Welcome to the second edition of the Just Women’s Sports LPGA power rankings. The tour has had three tournaments since we released our inaugural power rankings, and the results have shaken up the top 10.

Jennifer Kupcho made the winning leap into Poppie’s Pond at the 51st and final Chevron Championship. Hyo Joo Kim hula-danced along the Hawaiian shores to celebrate her Lotte Championship victory. Nasa Hataoka broke away from the field to claim the LA Open trophy last weekend by five strokes.

With the LPGA’s second of back-to-back tournaments in Los Angeles at Palos Verdes Golf Club underway this weekend, we run down the top 10 players on tour right now.

1. Jin Young Ko

After seven wins in her last 13 tournaments, Ko was close to extending her lead in these rankings during the third round of the DIO Implant Open. Instead, the World No. 1 found herself in the barranca in front of the 17th green. Rather than taking a penalty out of the hazard, Ko tried twice to get out before electing to drop. She ended up posting the first quadruple bogey of her five-year LPGA career, falling to five strokes behind eventual winner Nasa Hataoka. She played the final 20 holes at six-over par to finish T-21.

“I played not bad,” Ko said after her third round. “Just 17 was big mistake.”

Ko has had too much recent success otherwise to be knocked from the top perch. She posted 34 consecutive rounds under par following the first round of the Chevron Championship, where she shot a 74. The 13-time winner also posted 16 straight rounds in the 60s, another LPGA record.

The door could open for a new No. 1 if her blistering win streak remains on hold. Likewise, Ko’s grip on the Rolex No. 1 World Ranking is slipping. The 1.3-average ranking point cushion she built over Nelly Korda following her fourth-place finish at the JTBC Classic slowly trickled to 0.89 this week, as Korda remains sidelined while recovering from a blood clot. The World No. 2 last teed it up at the LPGA Drive On Championship in early February.

Starts: 4
Wins: 1
Top 10s: 2
Best Finish: Win at HSBC Women’s Championship
Last Month: 1st

2. Lydia Ko

Ko was not able to successfully defend her 2021 Lotte Championship, but the freshly-turned 25-year-old extended her consecutive top-30 finishes to 15 in a row dating back to July of last year at the Dow Great Lakes Bay Invitational. It’s her longest such streak since she won 22 in a row from 2015-16, a run that also included seven titles.

The two-time major champion finished T-25 at the Chevron Championship and T-18 at the Lotte Championship. After celebrating her birthday during the DIO Implant LA Open, Ko is back in action at Palos Verdes Golf Club this weekend.

In 2022, the former World No. 1 hasn’t finished outside of the top 25.

Starts: 6
Wins: 1
Top 10s: 2
Best Finish: Win at Gainbridge LPGA at Boca Rio
Last Month: 3rd

3. Hyo Joo Kim

In a nearly identical 2022 resume to Lydia Ko, Kim hasn’t finished outside of the top 26 in 2022. She won the Lotte Championship and finished T-8 at the Chevron Championship since the last iteration of these rankings. The 2014 Evian Championship winner sits in second place in scoring average at 69.3, trailing only Nanna Koerstz Madsen.

Her consistent results are due in part to her ability to recover around the green. The 2020 Olympian leads the LPGA in scrambling percentage, making par or better 77.9 percent of the time over 95 missed greens in regulation this season.

Starts: 5
Wins: 1
Top 10s: 3
Best Finish: Victory at the Lotte Championship
Last Month: Not Ranked

4. Atthaya Thitikul

Thitikul notched another top 10 since her maiden victory at the JTBC Classic at the end of March, with a T-6 at the LPGA Lotte Championship. The Thai star is putting together an impressive debut season so far, remaining well above her peers in the Louise Suggs Rolex Rookie of the Year Race with 468 points. That’s good for a 135-point advantage over Hye-Jin Choi (323) in second place and a 177-point edge over Hinako Shibuno (291) in third. Na Rin An (176) sits in fourth, rounding out the group with over 150 points.

Rookie of the Year is the only major award Thitikul is in contention for. The 19-year-old is fourth in the Rolex Player of the Year race with 45 points, trailing leader Jennifer Kupcho by 20.

