Next week’s Aramco Saudi Ladies International features a stellar field and a $5 million purse, now the highest prize fund in women’s golf outside of the majors and the LPGA’s season-ending CME Group Tour Championship. Up from $1 million last season, the women’s purse now matches that of the men’s Saudi International, won last week by Abraham Ancer.
Many of the best players in the women’s game will make their 2023 season debut next week, including World No. 1 Lydia Ko, Lexi Thompson, Atthaya Thitikul and In Gee Chun. In all, 13 major winners have entered.
The 120-player field will feature 60 Ladies European Tour players, 50 from the top 300 in the Rolex Rankings and 10 sponsor invites. The event, which is presented by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, takes place Feb. 16-19 at Royal Greens Golf and Country Club. The winner will receive $750,000.
Other notable players who have committed include Danielle Kang, Nasa Hataoka, Yuka Saso, Maria Fassi, Hyo-Joo Kim, Hannah Green and Andrea Lee.
The LET’s Saudi-backed events remain controversial given the wide-ranging human rights abuses Saudi Arabia has been accused of, especially toward women.
The 13 major winners in the Saudi Ladies International field boast 18 major titles between them.
While the purse is significant for every player in the field, it’s especially impactful for those with only LET status as well as those who have limited starts before the LPGA’s first full-field event of the season in late March.
The LPGA is in the midst of a month-long break before staging back-to-back limited-field events in Thailand and Singapore.
Here’s a closer look at the 10 players who received sponsor invitations and are entered into the field, which includes a wide mix of veterans and up-and-comers:
Meet the players who played their way onto the LPGA for 2023.
After a fortnight of pressure-packed golf, 46 players representing 21 different countries earned LPGA status for 2023 through Q-Series. A total of 23 of the 46 players will be LPGA rookies.
Hae Ran Ryu earned medalist honors, finishing at 29 under. The KLPGA player came into the event ranked 50th in the world. Ryu broke 70 in six of the eight rounds.
“I didn’t think that I could earn the LPGA tour card so soon,” said Ryu. “It’s still unreal to me that I could play on the LPGA tour.”
Three teenagers earned LPGA status for the first time, including former Netflix star Alexa Pano. Two players who are 30 and over are LPGA members for the first time.
Former Wake Forest player Ines Laklalech made history by becoming the first LPGA member from Morocco as well as North Africa and the Arab region.
Six players turned professional at the start of Q-Series. Two of those players earned LPGA status: Valery Plata and Natthakritta Vongtaveelap.
Plata, a fifth-year senior at Michigan State, prepped for final exams all throughout the tournament.
“I think it was good for me to just go home, stop thinking about what happened on the golf course and just think about school,” said Plata, who was 4 over in her first nine holes on Day 1 and finished the tournament 25 under.
Players who finished in positions 1-20 earned category 14 LPGA status, while those in positions 21-45 will be in category 15. Players in category 14 will be ranked higher on the priority status list that fills tournament fields. Players are listed in the order of their finish at Q-Series.
To wit: Of the 17 Q Series grads last year who kept their LPGA card in 2022, only 4 were below 20th. The lowest were a pair at T35: Linn Grant (who despite only playing the non-US events incredibly was 56th in CME points) and Caroline Inglis who got the final card at No. 100.
The first full-field LPGA event of the season is in March in Arizona.
Charlotte Thomas described this week as a “do or die” chapter of her professional career. Six years into the play-for-pay ranks, Thomas felt that whatever happened at Q-Series over the last eight rounds could be a sign.
In the end, the sign read: Back to the LPGA.
“I’m exhausted and ready for a drink,” said Thomas, who tied for 28th to earn back her tour card for 2023. A total of 46 players earned LPGA cards at Q-Series, a 144-hole grind that takes places over a fortnight in Alabama.
“I think when I look back on last year, I initially was disappointed that I lost my card and had to come back here,” said Thomas, “but I think the fact that I didn’t play golf for 16 months was – I kind of don’t give myself enough credit sometimes I don’t think.”
Thomas missed the 2021 LPGA season while struggling to find a treatment for chronic eczema.
