Tag: Amy Yang

Two weeks after winning $2 million at CME, Amy Yang is at LPGA Q-Series – as a caddie

The five-time LPGA winner is instead caddying at LPGA Q-Series for good friend Jennifer Song.

Amy Yang is back inside the ropes after winning the CME Group Tour Championship and the $2 million first-place prize. Only Yang wont’t hit any shots. The five-time LPGA winner is instead caddying at LPGA Q-Series for good friend Jennifer Song, according to lpga.com.

Yang, 34, last played at LPGA Q-School in 2008, but agreed to return to help Song, who finished 149th on the CME points list, which determines LPGA status. The top 100 on the CME list keep full status each year.

Song, 33, missed 11 cuts in 18 starts on tour in 2023. The 2009 U.S. Women’s Amateur and U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links champion, Song has recorded 13 career top-10 finishes and made $3,006,404 since joining the tour in 2011.

Jennifer Song of the United States plays her second shot on the 18th hole on Day One of the ISPS HANDA World Invitational presented by AVIV Clinics at Galgorm Castle Golf Club on August 17, 2023 in United Kingdom. (Photo by Octavio Passos/Getty Images)

The newly abbreviated LPGA Q-Series got underway Thursday at the Robert Trent Jones’ Magnolia Grove Golf Course in Mobile, Alabama. The event, which has been shortened from 144 holes to 108 holes, concludes Dec. 5.

Song is one of 104 players who will compete over the Falls and Crossings courses, with a cut after Round 4 to low 65 and ties.

Players who finish in the top 45 and ties will earn 2024 LPGA cards, with those in the top 20 earning a higher status.

Amy Yang wins LPGA season finale at 2023 CME Group Tour Championship

This is Yang’s first win since 2019.

NAPLES, Fla. – Amy Yang battles something she calls “ego talk.” It’s the stuff she tells herself that gets in the way when the pressure is on. She dealt with it early on Sunday at the CME Group Tour Championship, when she doubted herself and wondered if the day would end with just another close call.

This time, however, Yang shut down that ego talk.

“This is very meaningful,” said Yang in her new bright blue blazer, the CME trophy by her side and a $2 million cardboard check somewhere nearby.

Yang, 34, stayed strong down the stretch mentally at Tiburon Golf Club, where she holed out for eagle on the 13th hole and birdied the last two to win by three over Alison Lee and Nasa Hataoka. It was Yang’s first LPGA title since 2019, her fifth overall, and her first on U.S. soil.

Amy Yang of Korea celebrates with the CME Globe trophy and her check during the trophy ceremony after winning the CME Group Tour Championship at Tiburon Golf Club on November 19, 2023 in Naples, Florida. (Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images)

For Lee, finishing runner-up in her last three LPGA events felt bittersweet. While she’s playing the best golf of her life, that elusive first LPGA victory remains out of reach.

Good friend Megan Khang, who finally broke through with her first victory earlier this year at the CPKC Women’s Open in her 191st career start, sat in on Lee’s post-round press conference.

“This isn’t really a question,” said Khang as she took the mic, “but as a friend, I am a proud of you. You’ve been playing so good, Alison. It’s coming.”

An emotional Lee, who made her 179th career start at the CME, has credited new friend Fred Couples with helping instill the confidence she’s felt in recent months, noting that he texts her daily with words of encouragement.

“So many times I would joke around saying I’m just never going to win out here,” said Lee, who was a standout amateur player at UCLA before turning professional. “I really didn’t think I could ever do it.

“But to play the last three weeks just continuously putting the pressure on everyone on the leaderboard and putting myself in contention has just been really cool for me and been a really awesome experience.”

It wasn’t long ago that Yang, who suffered from tennis elbow after too much rock climbing, wondered if her career might come to an end earlier than expected. She also wondered how much longer she wanted to keep grinding through tour life.

Longtime coach Tony Ziegler told her life’s too short to keep playing if she wasn’t happy. She needed to make a decision.

Two weeks later, Yang came back and told him that she wanted to keep playing and she wanted to win. Ziegler repeated what he’s said to her often in recent years: “Your best golf is ahead of you.”

“Back in the day,” said Ziegler, “when she played really good golf, she had a lot of pressure and expectation, and she didn’t know how to deal with it.