Starts: 8
Wins: 1
Top 10s: 4
Best Finish: Win at JTBC Classic
Last Month: 4th

5. Nanna Koerstz Madsen

The Dane is third in scoring average on the LPGA Tour. She followed up her playoff loss at the JTBC Classic with a T-8 at the Chevron Championship to make it three top 10s in a row, along with her victory in Thailand.

Koerstz Madsen is currently second in strokes gained while putting, with her flat stick averaging 29 putts per round, just over a stroke better than her 2021 average. She’s also crushing her driver, averaging just over 280 off the tee. That makes her the second-longest hitter off the tee this season, trailing fellow Dane Emily Kristine Pedersen by two yards.

Koertz Madsen’s T-48 at the DIO Implant ended her top-10 streak, but she and Danielle Kang are the only two golfers with a win and a runner-up finish in 2022.

Starts: 7
Wins: 1
Top 10s: 3
Best Finish: Win at Honda LPGA Thailand
Last Month: 6th

6. Nasa Hataoka

After the 23-year-old missed the cut at the Lotte Championship, Hataoka had a 90-minute lesson with a new coach who helped launch her to victory in Hawaii. Hataoka felt more open to making changes to her swing after not playing the weekend, and she worked on moving the ball further up in her stance and closer to her body.

The change resulted in Hataoka winning the DIO Implant Open by five shots, the biggest margin of victory on tour this season. The win, her sixth during her six-year career on tour, tied her with Jessica Korda for the most wins without a major title among active LPGA players. Her lone top-10 finish is deceiving based on her performances. In four starts before she missed the cut in Hawaii, she finished T-11, T-12, T-16 and T-17.

This week, six is a theme for Hataoka, with her victory moving her to sixth in the Rolex World Rankings, three spots off of her career-best.

Starts: 9
Wins: 1
Top 10s: 1
Best Finish: Win at DIO Implant LA Open
Last Month: Not Ranked

7. Jennifer Kupcho

Kupcho broke through for her first LPGA victory on the major stage at the Rancho Mirage Dinah Shore course, leaping into Poppie’s Pond to punctuate her major championship. In 67 career LPGA starts, Kupcho had been within three shots of the lead six other times but had not won until Chevron.

“Once I started putting myself in contention and not succeeding, I really worked with my swing coach,” she said. “He’s also really good with the mental game. So just talking to him a lot about what’s going through my mind all the time and trying to figure out how to process my way through that.”

The 24-year-old shared after her win that it was challenging to hear fans call out Nelly Korda’s or Lexi Thompson’s names instead of her own on the course in the past. She’s now in their category with a major title, three years after winning the 2019 Augusta National Women’s Amateur.

Two missed cuts and a T-64 at the DIO Implant LA Open keep Kupcho further down the list, but the American’s star has been rising since the Solheim Cup. She holds an early lead on the Rolex Player of the Year race with 65 points, leading Koerstz Madsen by 17.

Starts: 8
Wins: 1
Top 10s: 2
Best Finish: Win at Chevron Championship
Last Month: Not Ranked

8. Celine Boutier

Boutier’s consistent run of play extends through the opening salvo of the season, with the French golfer leading the tour with five top-10 finishes. The Frenchwoman finished T-4 at the Chevron Championship, T-10 at the Lotte Championship and T-14 at the DIO Implant Open, finishing a stroke off of her third top-10 in a row at Wilshire Country Club.

At her press conference ahead of the Palos Verdes Championship, Boutier cited putting improvements as the difference-maker in her play. She’s T-17 on tour this year with 29 putts per round, a one-stroke improvement from 2021, when she averaged 30.1 putts per round (T-57).

Starts: 8
Wins: 0
Top 10s: 5
Best Finish: 3rd at Honda LPGA Thailand
Last Month: 8th

9. Danielle Kang

Kang and Koertz Madsen are the only two players with a victory and runner-up finish in 2022. Kang’s electric start nearly put her at the top of the original version of the power rankings, but she has cooled off since.

She finished T-17 at the Chevron Championship, then withdrew from the Lotte Championship with an injury. Kang failed to break 70 in four rounds at the DIO Implant LA Open for a T-35 finish, after posting in the 60s in 13 of 16 rounds over her first four events of the year.

She’s holding in the top 10 of the rankings because of her success at the start of the season, but she’ll need a dramatic turnaround to move back into second place.

