It’s a rare Sunday when the LPGA is on live network television while the PGA Tour is not.
NAPLES, Fla. — As the LPGA season comes to a close, Sunday’s final round will take TV’s center stage.
Golf Channel will have live coverage of the first three rounds of the CME Group Tour Championship, with NBC taking over on Sunday. With the PGA Tour’s RSM Classic on Golf Channel all four days, it’s a rare Sunday when the LPGA is on live network television while the PGA Tour is not.
In addition, ESPN+ has been added to the lineup, with featured group coverage all four days, plus16th hole coverage during Sunday’s final round.
It’s the third LPGA event to be featured on ESPN+ but the first this year. ESPN+ coverage of on Friday and Saturday will be finalized after pairings and tee times are announced.
Thursday, Nov. 16
7:45 a.m., first round featured groups, ESPN+
2 to 3 p.m., first round, Peacock
3 to 5 p.m., first round, Golf Channel and Peacock
Friday, Nov. 17
TBD, second round featured groups, ESPN+
2 to 3 p.m., second round, Peacock
3 to 5 p.m., second round, Golf Channel and Peacock
Saturday, Nov. 18
TBD, third round featured groups, ESPN+
2 to 5 p.m., third round, Peacock
4 to 7 p.m., third round, tape-delayed on Golf Channel
Sunday, Nov. 19
9 a.m. to 3 p.m., final round featured groups, 16th hole
NAPLES, Fla. – What a difference a year makes. One year ago, CME Group Chairman and CEO Terry Duffy was “exceptionally disappointed” in how events outside the ropes unfolded at the CME Group Tour Championship.
“They better get their act together,” Duffy told Golfweek last year, “because they’re going to lose people like me over stuff like this.”
One year later, Duffy and LPGA commissioner Mollie Marcoux Samaan were posing together for pictures after a blockbuster announcement that included a purse increase from $7 million to $11 million in 2024 and a first-place prize of $4 million, up from $2 million this year. CME also announced a two-year contract extension. Beginning next year, the tour championship will boast the largest first-place prize in all of women’s sport.
CME Group CEO Terry Duffy speaks to the media after announcing a two-year sponsor extension of the CME Group Tour Championship with an increased $11 million purse and record $4 million first-place prize during a news conference at The Ritz-Carlton Naples in Naples, Florida. (Photo: Michael Reaves/Getty Images)
Duffy said he and Marcoux Samaan got together several times throughout the year, and that those conversations helped give him confidence to move forward with the LPGA.
“I think it was more of a breakdown more than anything else,” said Duffy of last year’s drama. “As I said, when communications go bad, a lot of other things can snowball with it. I think we started to see a little bit of that.”
The format for this year’s Tuesday night festivities was different than last year but LPGA officials reported that every player in the field showed up.
“As Terry said, communication is the key,” said Marcoux Samaan, “and being accountable for things that don’t go perfectly. We had communication right after the incident and we continued during the season. As he said all along, I just wanted to push you guys to be better. We moved on right away and moved on to the future and we moved on to continuing to work together to elevate the tour and elevate our impact.”
This marks the 10th anniversary of the CME Race to the Globe points list, which is used to not only determine the season-ending field, but also who gets a card for next season.
CME first became title sponsor of the LPGA season-ending event in 2011 with a purse of $1.5 million.
For years, Duffy’s efforts as title sponsor have pushed other events on the LPGA – particularly the majors – to raise the bar. But another reason Duffy wants the CME Group Tour Championship to be so lucrative is to ensure that players circle this event on their calendars as a must-make week. And to get here, they might have to tee it up in more events along the way, thus lifting the entire tour.
It’s worth noting, of course, that neither Lexi Thompson nor Lydia Ko are here this week. Both are past champions of this event, with Ko sweeping all the post-season honors last year after winning the title and $2 million prize. Thompson played in only 14 events on the LPGA schedule this season. Ko competed in 20.
While purses on the LPGA vary wildly, with nine full-field events in 2023 having a purse of $2 million or less compared to major championship purses that are $9 million and $11 million, CME points act as a leveler. Players earn 500 CME points for a victory whether the purse is $1.5 million or $3.5 million. At the majors, players receive 650 points for a victory.
“I am trying to be a catalyst for women’s golf,” said Duffy. “Not against the other sponsors. So if, in fact, they want to up their purses, great. But I don’t think it’s absolutely – and I know Mollie is not going to want to hear me say this – absolutely necessary.
