The Good-Good Golf Podcast · TalkinGolf Productions

Ep 152: Evian and more With Emma Ballard of Women and Golf

·1 hr 9 min·2 clips

Rod Murray starts out sounding properly cooked. He says the week has left him punch drunk from the steady run of big tournaments in both men's and women's golf, and that sets the tone straight away. The next stop is the Evian Championship in France. The contrast with last week’s Open Championship at Hoylake is part of the setup, and the show keeps circling back to the hillside setting high above Lake Geneva. Emma Ballard from the Women in Golf website joins the conversation. She has just come back from Spain, where she was at the venue for the Junior Solheim Cup, and the panel treats that as the kind of gruelling work trip only golf people can fully appreciate. Adrian Logue is back too. The room immediately notices he has been absent for several weeks and leans into the usual teasing about where he has been, whether anyone should have been worried, and why a postcard would have been nice. That kind of joking carries the first stretch. It gives the episode the loose, slightly unruly rhythm the show likes, where the serious points arrive through interruption rather than formal setup. Once the conversation settles, it turns into a wider discussion of women’s golf. The panel talks through what it means when a young player wins a major and still gets filed away as if the result needs extra permission. A mixed team event comes up as a real possibility. The argument is that, for a general golf fan, that kind of event could be brilliant, even if it does not automatically bring in the whole wider audience. The knock-on effect matters. The show keeps returning to the idea that women’s golf can add something meaningful without pretending it has to borrow value from the men's game to justify itself. The Presidents Cup becomes the sharper example. The panel argues that it is the event most in need of a reset, because it has long been treated like Ryder Cup light and has never fully found the same pull. The point is blunt. If golf wants the kind of injection that transformed the Ryder Cup, the Presidents Cup is the place to try something bolder. The women are not the add-on here. They are the missing piece that could make the competition feel like more than a polite echo of something else. Emma’s perspective keeps that argument grounded. The discussion does not drift off into theory for its own sake, because it keeps coming back to how real audiences watch, what actually attracts attention, and which formats have room to grow. There is also a small side road into pronunciation and names. Ronnie’s preferred name gets clarified, and the LPGA media tape pronunciation guide gets a nod, handled with the sort of dry practicality that makes the room feel familiar rather than polished. That detail matters more than it sounds. It is one of those little moments that shows the show is comfortable with the texture of golf culture, not just the headline topic. Through all of it, the panel stays conversational and blunt. It does not tidy every thought into a neat preview. It lets the questions breathe, lets the teasing sit next to the serious points, and keeps slipping between tournament setup, women’s golf, access, governance, and the practical shape of the sport. By the end, the episode has covered Evian, the Junior Solheim Cup, the Presidents Cup, and the ongoing problem of how golf decides what deserves to matter. It closes with the usual thanks and the sense that everyone has talked themselves into the next week already.

As heard by us

A clear-eyed Evian preview that opens into a stubborn case for mixed events and the Presidents Cup.

The episode starts with a clear-eyed look at the string of big tournaments in men's and women's golf, then settles into a preview of the Evian Championship in France.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Want Evian chat that wanders into a bigger argument about where women's golf can take the game?

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from The Good-Good Golf Podcast