Caitlin Clark brought her golf game and a big buzz to the LPGA Tour on Wednesday when the basketball star played in a pro-am that attracted a bigger crowd than the tour often gets for its tournament rounds.

Clark played nine holes with Nelly Korda, the No. 1 player in women’s golf who is competing for the first time in nearly two months after a minor neck injury. She played the back nine at Pelican Golf Club with Annika Sorenstam, host of a tournament called The Annika.

During a brief interview with Golf Channel, the WNBA rookie of the year was asked if she picked up any tips from Korda.

“I’ve watched and she’s amazing,” Clark said. “But golf is hard.”

The gallery packed behind the ropes to watch Clark, and she signed autographs for hundreds of fans when the pro-am was over.

Clark has an endorsement deal with Indiana-based Gainbridge, the presenting sponsor of the LPGA’s penultimate tournament on the schedule. She also took part in a women’s leadership summit hosted by Gainbridge.

“It can only help grow women’s golf,” Brittany Lincicome said Tuesday, bringing a basketball for Clark to sign for her daughters.

Korda comes from a top sporting family. Her older sister, Jessica, played in the Solheim Cup and younger brother Sebastian is No. 23 in the men’s tennis ranking. Their father, Petr Korda, won the 1998 Australian Open in tennis.

She said she has messaged with Clark on Instagram, but nothing topped spending time inside the ropes.

“To see the influence that she has on people, bringing people out here, and to see how amazing of an influence she is just for sports, was really cool to see firsthand today,” Korda said.

Clark said she likes getting away to play golf — she played in the John Deere Classic pro-am last summer on the PGA Tour — and she contributed one putt from about 3-point range.

“It was great to see how relaxed she was,” Korda said. “Obviously with the media attention she has gotten probably in the past year-and-a-half, two years, you can see how she’s comfortable playing in front of a larger crowd. And she was just really enjoying it. You can tell.

“She’s definitely very talented. She was picking the ball really clean. She was losing a couple shots to the right, but I asked her how many times a week she plays and I think with the amount of obligations she has she probably gets to the golf course once a week.”

Korda last played at the Kroger Queen City Championship on Sept. 22, a week after she led the Americans to a Solheim Cup victory. She spoke of having migraines and thinks her neck injury that kept her from the Asian swing might have been related.

Korda already has clinched LPGA player of the year for the first time. She leads the Race to CME Globe but still needs to win the season-ending CME Group Tour Championship next week, which awards $4 million to the winner.

Baseball

Williams’ memorabilia up for auction >> Ted Williams’ Presidential Medal of Freedom, which was presented to him by fellow World War II naval aviator George H.W. Bush, is among the items up for auction from the memorabilia collection of the ballplayer’s daughter.

The medal is expected to fetch $25,000-$50,000. Other lots include Williams’ 1946 AL Most Valuable Player Award and the silver baseball bat he earned for winning the AL batting title in 1958 (both estimated to go for $150,000-$300,000).

The items in the auction belonged to the Hall of Famer and had been held by his daughter, Claudia, who died in December. A first batch of items from the collection went up for auction in 2012 at Fenway Park and garnered more than $5 million.

Also included in the auction was the “hitter.net” hat that Williams wore for a pregame ceremony at the 1999 All-Star Game in Boston, when the current players were so eager to meet him that they had to be told to let him leave the field so the game could begin.

Schumaker hired by Rangers >> The Texas Rangers have hired former Miami Marlins manager Skip Schumaker as a senior adviser for baseball operations.

Texas announced Schumaker’s addition to its front office on Wednesday, when the team also signed right-handed pitcher Luis Curvelo to a one-year contract calling for the $760,000 minimum while in the major leagues and $90,000 while in the minors.

Schumaker was the 2023 NL Manager of the Year after Miami went 84-78 and made the fourth postseason appearance in club history. The Marlins slipped to 62-100 last season after the organization had parted ways with general manager Kim Ng, who was responsible for hiring Schumaker and building the roster that made the playoffs.

The Marlins and Schumaker mutually agreed that he would not return for the 2025 season. He led a roster decimated by trades and injuries to a 146-178 record over the past two seasons.

Before going to Miami, Schumaker was a bench coach for St. Louis, where he played for the Cardinals during their 2011 World Series championship over Texas.