Her most recent Adidas collaborations include basketball sneakers Exhibit B (2022) and Exhibit Select (2023) in a variety of different colorways, as well as limited edition off-court apparel.

In 2022, Parker led a mentorship program for the brand’s first class of NIL-sponsored college athletes, a stacked roster that involved the likes of rising star Hailey Van Lith, among others. In her new position, she’ll be "overseeing pretty much everything" when it comes to the brand’s women’s basketball operations.

That "everything" includes weighing in on shoe and clothing design, navigating new and existing athlete partnerships, and taking control of Adidas' grassroots growth strategies. She’ll also help with "how we actually speak to the women’s basketball consumer," Eric Wise, who leads the brand’s global basketball business, told Fast Company.

According to Parker, the decision to accept the offer hinged on her desire to be more than just "the face" of Adidas women’s basketball.

"I said to [Adidas], 'I don’t want to be a mascot,'" Parker said. "'I really want to be in the meetings, and I want to be a part of making decisions.'"

Charter flights are on the horizon for the WNBA, with commissioner Cathy Engelbert saying on Tuesday that the league will provide teams with full-time private travel services beginning as soon as this season. 

The move is set to address years of player safety concerns, among other issues. Engelbert told AP Sports Editors that the league aims to launch the program "as soon as we can logistically get planes in place."

The initiative is projected to cost around $25 million per year over the next two seasons.

The WNBA has previously provided charter flights on a limited basis, including during the postseason and when teams were scheduled to play back-to-back regular season games. Individual owners seeking to independently provide their teams with private travel — such as the New York Liberty’s Joe and Clara Wu Tsai back in 2022 — faced significant fines for using unauthorized charters.

While players and team staff have been calling for league-wide charters even before Caitlin Clark and other high profile rookies joined the league, Engelbert has routinely cited steep year-to-year costs as the reasoning behind sticking to commercial flights. 

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However, the WNBA's surging popularity means increased visibility, and a subsequent uptick in security concerns — especially when it comes to big name newcomers like Clark — has Englebert reconsidering her previous decision. 

WNBA Players Association president Nneka Ogwumike called the move "transformational," and credited the WNBPA as well as the league for its implementation. 

"Our league is growing, the demand for women's basketball is growing," Ogwumike told ESPN. "That means more eyes on us, which is what we want, but that means more protection from the organization that we play for, the whole W that we play for.

"Chartering flights not only is a safety measure, the biggest thing, and then obviously what it means to be able to play a game and go home and rest and recover and be the elite athletes that we try to be every single night when we step out onto this court."

Aces coach Becky Hammon called the immediate response to the charter announcement "great" but noted that there are still kinks to be worked out. 

"What it all looks like, we’re still gathering information, we don’t know," she said Tuesday.

Several players emphasized the importance of safety, highlighting how last season the Phoenix Mercury’s Brittney Griner was harassed in an airport while traveling commercial.

"All these players and these faces are becoming so popular that it really is about that as much as it as about recovery," Minnesota Lynx forward Napheesa Collier said.

"Above everything else, I think it's the safety of our players," Mercury player Natasha Cloud added. "We have a prime example with BG on our team that needs to be safe. At airports, it's like a madhouse. You see Caitlin Clark walking through airports, people following her, people trying to touch her, get pictures with her. It's just a safety measure, through and through. You would never have an NBA team walk through an airport."

Prior to Tuesday's announcement, the league had said it would charter flights for the playoffs and back-to-back games via a program introduced last year. The latest news, however, promises that teams will also be provided charters to and from all regular season games.

"Our safety is being taken seriously now, finally. In no world should our security not be a priority," Griner told ESPN. "If we want to be the league that we want to be and have the respect that we have, it comes with some risks. Sometimes people want to get close to you and it's not people you want, so I'm just glad that we don't have to deal with that anymore."

Deja Kelly has landed on her final destination, with the former North Carolina star announcing her commitment to Oregon on Monday. 

A three-time All-ACC guard, Kelly averaged 15.4 points, 3.5 rebounds, and 3.0 assists per game in her four years in Chapel Hill. She led the team in scoring in each of the last three seasons, but opted to transfer elsewhere for her fifth and final year of NCAA eligibility.

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The 5-foot-8 Texas native finishes her UNC career eighth on the team’s scoring list, having helped carry the Tar Heels to a Sweet 16 in 2022. 

Kelly is the seventh new addition for Oregon Ducks coach Kelly Graves this offseason, as the program faced a number of big name departures at the close of the 2023 NCAA tournament. She will join Texas' Amina Muhammad, Arizona's Salimatou Kourouma, Washington's Ari Long, BYU's Nani Falatea, UC Santa Barbara's Alexis Whitfield, and Siena's Elisa Mevius in Eugene this fall.

Kelly wasn't the only noteworthy transfer shaking up women's college hoops this week, with Marquette's Liza Karlen and Pitt's Liatu King both announcing their commitments to Notre Dame within a span of roughly 18 hours.