“That’s up to them to decide. The last thing you want to do is chase anybody away.”
Check out the best photos from the LPGA’s CME Group Tour Championship.
It all comes down to this.
The LPGA’s final event is here, as the 2023 CME Group Tour Championship kicks off Thursday in Naples, Florida, at Tiburon Golf Club. The top 60 golfers in the season-long standings will compete for a $7 million purse.
Celine Boutier and Lilia Vu enter the tournament at 1 and 2 in the standings. The course is a par-72 layout measuring 6,556 yards.
Lydia Ko won the Race to CME Globe last year and captured the CME Group Tour Championship, though she’s one of the numerous big names who is not in attendance this week.
Angel Yin took a more conservative approach to the season and won big.
NAPLES, Fla. — Angel Yin took a more conservative approach to the season and won big. In addition to claiming her first LPGA title in 159 starts, she won $1 million for clinching the season-long Aon Risk Reward Challenge. Thailand’s Atthaya Thitikul finished second.
When Aon introduced the challenge in 2019, the $1 million prize became the largest single monetary prize on the LPGA. The payout is the same on the PGA Tour, where Tyrrell Hatton won.
Yin, 25, said that in previous years she’d come to a reachable hole and automatically want to go for it. This year, however, the power player has learned to embrace her wedge play.
“When you overlook the small things, it doesn’t benefit you,” said Yin. “So what I started doing is I started looking at the small things and cherishing it more and accumulating that more, and I think that’s what really helped.
“(In) Cincinnati I made an eagle. That was huge, but it wasn’t really planned for. It was really lucky. If you really think about it, eagles are (made) with a lot of luck. Birdies are more calculated. If I can just put all my money on my birdies, I can get my return.”
At the Solheim Cup in Spain, the always entertaining Yin wore sunglasses to a Team USA press conference in a nod to Deion Sanders. The LPGA marketing team presented Yin with Sanders T-shirt after her Wednesday press conference in Naples.
For Yin, who has played the past four seasons without a personal sponsor, this money gives her the ability to help others who might find themselves in similar financial situations in other business endeavors.
“I’m very blessed with a lot of people in my life that have been a lot of support,” said Yin, “but let’s just say on the financial side or other support hasn’t been as great. I feel like if I have the ability to do that, I want to be able to reach out.
“Because money makes things go around, and as much as we don’t want to talk about it, it can bring a lot of things in life and create a lot more opportunities. … We’re here for a long time, and I want to find out what my passions are in life. I want to be able to help people that haven’t been helped out.”
Angel Yin of the United States speaks with the media after winning the 2023 AON Risk Reward Challenge at Tiburon Golf Club on November 14, 2023 in Naples, Florida. (Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images)
After coming up short against Lilia Vu in a playoff at the Chevron earlier this season, Yin went head-to-head again against the current World No. 1 at the Buick LPGA Shanghai last month and came out on top.
There’s still plenty of talk about who didn’t make the field in Naples, Florida.
NAPLES, Fla. — While nine players are making their debut at this week’s CME Group Tour Championship, there’s still plenty of talk about who didn’t make the field.
Throughout the season, players earn points toward the Race to CME Globe, which is used not only to determine the field at Tiburon Golf Club but also to determine what kind of status – if any – players have for the next season.
The top 60 players and ties after The Annika driven by Gainbridge event qualified for the Tour Championship, which features a $7 million purse and $2 million payout to the winner.
“You just have to believe it’s coming, and I did that this year.”
NAPLES, Fla. – Lilia Vu cried on the 18th green last year at the CME Group Tour Championship. The desire to win was so great that when the season came to an end, Vu broke down.
“It’s kind of this concept where when you want something too much, it gets away from you,” she said of her close calls. “You just have to believe it’s coming, and I did that this year.”
Just before Vu left for CME last season, the windshield wipers blew off her car. Her caddie urged her to buy a new car during the offseason. Vu told herself that she’d buy her dream car, a Mercedes Benz G550, after she won her first event. Vu jumped the gun, however, and bought it before that first triumph came at the Honda LPGA Thailand in February. Three more victories have since followed, including two majors.
“I was like, ‘Oh, it’s because I knew I was going to win,’ ” she said with a smile.