Everyone in the field in Dothan has a story. Some have been toiling in the professional ranks for years, while others, like Michigan State’s Valery Plata, turned pro just before Q-Series. Plata tied for third with recent Stanford grad Aline Krauter.
Tournament winner Hae Ran Ryu, a KLPGA veteran, is ranked 50th in the world. (Epson Tour photo)
South Korea’s Hae Ran Ryu, currently No. 50 in the Rolex Rankings, topped the field at 29 under, clipping Bailey Tardy by two strokes.
Two years ago, Tardy missed out on earning her LPGA card through the Epson Tour by $343. Once again, Tardy finished 11th on the money list this year, missing the 10th spot by $1,765.
“I actually told my caddie just walking down, I think 15, and really anybody close to me knows that I wasn’t even going to sign up for QII,” said Tardy. “I think I signed up 15 minutes before the deadline, and that was because my coach told me to and was like, this is your opportunity, you can’t give that up.
“And I didn’t want to come to Q-School at all. Even at the beginning of the year I told everyone, I’m not going to Q-School. I’m not doing it. That’s not what I want to do.
“And I’m so happy I did.”
The top 20 players and ties earn category 14 status on the LPGA, while those who finished 21-45 and ties earned category 15 status. Players who finished outside the top 45 and completed all four rounds before the cut earned Epson Tour status for 2023.
“Feels good, especially since our first event of the year would be my home course in Phoenix,” said Dana Finkelstein, who tied for 15th.
“Superstition Mountain is kind of where golf started for me. The Safeway Open out there, I was like 12 or 13 and I went to go watch Annika [Sorenstam] and Morgan [Pressel] and all them. I have pictures of my awkward 12-year-old self at the golf course, and now it’s cool that I’m going to be playing and some other 12-year-old is going to be watching me. It’s pretty cool.”
The first full-field LPGA event of the season, the LPGA Drive On Championship, will take place March 23-26, 2023, in Gold Canyon, Arizona.
Finkelstein, an LPGA veteran, shared 15th with 2022 Alabama grad Polly Mack, who held on despite a closing 76. Mack played the first 72 holes without a caddie but employed a good friend for the second week.
Alexa Pano, the 18-year-old who starred in the Netflix series “The Short Game,” shot 68-67 over the weekend yet missed the top 20 by one stroke. Pano turned professional in the spring and finished 13th on the Epson Tour money list this season.
Jaravee Boonchant was one of three former Duke players who finished in the top 45. Boonchant had former Blue Devil teammate Gina Kim on her bag for Q-Series. The pair, along with Ana Belac (T-38), helped Duke win the 2019 NCAA title. (Kim earned her LPGA card earlier this year via the Epson Tour.)
Lindy Duncan, a former NCAA Player of the Year at Duke, shot three consecutive 73s to also take a share of 38th.
“I keep asking Gina questions that probably shouldn’t be asked on the course, but she was really helpful and very supportive,” said Boonchant, who tied for 21. “And she honestly was like the one who kind of put me in place and shape my thought and my mental game.
Meet 12 of the players set for the 144-hole grind.
One hundred players will tee it up this week at LPGA Q-Series, an eight-round grind that begins on Dec. 1 and ends Dec. 11. The first week will be contested at the RTJ Trail at Magnolia Grove in Mobile, Alabama, at the Crossings and Falls courses.
The field will be cut to top 70 and ties after the first week of competition. The second week of competition will take place at Highland Oaks Golf Course in Dothan, Alabama.
A total of 45 players will receive LPGA status in 2023. This is the first year that players were required to turn professional before entering Q-Series. A total of six players turned pro for this week: Nataliya Guseva, Minji Kang, Ashley Lau, Heather Lin, Valery Plata and Natthakritta Vongtaveelap.
Players in the top 75 of the Rolex Rankings automatically advanced to the final stage. Those players include: Yuna Nishimura (44), Hae Ran Ryu (51) and Minami Katsu (56).
Players who finish in the top 20 of Q-Series will fall under Category 14 of the LPGA Priority List. Those who finish 21-45 and ties earn Category 15 and Epson Tour status Category C.
Those who complete all four rounds before the cut earn Epson Tour status.
This year’s field features an eclectic group of players, including former college hotshots, up-and-comers and a former Netflix star.
