PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — Ina Kim-Schaad outlasted Hanley Lengthy within the longest championship match in U.S. Ladies’s Mid-Beginner historical past Thursday, profitable with an 18-foot birdie putt on the fifth additional gap on Monterey Peninsula Nation Membership’s Dunes Course.
Kim-Schaad, a 42-year-old from Jupiter, Florida, additionally received in 2019. She is the fourth-oldest winner in occasion historical past and the primary two-time winner since Julia Potter-Bobb in 2016. The match is open to gamers 25 and older with a Handicap Index that does not exceed 9.4.
“I am overwhelmed with emotion, actually,” Kim-Schaad stated. “I really love this place, and my husband and I bought married in Carmel. To do it at such a particular place, golf course, with my household right here and my husband on the bag, his birthday day week, and for a second time, it is like there’s not even sufficient language to place round simply all of the feels that I am feeling.”
Lengthy, a 28-year-old from Clarksville, Tennessee, squared it with a par on the par-4 seventeenth when Kim-Schaad’s method flew the inexperienced and she or he needed to play her third shot from a cart path. Each gamers bogeyed the par-4 18th to ship it additional holes. They parred the primary 4 playoff holes, with Lengthy holing an 18-footer on the second additional gap.
“It was an absolute battle on the market your entire day,” Lengthy stated. “Truthfully, I am simply so happy with my grit and willpower all through your entire day, conserving my head up and held excessive and by no means giving up.”
Each finalists earned spots within the 2026 U.S. Ladies’s Open at Riviera Nation Membership and the 2026 U.S. Ladies’s Beginner, with Kim-Schaad additionally moving into the 2027 U.S. Ladies’s Beginner.
The earlier longest match in match historical past was 22 holes in 1989 in Robin Weiss’ victory over Web page Marsh Lea.