Starts: 5
Wins: 1
Top 10s: 4
Best Finish: Win at Hilton Resorts Tournament of Champions
Last Month: 2nd

10. Minjee Lee

In March, the Australian passed on the opening Florida swing to remain in the Eastern Hemisphere for her debut at the HSBC World Championship in Sinagpore. Lee blitzed the final round with 11 birdies for a 63 and T-2 finish. It set the tone for a stellar start to the year, as Lee hasn’t finished outside of the top 25 across her five starts in 2022. She finished in 12th place at the Chevron Championship and had a T-3 at the DIO Implant Open since the last rankings.

The 2021 Amundi Evian Championship winner leads the tour in scoring average by a quarter of a stroke. Her low scoring is also why she sits in the lead in the Aon Risk Reward Challenge, a million-dollar competition that Aon sponsors on the LPGA and PGA Tour, rewarding the golfer with the lowest average score on a specific hole at each tournament. Lee’s averaging -1.1 over two combined scores, 0.1 ahead of 2017 KPMG Women’s PGA champion So Yeon Ryu.

Starts: 5
Wins: 0
Top 10s: 2
Best Finish: T-2 at the HSBC Women’s World Championship
Last Month: Not Ranked

Kent Paisley is a contributing writer at Just Women’s Sports covering golf and the LPGA. He also contributes to Golf Digest. Follow him on Twitter @KentPaisley.

Expansion team WNBA Golden State has officially brought on New York Liberty assistant GM Ohemaa Nyanin as general manager, the team announced in a Monday afternoon statement.

The move marks one of the first major personnel hires for the highly anticipated franchise, set to begin league play in 2025. Nyanin will oversee all basketball operations for the Bay Area addition, including building out the roster, shaping the team, and developing talent. 

Nyanin joins team president Jess Smith and senior vice president of marketing and communications Kimberly Veale in the WNBA Golden State front office.

"Ohemaa is the perfect fit to lead our WNBA basketball operations as we prepare for our inaugural season in 2025," Warriors co-executive chairman and CEO Joe Lacob said in the release. "As we moved through the GM hiring process, it became more apparent each day how impressive and well-versed Ohemaa is in all facets of the business, and as a person."

Nyanin was with the Liberty for more than five years, most recently serving as the team’s assistant general manager. Prior to that, she spent five years as the assistant director of the women’s national team at USA Basketball, helping to oversee team operations through gold medal wins at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio and the 2018 FIBA Women's Basketball World Cup.

"I am truly honored to be chosen as the first general manager of WNBA Golden State," Nyanin said. "Throughout the interview process, it was clear that bringing a WNBA team to the Bay Area was meticulously thought out and those involved are motivated changemakers who will be proactive in growing the league. I look forward to joining this franchise and building a competitive basketball team that the fans deserve."

In a July 2023 profile published by The Next, Liberty assistant coach Roneeka Hodges described Nyanin as the New York team's “Ms. Make-it-Happen."

"She’s a jack of all trades," added Hodges, while Liberty GM Jonathan Kolb paid Nyanin a particularly prophetic compliment.

"She needs to be a general manager in this league," Kolb said. "Full stop, it needs to happen, and that’s her goal."

Chelsea began Sunday with their WSL title hopes a distant dream... before closing out the weekend right back in the thick of the title chase.

The Blues made a last-ditch effort to claim their fifth consecutive Barclays WSL title on Sunday with an 8-0 win over relegation-bound Bristol City. The victory came after a visiting Arsenal upset current table-toppers Manchester City at Joie Stadium, besting the home side 2-1 on back-to-back goals from Stina Blackstenius. With the win, the third-place Gunners re-opened the door for Chelsea to finish level at the top of the table on points.

Chelsea remains second in the standing, with 49 points to Manchester City's 52. But the barrage of goalscoring over the weekend could be enough to overtake City's potential tiebreak advantage in goal differential, leaving even coach Emma Hayes in awe.

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Chelsea holds a game in hand, but the Blues will need to win their May 15th match against Tottenham to give them a shot at the title. Should they take all three points, the title race will come down to the final weekend, when Chelsea squares off with Manchester United while City faces Aston Villa on Saturday, May 18th. 

Set to take over the USWNT in June, Hayes acknowledged the likelihood of finishing out her time at Chelsea with zero trophies, after losing in both the Conti Cup final and UWCL semifinal last month. But for now, her initial pessimism has subsided.