“No one really wants to be here,” said Dewi Weber, who finished 101st on the CME points list this year, one position shy of a full card.
“The vibes are always really, really weird at Q-school. But I was a rookie on the LPGA, but I feel like I’m kind of a vet when it comes to Q-school because I’ve done this now four times, even though I don’t want to but I have.”
Future stars of the women’s game are bound for the LPGA’s fourth major of the season in France.
The Amundi Evian Championship has announced six wild card selections for this year’s event, slated for July 21-24. The season’s fourth major will be held at the Evian Resort Golf Club in Évian-les-Bains, France, with an increased purse of $6.5 million and $1 million to the winner.
World No. 1 Jin Young Ko headlines the field along with No. 2 Nelly Korda and last year’s winner Minjee Lee, who won the U.S. Women’s Open at Pine Needles in June and finished runner-up at the KPMG Women’s PGA.
Five amateurs and one professional have been award exemptions this year, including top-ranked amateur Rose Zhang.
With the NCAA postseason approaching, Cardinal players thrilled to be back on campus after a year of COVID-19 craziness.
PALO ALTO, California – On the last day of her senior year, Rachel Heck sat outside the gates of St. Agnes Academy in Memphis, Tennessee, with friends – spaced out, of course – and shed some tears. Heck had been in school with more than a dozen of her 99 classmates since age 3. They’d parted ways for Spring Break on a Friday, thinking nothing of it, and never returned.
“The last day you run down the hallway and slam all the lockers,” said Heck. “There were so many traditions that we just didn’t get to do.”
As if that weren’t bad enough, the fall semester of college golf at Stanford was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While other conferences forged on, the Pac 12 did not compete. A lost Heck found herself sending out S.O.S. messages in the Zoom chat of CS106A, an intro to computer science class. One morning she got up at 8 a.m. to work on an assignment in her Memphis bedroom and by 3 p.m. had gotten nowhere.
“I had nothing on my screen and just started bawling,” said Heck. “I’m supposed to be on campus. I’m supposed to have resources.”
Mercifully, fellow Cardinal students came to her aid. She eventually found a local tutor.
Heck can laugh about it now. Sitting outdoors at a long table at Osteria Toscana in Palo Alto, many things have started to feel familiar again. Osteria is a frequent haunt for the Cardinal, a nice place to bring recruits on campus visits. Four Stanford teammates have gathered here on a pleasant spring evening to talk about recent detours and silver linings. Any mention of hardship is usually laced with humor.
There’s great perspective here.
Left to right: Angelina Ye, Aline Krauter, Rachel Heck and Ziwi Yang
Now three months into life as a college student-athlete, Heck, one of the hottest players in college golf, is still getting to know her teammates. The entire team lives in the same dorm on the same hall due to COVID-19 protocols. Running into each other throughout the day at the bathroom sink or dining hall has helped make up for the time spent apart.
After months of nothing, it’s now pedal-to-the-floor action at Stanford Golf Course. Two weeks after hosting the Pac 12 Championships (won by USC and Heck), the 17th-ranked Cardinal play host to NCAA regional action May 10-12, with 17 teams trying to advance to the NCAA Championship. The top six teams will move on to Greyhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, Arizona, beginning May 21.
Other regional sites include Baton Rouge (LSU); Columbus, Ohio (OSU); and Simpsonville, Kentucky (Louisville).
With last year’s season canceled in March – wiping out conference and NCAA tournament action – junior Aline Krauter is the only member of the Cardinal lineup who has any postseason experience.
Krauter left campus last spring pretty quickly because her parents worried that she wouldn’t be able to get back into Germany. The planes and airports were eerily quiet. She admittedly was thrown off from the start, having not lived at home with mom and dad for an extended period since she left for boarding school in Florida at age 15.
Krauter’s family got acquainted with their backyard garden during quarantine, a welcome addition to their daily routine. When golf courses were closed, the German national team was able to practice at St. Leon-Rot, site of the 2015 Solheim Cup. She took advantage when she could.
Even though much in her life was canceled over the past year, good things happened too: Krauter met a new boyfriend after things started to open back up. She won the Women’s British Amateur at West Lancashire. The victory earned her a spot in the ANA Inspiration, where the international relations major realized her game was indeed big enough for the next level.
