This three-time winner named the family boat after an LPGA major

After Lauren Coughlin finished third at the 2024 Chevron Championship, she told her husband, John Pond, that rather than give him the normal caddie cut, she’d buy him a boat. Later that year, when she finished fourth at the Amundi Evian, she told him that the boat just got bigger. "I want one with a crew now," he cracked after she won twice that summer.

Eventually, the couple got their boat, a 25-foot Carolina skiff christened “Chevian. ” Coughlin, 33, spent the offseason in South Florida where she plays out The Dye Preserve in Jupiter. While out fishing with her husband on Wednesday after the season-opening Tournament of Champions in January, Coughlin jumped down into the boat, landed on her left leg and felt it pop.

The calf injury kept her out of the Asian swing, missing limited-field events in Thailand and Singapore. Though a forced break, Coughlin began to view it as a good reset, both mentally and physically. She returned to action at the Fortinet Founders Cup in mid-March, where she made the cut and then finished back of the pack on Sunday at the Ford Championship birdie-fest.

On the drive from Phoenix to Las Vegas for the inaugural Aramco Championship at Shadow Creek, Coughlin and her husband talked about the progress being made. In January, she changed the lie angles on her irons and felt something click. At the Ford, she went back to her old driver shaft and found success.