Vu enters the final event of the 2023 season with 27-point lead over Celine Boutier in the Rolex Player of the Year race. Boutier, who became the first Frenchwoman to win the Amundi Evian over the summer, will need to win the CME to have a chance of upsetting Vu. A victory is worth 30 points.
Boutier would be the first Frenchwoman to win the award. No American has won the POY since Stacy Lewis in 2014.
Boutier didn’t start thinking about her chances for Player of the Year until after she won an epic nine-hole playoff in Malaysia for her fourth title. She knew it would take something special to overtake Vu’s two major victories. While the PGA Tour uses a player vote to determine its POY, Boutier appreciates the LPGA’s points format.
“You just can’t fight against points,” she said.
Celine Boutier of France plays an approach shot on the tenth hole during the second round of the 2023 Annika driven by Gainbridge at Pelican Golf Club in Belleair, Florida. (Photo by Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images)
Last season, Boutier ranked third on the LPGA in top-10 finishes with 12 in 24 starts. While she can’t really point to one aspect of her game that’s drastically different to last year, she does believe that putting herself in the mix so many times in 2022 gave her the confidence to enjoy a breakout season.
Vu, who returned to No. 1 in the world after her victory last week at The Annika, currently tops the money list with $3,252,303. Sponsor-less to begin the season, logos now adorn her clothing.
With a $2 million first-place check on the line in Naples, talk around the CME always comes back to money.
Money used to be a sore subject for Vu, who struggled her rookie year when she compared herself to others coming out of college who had sponsors. Vu had help financially from her parents, and while she was grateful for it, the self-inflicted pressure to pay them back hung over her head. The 2019 season was mostly miserable for the former Bruin.
“I think I kind of just like stopped letting money control me,” she said. “I don’t really think about it anymore. I just knew like, OK, I just want to start having fun playing golf again and then everything will follow along. That’s what happened.”
The pandemic break was “huge” for Vu, who used the time to reset her mind with books. The book that got everything started was “The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson.” The premise of the book, she said, is to get one percent better every day.
Vu started a practice in 2020 of reading at least 10 pages of a book every day that she still continues. Right now she’s reading “101 Essays That Will Change the Way You Think” by Brianna Wiest.
Vu looks back on a time when she nearly quit golf as an important building block to her success.
“My rookie year just destroyed me,” she said. “I put so much pressure on each and every shot, life and death.
“I just remember being miserable. This is like the dream, everything we ever worked for was to be out here, and I was just not in the right mindset for it.
“Everything happens for a reason and that’s why I’m here now.”
“No matter what’s happened this year, obviously, it doesn’t summarize what’s happened in the past nine years.”
BELLEAIR, Fla. – Lydia Ko’s 10th season on the LPGA has come to an end. The woman who swept the postseason awards last year at the CME Group Tour Championship won’t be in the field to defend her title in Naples, Florida. The former phenom’s glorious comeback campaign flamed out in 2023.
For all the out-of-the-blue success stories on the LPGA this year, Ko’s struggles are by far the most shocking development. Winless on the LPGA this season, Ko finished 100th on the CME points list. Ko can use her winner’s status to get into plenty of events next year.
A 16-year-old Ko said at the start of her LPGA career that she wouldn’t play past the age of 30. Now a decade into a career that’s yielded 19 LPGA titles, including two majors, and more than 100 weeks at No. 1, Ko knows she’s deep into the back nine of her career. The two-time Olympic medalist (silver and bronze) wants to play for gold next summer in Paris. She also wants to qualify for the LPGA Hall of Fame. She’s two points shy of the 27 needed, which means two regular-season wins or one major title would get her there.
Did the pressure to reach the Hall get to her this year?
“I think so,” she said. “That would be a lie, I think, if you said no.”
The truth is Ko doesn’t know when she’ll call it quits. She could, as she said, win two tournaments and say, “peace out.” She could retire after the Olympics next year. She could get inspired by more success and decide to play til she’s 30.
What she does know is that she doesn’t want to come to the end and ask herself, what’s next?
“I want to have my second chapter, whatever the career may be, like, ready before I retire from competitive golf,” she said, “so that I’m not lost.”
Ko has talked to enough retired athletes to know that without a plan, an identity crisis could unfold. She wants to be prepared enough to leave the tour with a new sense of purpose. Lorena Ochoa, she said, is a role model for how to retire right.
