Ashleigh Buhai claims first major win in playoff at Women’s British Open
Buhai’s British Open trophy marks her first LPGA Tour win.
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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.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
Buhai’s British Open trophy marks her first LPGA Tour win.
Buhai holds a five-shot lead heading into the final round.
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