Brittany Lincicome has been offered a sponsor exemption to compete on the PGA Tour this summer at the Barbasol Championship.
Lincicome, 32, a winner of eight LPGA Tour titles, including two major championships, is one of the longest-hitting players in the women's game. She would join the likes of Annika Sorenstam and Michelle Wie as the only female golfers in recent times to play in an official PGA Tour event.
"I always thought it would be cool to try," Lincicome told reporters at the U.S. Women's Open in Birmingham, Alabama. "I'm not trying to prove anything."
The Barbasol Championship will be played July 19-22, opposite of The Open. It was won last year by Grayson Murray and will be played at Keene Trace Golf Club in Nicholasville, Kentucky.
Lincicome has an endorsement deal with Pure Silk, whose parent company also owns Barbasol. She has won the last two Pure Silk LPGA events in the Bahamas.
She is not unfamiliar playing against male golfers. Lincicome's husband is long-drive competitor Dewald Gouws, and she has played in mini-tour events to prepare for the LPGA season. Growing up in southwest Florida, she competed against and sometimes defeated boys in junior and high school play.
"Those guys were very welcoming and I had a great time, so hopefully it's the same," Lincicome said of her mini-tour experiences. "I'm already nervous. I feel like every time I walk by one of those guys they are going to look at me like, 'Why the heck are you here?' Hopefully they are really nice. If the tours think it's OK and there really is no negative side to it, I guess the worst I could do is miss the cut."
Sorenstam, an LPGA Hall of Famer, played in the 2003 Colonial to considerable fanfare but missed the 36-hole cut. Wie played in several PGA Tour events, the most recent 10 years ago, but never made the cut. Other women to play in PGA Tour events were Babe Zaharias and Suzy Whaley.
Information from ESPN contributor Bill Fields was used in this report.