What Ko knows for certain is that she’d like to finish the degree in psychology that she started eight years ago in South Korea. She has a year and a half left. Now married and living in California, the idea of finishing off that degree at a place like Stanford intrigues her.
There was a time when Ko wanted to study law, not because she wanted to become a lawyer, but because she found the law fascinating.
“I think some of my studies,” she said, “I could actually like completely divert into like something that I’m intrigued about more so than I’m going to make a business out of it.”
Last August at the LPGA stop in Portland, a struggling Ko got some advice from LPGA legend Juli Inkster. The Kiwi hadn’t finished in the top 10 since February, and her ball-striking was in the doldrums.
Inkster told Ko to set a goal of trying to break par every round. At that point, Ko hadn’t broken par in nine rounds on the LPGA.
“I think that really simplified it for me,” said Ko.
Lydia Ko of New Zealand reacts as she walks towards the second fairway during the final round of the 2023 BMW Ladies Championship on the Seowon Hills course at Seowon Valley Country Club in South Korea. (Photo: Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images)
The next month in South Korea, ahead of the BMW Ladies Championship, Ko met with Jin Young Ko’s swing instructor, Si Woo Lee for some help. Ko played the BMW on a sponsor exemption despite being defending champion.
Lee helped her to a third-place finish in South Korea, and she followed it up with a share of 11th in Malaysia. Ko, who will partner with Jason Day at the new Grant Thornton Invitational before officially heading into the offseason, feels like she finally has some positive momentum to carry into the winter break. Prior to that, Ko felt like she was stepping in quicksand, sinking further and further away from her goals.
For all the heartache, she’s in a good place.
“No matter what’s happened this year, obviously, it doesn’t summarize what’s happened in the past nine years,” said Ko, voicing a big-picture perspective that will serve her well.
At this time last year, Ko collected three Hall of Fame points at the CME: one for her tournament victory in Naples along with two points for winning the Vare Trophy and Rolex Player of the Year. She racked up five points for the year to get to 25.
Suddenly, a lifelong goal that once felt so far away seemed within reach.
Ko, however, is quick to point out that it wasn’t that long ago that she went three years on tour without winning. And that her last major victory came seven years ago at the 2016 ANA Inspiration. She knows better than anyone that the task ahead is doable but tough.
“I can’t even remember what I was doing a week ago, let alone in 2016,” she said. “A lot of things have changed.”
Whatever happens in the coming years, Ko is certain that she won’t become a part-time player. She won’t hang on or hang around if her heart doesn’t want to give 100 percent.
“If I’m doing it,” she said, “I want to do it properly. And I want to do without regrets.”
Here’s a closer look at how those trying to clinch a spot at the CME got started in Japan.
With only two events left before the CME Group Tour Championship, LPGA players in Japan are making a strong push to secure their spot to compete for a $7 million purse and $2 million first-place prize at the season-ender.
2022 Toto Japan Classic champion Gemma Dryburgh is among those players. The Scot is currently 60th on the CME points list. The top 60 and ties after The Annika driven by Gainbridge at Pelican advance to Tiburon Golf Club in Naples, Florida.
JLPGA player Akie Iwai, currently No. 36 in the world, paces the field after Round 1 of the Toto with a 9-under 63. A three-time winner in Japan, Iwai tied the tournament’s 18-hole scoring record last shot by Shanshan Feng on the Minori Course in 2017.
Japan’s Nasa Hataoka, a six-time winner on the LPGA, holds a share of second at 8 under.
Here’s a closer look at how those trying to clinch a spot at the CME got started in Japan:
Here are 10 players on the bubble heading down the final stretch.
Only three events remain on the LPGA schedule before the season-ending CME Group Tour Championship, and there are some big-name players sitting on the outside. The top 60 players on the Race to CME Globe points list will qualify for the season finale in Naples, Florida, Nov. 16-19, where anyone in the field can win the top prize in women’s golf of $2 million.
This week’s Maybank Championship in Malaysia has a field of 78 players with no cut. A victory is worth 500 points, and a 10th-place finish garners 75. The Toto Japan Classic in early November is another no-cut event, which means that like the Maybank, every LPGA player in the field will earn CME points, should she complete all four rounds.
The Annika driven by Gainbridge at Pelican is the final event before the CME points list is finalized on Nov. 12.
Here are 10 players on the bubble heading down the final stretch:
