From Player to Stakeholder
Michelle Wie West stepped back from a full tour schedule, but her ambition never left. Through McLaren Golf, WTGL, Los Angeles Golf Club, and her first course design, she is turning years of visibility into equity, influence, and a stake in what golf builds next.
Who Holds the Pen, and the Club
Michelle Wie West's first golf course, a par-3 layout in South Carolina, builds two different games into the same hole. Angeli Gianchandani on why access puts a player in the club, but authority puts the pen in her hand.
She Built It in the Dark
Judith Leiber designed her handbags in her mind while confined in a Budapest ghetto during the Holocaust, then spent six decades turning scarcity, exile, and reinvention into a signature rather than a wound.
The Double Strand
Aryna Sabalenka wore a $148,000 necklace to Roland Garros and was asked how she could advocate for higher prize money. Novak Djokovic has a $121,000 watch trilogy named after his titles. Nobody asked him anything. Angeli Gianchandani applies cultural intelligence to the question women in sport are still being asked that men never are.
The Prize Was Always Called a Purse
Golf calls its prize money a “purse,” but the men who named it had already traded theirs for pockets. From Augusta’s century-long resistance to women members to the pay gaps still splitting tennis and golf, this is how Billie Jean King, Annika Sorenstam, and Serena Williams stopped waiting for the system and built their own.
The World Cup Made Her
She started as an intern on a demanding automotive account. She went on to run Mastercard’s FIFA partnership, manage Pelé’s appearances, and work inside the 2006 World Cup Final. Angeli Gianchandani on the Division 1 discipline that carried her to Chief Revenue Officer, and why she went back to coach.
The Truth Behind the Green Jacket
One Weekend. One Year.
Augusta sets the standard once a year. The rest of the season is spent deciding whether you met it. The course closes in summer to protect the bentgrass greens from Georgia's heat. The crew tends the grass when no one is watching. The players are building their game all year. The members show up October through May. And then the world watches for four days every April.
The standard does not take a season off.
Woman in Hot Water
On the May 2026 cover of Vogue, Anna Wintour called The Devil Wears Prada a classic. Something that endures. Something the culture keeps returning to.
I know exactly what that is.
The Long Game of Power and Even Longer Game of Freedom
Grit beats pedigree. Every time.
I believe that. I have lived that. And then I read a story that made me sit with what happens when pedigree shows up without the internal foundation to hold it.
Silence Is a Strategy
Eileen Gu can explain the physics of a double cork 1620 with scientific precision. She can break down torque, rotational velocity, body alignment, and landing angles in exact detail. On snow, nothing is left to chance.