Professional golfer Olivia Schmidt wants to correct the narrative—when sports organizations allow male athletes to compete against women, they’re protecting the few at the expense of the many. She would know, as Schmidt has spent her entire career thus far working toward qualifying for the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) Tour.
Hundreds of her fellow female golfers enter the competition each year, but this year was different. At this summer’s LPGA Qualifying School, a series of tournaments golfers must win to advance to the LPGA Tour, and female golfers were forced to compete against a trans-identifying male athlete, Hailey Davidson. The male ended up failing to advance out of the second stage of the competition but did earn status on the Epson Tour.
The decision by the LPGA to allow Davidson to compete in the women’s division at all left many female golfers, including Schmidt, disappointed in the organization of which they’ve dreamed of being a part.
For Schmidt, this dream began early in her life when she was deciding between tennis and golf. Weighing the pros and cons, Schmidt said she loved being outside, but her tennis camp took place indoors. So, she went with golf and eventually worked hard enough to turn it into her career.
“I get to spend eight hours on a piece of grass all day, and that’s the best job in the world,” Schmidt said.
But the journey from a young golfer to a professional was anything but easy.
“A lot of time and energy goes into this, a lot of practice, a lot of time away from my family that if I just had a normal desk job, I could go and hang out with them every night. [That’s] time that I could have meeting people and building a family of my own,” she said. “But I’ve given a lot of that up.”
Schmidt golfed at Arkansas State University where, in the 2020-21 season, she set a program record with a 73.48 stroke average, ranking sixth in the Sun Belt Conference. In 2022, Schmidt was the first in program history to earn the title of Sun Belt Golfer of the Year and even holds Arkansas State University records for the most rounds at or under par –– 19 in one season.
These accomplishments led Schmidt into her professional career. She joined the Epson Tour in 2023 and participated in three tournaments on the Ladies European Tour. Schmidt admitted that it’s been tough since she started pursuing golf professionally but credits the people she has met along the way for supporting her through the highs and lows.
“I’ve met the bridesmaids at my wedding, the aunts to my kids one day, and that’s been the biggest gift,” Schmidt said.
This sense of sisterhood was echoed by many other athletes golfing alongside Schmidt during 2024’s LPGA Qualifying School and is a major reason why several chose to speak out with IW Features in its new series “Tee Time” about the injustice of male athletes in women’s competitions.
Right before Qualifying School, a letter signed by more than 275 female golfers, including Schmidt, urged the organization to keep their separate female golf category exclusively female. The LPGA’s current standards allow trans-identifying males to play against women if they undergo wrong-sex hormonal treatment and surgery, but the organization plans to introduce new guidelines for trans-identifying athletes this month.
“We need the LPGA to make a change. The bottom line is we can fight this all we want, but the true change comes from the LPGA,” Schmidt said. “They are the only ones with the power to stop it. It’s up to them to protect us.”
Schmidt went on to argue that there’s a false perception that the women participating in this movement are “anti-trans.”
“In reality, we are just pro-women. This movement isn’t about excluding people, but rather including women and keeping women’s golf female,” she said.
For Schmidt, who one day hopes to be a mother, she wants kids to be able to chase their dreams like she did without the additional hurdle of gender ideology standing in their way.
“When you have a big organization that only protects one person compared to 400 others, it says a lot about who they are and how they handle themselves,” she said. “I think that it’s tough because that one person [Davidson] is following every rule that they [the LPGA] have, and I can respect that, but I also want to protect the future.”
While Stage 2 in this summer’s Qualifying School didn’t go as Schmidt had hoped, and she did not earn her tour card this time around, she said she still has Epson status for the 2025 season and will continue chasing her dream. Throughout this journey, Schmidt intends to keep fighting for female sports alongside the women she credits with profoundly impacting her life.
“I will continue to advocate for keeping women’s sports female until the day I die, whether I am playing or not,” she said. “This is a cause that I believe in.”
