It got much closer than Jennifer Kupcho certainly wanted it, but in the end, a win is a win!

Kupcho won the Chevron Championship – marking her first career LPGA Tour victory – by two over Jessica Korda on Sunday, the final event hosted at the iconic Dinah Shore course at Mission Hills Country Club after 50 years.

Kupcho was a star at Wake Forest University and won the inaugural Augusta National Women’s Amateur – which wrapped up Saturday afternoon – but she hadn’t yet won on the LPGA Tour.

She’s been close in the past, having notched two runner-up results and 11 top-10 finishes in her young career (she was also part of the 2019 Solheim Cup team) but until Sunday, Kupcho hadn’t taken an event across the finish line.

The Chevron Championship – which will move to the Houston area next year after a half-century in the California desert – is one of the most storied events in women’s golf and made for a wonderful place to win for the first time on the LPGA Tour.

“It was a lot,” Kupcho said with a deep exhale after the win was finalized. “I’m still shaking. It was just so fun to be out there especially with Patty (Tavatanakit, the defending champion). It was a lot of hard work (to keep emotions in check) and a lot of deep breaths.

Kupcho started the day with a six-shot lead, but nerves almost got the better of her. She made seven bogeys on Sunday, including on No’s 17 and 18. She also made back-to-back bogeys on 13 and 14 and was put on the clock due to her pace of play.

However, the squares on the scorecard ended up mattering little.

Korda, who is still looking for her first major championship win, kept chipping away at Kupcho’s lead through the day but was suffering through muscle spasms and couldn’t keep up to Kupcho as the day wore on.

Korda was hurting so much that at one point on the back nine she laid on the ground and got medical treatment.

Korda’s runner-up result marked her best-career major championship finish.

Pia Babnik, an 18-year-old who joined the Ladies European Tour when she was just 16(!), notched her best-ever major championship result as well, finishing third.

Hinako Shibuno, Celiene Boutier, Lexi Thompson, and Tavatanakit finished tied for fourth.

And 34 years after Amy Alcott first leapt into Poppie’s Pond – one of the most iconic celebrations in the game of golf – Kupcho became the final golfer to make the victorious jump.

Golf Town Athlete Brooke Henderson was hoping to take advantage of an excellent Saturday round to continue to climb the leaderboard on the final day of the first major of the year, but things didn’t quite go her way early.

Still, Brooke’s wonderful start to the 2022 season continued with another solid result. She ended up finishing tied for 13th – her eighth top-20 finish in her last 15 major-championship starts.

Brooke was 1 under through two holes, but unfortunately made three straight bogeys on No’s 3-5. She added one a birdie on the par-3 14th and for good measure, she rolled in a beautiful birdie putt from about 25 feet on the 72nd hole of the championship.

She ended up 6 under for the week.

In case anyone was wondering about Brooke’s switch to a shorter driver (the LPGA Tour adapted a new rule last week saying clubs can be no longer than 46 inches. Brooke has, of course, used a 48-inch driver since she was 15 years old), it went as well as it could have, considering the major-championship circumstances.

Brooke averaged more than 280 yards off the tee through three rounds plus hit more than 76 percent of her fairways. It’s something she’ll continue to work on, but so far so good.

“It’s been going pretty well,” said Brooke on Saturday. “I’ve been hitting the driver well and I’ve been hitting a lot of fairways, too, which is always great.”

The LPGA Tour is off next week before returning for an event in Hawaii, which Brooke won in both 2018 and 2019.