“I wasn’t sure coming in if I was going to hit the ball high enough to land it soft enough on the greens,” said Krauter. “I didn’t know if I hit it far enough. That doubt went away during the practice rounds and tournament.”
Sophomore Angelina Ye first came to visit Stanford at age 9. She was living in Shanghai at the time and playing in a nearby tournament. In the first grade, Ye wrote in an essay that she wanted to be No. 1 in the world so that she could buy her own plane to avoid having to purchase plane tickets.
“I was 7,” she said, laughing. “Cut me some slack.”
Ye played in her first China LPGA event at age 12 and finished third. At 13, she played in in the Blue Bay LPGA event on Hainan Island. Not once has she imagined herself sitting behind a desk. Even so, her parents instilled in Ye the importance of an education. The decision to go to Stanford, she said, shocked a lot of people in golf back home in China.
“I think I’m the only one who’s playing at this level and at my age who has not turned pro yet,” said Ye. Most elite junior players stop attending school on a regular basis before high school. They were technically enrolled, she said, but mostly just took the final exams.
“When I got my acceptance letter it was a big deal back home,” said Ye. “I’m really happy that they see this as an option now.”
Ye, who enrolled in the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida, during high school, returned there when the pandemic hit to stay with her mother and brother. Her instructors, Sean Foley and Mark Sweeney, were nearby, and courses only closed in the area for about a week.
Ye’s family has since moved about 25 minutes away from the Palo Alto campus. When the fall season was canceled, she could still go up to Stanford to practice.
Angelina Ye during a match between San Jose State, CAL and Stanford University at Stanford Golf Course on February 27, 2021 in Stanford, California.
Ziwi Yang, known as “Emily,” was the only member of Stanford’s team who stayed on campus all of last year.
The Beijing native was inspired to go to Stanford by the likes of Tiger Woods, Reese Witherspoon and Hannah Montana. An essay she wrote for Golf Digest China about her freshman year helped solidify Ye’s decision to follow in her footsteps.
Yang won’t be in the lineup at regionals. She has no plans to play professionally either, though she did consider it at one time. When the pandemic canceled Yang’s summer internship with the United Nations in Geneva, she got a position doing COVID-19 research at the Hoover Institution.
With the golf course, dining and workout facilities closed early on, Yang, who only had a couple of friends still on campus, took up running. Nothing made the ambitious Yang sweat more, though, than getting called on during a Zoom class for international law.
“I voluntarily took this class,” she said with a laugh. “I don’t know why.”
Last November, Yang was awarded the Rhodes Scholarship and will study 19th century history at the University of Oxford in England starting in the fall. She chose this particular subject area largely because the research will take her to Vienna, Paris, Istanbul, Germany and possibly St. Petersburg.
Talk of future travel and the fast-approaching NCAA postseason over hearty Italian food helped soothe disappointments from the past year. There’s much to look forward to at Stanford and beyond.
Germany’s Aline Krauter, a junior at Stanford, will be in the ANA Inspiration field instead of playing the Augusta National Women’s Amateur.
Top female amateurs face a difficult decision on how to spend the first weekend of April with the Augusta National Women’s Amateur and the ANA Inspiration, the LPGA’s first major, still overlapping. The tournaments will be played on opposite sides of the country on March 31 to April 3.
Krauter is the reigning British Women’s Amateur champion.
“It is such a fantastic opportunity for me to gain experience playing amongst the world’s best in the season’s first major,” Krauter said in a media release on Monday. “I could not think of a more historic venue to play my first major championship at. I am honored to have been given this amazing opportunity to test my game at the next level.”
The ANA Inspiration has traditionally welcomed a handful of the world’s top female amateurs to compete in the field. This year, only Rose Zhang, the 2020 U.S. Women’s Amateur champion, and Krauter were invited. Both players appeared on Augusta National’s list of confirmed entries for the ANWA, and Zhang – who will also play for Stanford beginning next fall – remains on the list.
Counting Krauter, Stanford would have sent four players to Augusta National, second only to USC, which is sending six players.
