The Pathway Is Working NXXT Women's Pro Tour | 2025/26 Season in Review
- Andrei Rosales
- 1 day ago
- 5 min read
A Message from Stuart McKinnon, President & CEO of NXXT Golf
When we built NXXT Golf, we made a single defining promise: that this platform would be more than a place to compete. It would be a place to become.
Three seasons in, that promise is no longer a vision statement. It is a track record and it has names.
A Season That Defined the Platform Sweden's Sara Ericsson claimed the 2025 GolfJoy Player of the Year title on the NXXT Women's Pro Tour, competing against 127 players from 23 countries in one of the most internationally diverse and competitive fields in our tour's history. Sara did not win the season on the strength of a single event, she won it through discipline, consistency, and the ability to perform when it mattered most, capping her campaign with a runner-up finish at the season finale that lifted her to the top of the final standings. That is what a championship mindset looks like.
That standard was set against exceptional competitive depth. Across the 2024/25 and 2025/26 seasons, the NXXT Women's Pro Tour produced a sustained and remarkable wave of first professional victories. The following players each broke through on this platform: Annabelle Pancake, Alice Hodge, Laney Frye, Megan Schofill, Leigha Devine, Lauren Miller, Abbey Daniel, Jennifer Rosenberg, Hailey Jones, Shauna Liu, Mohan Du, Polly Mack, Gabby Barker, Katie Lu, and Hollie Muse. Six of those victories came within a single winter series a concentration of breakthroughs that speaks directly to the competitive quality of the environment we have built.
Four players won their very first professional event on this tour arriving from elite amateur backgrounds and delivering immediately on the biggest stage of their young careers.
What Happens After NXXT
The true measure of a development platform is not what happens on it, it is what happens because of it. On that measure, the results speak with increasing clarity.
Nataliya Guseva is among the most compelling examples of the NXXT pathway in action. A three-time NXXT champion, she posted six top-10 finishes in her LPGA rookie season - a debut that announced her as a legitimate force at the highest level of the game.
Jessica Porvasnik used the NXXT platform as critical preparation during a seven-year professional journey defined by determination. She posted back-to-back runner-up finishes on NXXT heading into her LPGA debut, arriving with the form and conviction this tour helped build.
Laney Frye won the inaugural Battle of the Sexes defeating a co-ed professional field before completing her Epson Tour rookie year and securing her LPGA Tour card for 2026.
Hailee Cooper, a former NXXT champion, qualified for the 2025 U.S. Women's Open, finished inside the top 10 of the Epson Tour standings, and earned her LPGA Tour card for the 2026 season.
Mohan Du of China won the Battle of the Sexes II on our platform securing her first professional win in North America in a co-ed field where the top 10 finished evenly split between men and women before going on to earn her 2026 LPGA Tour card at Final Qualifying.
Polly Mack of Germany won her first professional title in a dramatic three-way playoff on the NXXT Women's Pro Tour, then followed that breakthrough by earning her 2026 LPGA Tour card at Final Qualifying the same season.
These are not isolated stories. They are a pattern and the pattern is accelerating.
A Platform Built for Every Competitor
It is worth being clear about what NXXT Golf has become. While the Women's Pro Tour remains our flagship and the foundation of everything we have built, NXXT Golf today operates as a multi-tour platform built around a single principle: equal opportunity.
The NXXT Battle Tour - North America's first professional co-ed tour - places female and male professionals on the same field, the same leaderboard, and competing for the same title and purse.
The NXXT Faldo Junior Tour - welcomes boys and girls under the same competitive framework and the same championship standards. In every format we operate, female athletes are not accommodated they are equal competitors. That is not a footnote. It is a design principle and it extends to the families of every junior, amateur, and professional who competes on this platform.
Building the Pipeline
A professional pathway is only as strong as the foundation beneath it. That is why we have invested deliberately in the development architecture that feeds it.
Our Play-Up model provides elite juniors and top amateurs with exemptions into select NXXT professional championships competing directly against touring professionals in full championship conditions, not as guests, but as genuine competitors. The results are immediate and tangible.
Shauna Liu, a 16-year-old two-time Canadian Junior Girls champion and Team Canada NextGen standout, delivered a commanding performance at the NXXT Women's Championship at LPGA International winning at 4-under-par to claim her first professional-level victory and an Epson Tour exemption, with Maisie Filler securing runner-up honors via a dramatic sudden-death playoff. Through our partnership with GolfJoy, Liu subsequently earned a start at the GolfJoy Women's Open at Mission Hills on the CLPGA Tour in China an official world-ranking event competing against a global professional field. A 16-year-old junior golfer. A world-ranking event in China. The pathway working exactly as designed.
At the season finale, amateur Daniela Ballesteros of Peru, also competing through the Play-Up pathway, finished third against a full professional field a further example of what this model produces when elite junior talent meets a genuine competitive environment.
A Global Junior Platform: The NXXT Faldo Junior Tour
This spring, we took the most significant step yet in building a connected global pathway for the next generation.
The launch of the NXXT Faldo Junior Tour formally connects our platform to one of the most storied and consequential junior development programs in the history of the game. Sir Nick Faldo launched the Faldo Series in 1996 to provide competitive opportunities for junior golfers under 21 from around the world. Over thirty years, the series has developed alumni including Rory McIlroy, Yani Tseng, Tyrrell Hatton, and Danny Willett players who went on to become Major champions and World Number Ones. The vision, from the beginning, has been to create a junior golf legacy that lasts a lifetime and develops tomorrow's champions. That vision is our vision.
Through the NXXT Faldo Junior Tour, North American junior players now compete within a globally recognized framework, with top performers earning the opportunity to advance to Faldo Series Grand Finals including the prestigious Asia Grand Final in Vietnam. For a junior golfer on this continent, that represents a world-class competitive opportunity that did not previously exist here.
And the pathway extends upward from there. NXXT junior winners earn play-up exemptions into our Women's Pro Tour. Women's Pro Tour winners earn Epson Tour exemptions. Through the Faldo Series, our platform now connects to a global network spanning 45 countries. From a junior tee box in Florida to a world-ranking event in China the route is mapped, and it is real.
Junior. Amateur. Professional. Global. Connected.
That is the pathway.
Looking Ahead
As we close this season and build toward 2026/27, the mission is clear and the structure is in place. We will continue expanding competitive opportunities for athletes at every stage of development — from juniors taking their first steps in elite competition to professionals fighting for LPGA Tour status. We will keep building a platform where performance is rewarded with genuine next steps, not just trophies.
As a father of five daughters, this has never been solely a professional ambition. It is a personal conviction. I believe deeply in building a platform where female athletes have the opportunity, the visibility, and the structure they deserve — at every stage of the journey, from their first junior event to the biggest stages in the game.
The foundation is real. The players are real. The pathway is real.
Now we build what comes next.
Stuart McKinnon
Founder, President & CEO | NXXT Golf
Three Tours · One Modern Platform
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