PGA teaching professional Heather Angell arrived at this week’s 2025 KPMG Women’s PGA Championship at PGA Frisco with a golden opportunity to play in a major championship. But her adventure came to a quick, unfortunate end when she was disqualified a for a rare rules error involving her scorecard.
Here’s what you need to know.
Teaching pro disqualified for scorecard error at Women’s PGA
Angell is director of instruction at the Golf Club at Fiddler’s Creek in Naples, Fla., and has been the recipient of several awards honoring her skills as a teacher. Typically teaching professionals don’t play in majors. But Angell earned her way into the field at PGA Frisco via the Colebridge Financial Team.
Through competitions at the 2024 LPGA Professionals National Championship and the 2025 PGA Women’s Stroke Play Championship, 10 PGA pros played their way onto the Colebridge Financial Team, which earned them tee times at the 2025 KPMG Women’s PGA Championship. Angell claimed her spot by finishing fifth at the LPGA Professionals National Championship.
Angell teed off for Thursday’s opening round at 9:17 a.m. local time on the Fields Ranch East course’s 10th hole. The difficult host course, which is making its major debut this week, caused problems for even the world’s best pros, with only 15 players finishing under par in the first round.
It was even harder for the teaching professionals in the field. Angell struggled to a 15-over 87 in Round 1.
But that wasn’t the worst news for Angell. It turns out that she incorrectly wrote down a 5 on her scorecard for the par-5 16th hole, when she had actually made a 6. Angell didn’t realize her error before signing her scorecard.
As a result, she was disqualified thanks to Rule 3.3b for signing an incorrect scorecard with a lower score than she’d earned, and she’ll be heading home early in disappointment. Interstingly, if Angell had instead wrote down a higher score than she actually made, she would not have been disquailifed, but instead would have had to keep the incorrect, higher score.
LPGA’s best shine at KPMG Women’s PGA
It was a very different story for the two top-ranked golfers in the Rolex Women’s World Rankings.
Fresh off a heartbreaking close call at the U.S. Women’s Open, World No. 1 Nelly Korda shot an even-par 72 on Day 1 at PGA Frisco, putting her T16 with 54 holes to play. Korda is hunting for her first victory of the year this week.
The player just behind her in the world rankings fared even better. World No. 2 Jeeno Thitikul fired a four-under 68 on Thusrday to take a one-shot lead at the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship. Despite five LPGA wins, Thitikul has never won a major.
Thitikul and Korda played in the same grouping on Thursday alongside World No. 3 Lydia Ko (75). The star-studded trio will play together again on Friday, teeing off at 2:55 p.m. ET.