A year ago, before the 2020 ANWA was canceled and the ANA Inspiration moved to September because of COVID, five amateurs accepted an invitation to compete in the ANA Inspiration. Four of those players are committed to the 2021 ANWA, with Gabi Ruffels having turned pro. She will compete in the ANA as a professional after earning a return spot with her T-15 finish in September.
Germany’s Aline Krauter, a junior at Stanford, will be in the ANA Inspiration field instead of playing the Augusta National Women’s Amateur.
Top female amateurs face a difficult decision on how to spend the first weekend of April with the Augusta National Women’s Amateur and the ANA Inspiration, the LPGA’s first major, still overlapping. The tournaments will be played on opposite sides of the country on March 31 to April 3.
Krauter is the reigning British Women’s Amateur champion.
“It is such a fantastic opportunity for me to gain experience playing amongst the world’s best in the season’s first major,” Krauter said in a media release on Monday. “I could not think of a more historic venue to play my first major championship at. I am honored to have been given this amazing opportunity to test my game at the next level.”
The ANA Inspiration has traditionally welcomed a handful of the world’s top female amateurs to compete in the field. This year, only Rose Zhang, the 2020 U.S. Women’s Amateur champion, and Krauter were invited. Both players appeared on Augusta National’s list of confirmed entries for the ANWA, and Zhang – who will also play for Stanford beginning next fall – remains on the list.
Counting Krauter, Stanford would have sent four players to Augusta National, second only to USC, which is sending six players.
A year ago, before the 2020 ANWA was canceled and the ANA Inspiration moved to September because of COVID, five amateurs accepted an invitation to compete in the ANA Inspiration. Four of those players are committed to the 2021 ANWA, with Gabi Ruffels having turned pro. She will compete in the ANA as a professional after earning a return spot with her T-15 finish in September.
In a new twist to this year’s ANA Inspiration, the first major championship of the year, no amateurs will be playing.
The field at the 50th anniversary of the ANA Inspiration certainly won’t feel like old times with one key component missing – the amateurs.
Last year, two amateurs finished in the top 15 at the Dinah Shore Tournament Course: Rose Zhang (T-11) and Gabriela Ruffels (T-15). Three more – Lei Ye, Emilia Migliaccio and Olivia Mehaffey – made the cut.
This year, only Zhang, the 2020 U.S. Women’s Amateur champion, and Aline Krauter, who won the British Women’s Amateur, were invited to the year’s first major.
Both instead are confirmed to compete in the Augusta National Women’s Amateur, held the same week as the ANA from March 31-April 3.
Zhang, 17, tied for 17th at the ANWA in 2019. The Stanford signee is currently No. 1 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking. Krauter, 21, a junior at Stanford, will make her debut at the ANWA this spring.
“The ANA Inspiration has a long history of celebrating the world’s top amateur competitors and providing them with the opportunity to compete in a major championship,” LPGA Chief Tour Operations Officer Heather Daly-Donofrio said in a statement provided to Golfweek.
“To broaden competition opportunities for LPGA Tour members as we continue to deal with COVID-19 and to ensure a manageable field size, the 2021 tournament has limited invitations to the reigning U.S. Women’s Amateur and British Women’s Amateur champions.”
When asked if the tournament would return to its tradition of inviting up to seven amateurs in the future, a tour official said they would continue to adjust moving forward as the pandemic requires.
Since the ANWA was first announced in 2018, there have been calls for the LPGA to move the ANA Inspiration’s dates to avoid having two heavy-hitting women’s events compete for coverage as well as forcing top-ranked amateurs to make a difficult decision.
Gabriela Ruffels plays a tee shot on the 18th hole during the second round of the ANA Inspiration on the Dinah Shore course at Mission Hills Country Club on September 11, 2020 in Rancho Mirage, California. On Wednesday, Ruffels announced that she’s turning pro. (Photo: Christian Petersen/Getty Images)
The 2020 ANWA was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic and last year’s ANA, won by Mirim Lee, was held in September.
Zhang’s final score of 280 in blistering desert heat set a record for amateurs at the Dinah Shore Tournament Course at Mission Hills. Ruffels’ 281 matched the previous mark set by Caroline Keggi (1988) and Michelle Wie (2004).
Both Wie and Keggi hold the record for lowest finish by an amateur at the ANA, a tie for fourth.