"Let me be clear, it's not f*****g over," Hayes said after coaching her last home match with Chelsea on Sunday. "There's no time for sentimentality, all work drinks are canceled. There's a title to be won.

"This group of players taught me something so special this week — that you never ever give up."

A WNBA League Pass error left fans scrambling to watch Angel Reese and Kamilla Cardoso make their preseason debuts for the Chicago Sky in Minneapolis on Friday. 

Despite indicating streaming availability via YouTube before tip-off, the evening’s game was later removed from the league’s platform. With no streaming options — along with no live TV broadcast — WNBA fan Alli Schneider began livestreaming the game on X from her seat inside Target Center. As many as 400,000 people logged on to watch the game live, and by Saturday, the resulting two-hour video had amassed over 2 million total views. 

In the lead-up to the preseason showdown, fans on both sides voiced frustrations over the WNBA's error. The league apologized in response, saying their app was "incorrectly showing that every preseason game (including CHI vs MIN) is available on League Pass."

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"The growth is happening so fast, it’s so accelerated. Business as usual isn’t going to work anymore, you’re going to get left behind," Reeve said of the blunder. "This is an example... We have to capitalize on those things."

Sky coach Teresa Weatherspoon echoed Reeve's sentiments, calling it "awesome" that so many fans followed along via Schneider's DIY livestream.

"We would love for us to be on and for everyone to take a look, especially for this team, you have a great group of young women who are exciting to watch play," said Weatherspoon. "Tonight we had an opportunity to kind of get a feel for where we are and what we need to do. It’s awesome to know that a lot of people really tuned in."

On the court, Reese had a near double-double in her first professional outing, notching 13 points and nine rebounds in 24 minutes. A viral pass inside to set up fellow rookie Cardoso's bucket served as the icing on the cake. The Sky ultimately lost to the Lynx 92-81, despite Minnesota newcomer Alissa Pili netting just two points and one rebound in 13 minutes of playing time.

Due to overwhelming fan demand, the WNBA confirmed today that it will indeed stream the Sky's next preseason game against the New York Liberty on League Pass. The two teams square off on Tuesday, May 7th at 8 PM ET.

The Caitlin Clark WNBA era has officially begun, with the star-studded rookie making her preseason debut with the Indiana Fever on Friday. 

Clark scored a team-leading 21 points — including five threes — and recorded a game-high 16 points at the half. But it was Arike Ogunbowale who got the last word for Dallas, knocking down a splashy buzzer-beating three-pointer in front of the sold-out crowd to deliver the Wings the 79-76 win.

"I think there's gonna be a lot to go back and look at and learn from, because a lot of it is kind of different from college," Clark said shortly after the Fever's loss. "Just from, you know, a technique standpoint or you know, scheme standpoint, and what we do is not always always going to be the same. So I think those are the biggest things, but I think overall, I just played really hard and that's always something to be proud of."

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For Clark, the biggest transition challenges lie in WNBA's physicality and talent levels. 

"No matter who steps into the game, you can never really relax, because that’s how competitive the league is," she added.

Fever coach Christie Sides also commented on's Clark on-court adjustment in her postgame remarks. Noting that the team will have to take steps to protect their star as she navigates the W's upgraded athleticism, Sides shared that at one point in the game, Clark was "completely gassed" and called for a sub. 

"We have to do better, we can't let her get to that point," Sides said. "She just won't be able to last and the way people are guarding her — I mean, she's seeing a double team, she's seeing hard hedges, they're being real physical with her. That's how it's going to be for her. And so we've got to make sure we're doing what we can to protect her so she's able to go into fourth at the same level she is in the first."

Clark wasn't the only rookie making their pro debut in Dallas that night. Ohio State ace Jacy Sheldon racked up six points and one rebound in her 13 minutes on the court (plus an unfortunate viral moment), but the breakout performance of the night went to Jaelyn Brown, a Cal grad who went undrafted in 2020 and spent the last few years playing overseas. On Friday, she carried the Wings to the finish line with 21 points in 29 minutes on 7-of-15 shooting.

After the game, Brown attested that she's "ready to compete" in an atmosphere that she "belongs in."

"I just try and treat it as any other game," she continued. "The crowd was amazing, it’s a little different from overseas, a little bit, but it’s the same game. I just [came] out there with a calm composure and did what I can do."