“As she’s gotten older, she knows how to deal with it.”

The woman who had a smiley face stitched on the front of her visors beamed after that final-round 66. She finished at 27-under 261 for the tournament, shattering the event’s previous record by four shots.

For a long time, Yang was always in the best-to-never-win-a-major conversation on the LPGA. With 21 top-10 finishes at the majors, including two top 5s this season, she mostly flies under the radar at big events now.

“She’s just at ease with herself, no pressure, no expectation,” said Ziegler. “Basically playing for herself.”

Yang enjoyed a champagne bath on the 18th green after many of her friends came out to celebrate. Even before the injury, a burned-out Yang wondered if it might be best to retire. In time, she learned how to create a more balanced life, and wrapped up her 16th season on tour looking like a woman who has more time to shine.

 “You know,” said Yang, “I still can’t believe I did it.”

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After rock climbing injury nearly derailed her career, Amy Yang back on top at CME

“Feel quite nervous being in contention,” said Yang.

NAPLES, Fla. – It wasn’t all that long ago that Amy Yang wondered if her LPGA days were numbered. She’d taken her new hobby of rock climbing – at the gym – a bit too far and suffered from tennis elbow in her left arm. She lost distance as it hurt too much to get through the ball.

Now 34-year-old Yang, a four-time winner on the LPGA who joined the tour in 2008, is fully healed and back to playing some of the best golf of her life as she co-leads the CME Group Tour Championship with Nasa Hataoka at 21-under 295. Yang followed Friday’s 63 with a smooth 64. She hasn’t made a bogey at Tiburon Golf Club since the first hole of the opening round.

“Feel quite nervous being in contention,” said Yang, “but I never thought like I have to follow the 9 under par yesterday, because golf, you never know.”

Yang, who shot 61 in the third round of The Annika last week, is no stranger to low scores. She holds a share of the LPGA’s nine-hole record in relation to par at 9 under as well as a share of the lowest nine-hole raw score (27).

In 2015, she tied Annika Sorenstam’s record for total birdies in one round at 13. (Sorenstam’s 13 birdies came during her historic 59.)

Yang also shares the record with Beth Daniel for most consecutive birdies in one round at nine.

Alison Lee of the United States plays her shot from the third tee during the third round of the CME Group Tour Championship at Tiburon Golf Club on November 18, 2023 in Naples, Florida. (Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images)

While Hataoka and Yang combine for 10 LPGA titles, Alison Lee, who sits alone in solo third three shots back, would give just about anything to collect her first.

The former UCLA standout is on the hot streak of her life right now with a pair of runner-up finishes in her last two LPGA starts as well as a recent victory on the LET in Saudi Arabia. Lee credits her turnaround in part to the encouragement of new friend and mentor Fred Couples, who texts her every day.

Before Saturday’s round, Couples messaged: “OK, kid, today just keep using your swing to carry you. You’re putting great, playing like the champ that you are. Head high and brain clear, go get ’em.”

After excelling at every level as an amateur, Lee had resigned to the fact that she wouldn’t be the player she thought she’d be growing up.

Now, she’s starting to believe that maybe she can.

“I felt like it was so unattainable for so long,” she said. “For it to be like so close, I want it so bad. I just want it so bad.”

World No. 1 Lilia Vu, currently T-7, has all but formerly locked up the Rolex Player of the Year Award, which is worth one LPGA Hall of Fame point. Celine Boutier needed to win this week to have a chance. She currently trails by 14 strokes.

In the Vare Trophy race, it will take a special round from Hyo Joo Kim to knock off Atthaya Thitikul. Kim needs a round of 64 or better to match Thitikul’s current average. Thitikul can better her current average with a 69.

The winner of the Vare Trophy also receives one Hall of Fame point. A total of 27 points are needed to qualify for one of the toughest Halls in all of sports.

Meet the top 10 players in contention at the Chevron Championship and what they’re saying about a potential jump in a new pond

Will the winner jump or not?

THE WOODLANDS, Texas — Angel Yin remembers vividly a practice round she had with Cristie Kerr several years ago at an LPGA Drive On event in Georgia.

“She was walking after she hit a tee shot off a practice round, and she was like, ‘I’m four days away from people knowing I’m back,'” said Yin.

“That’s the confidence. Every day I tell myself that: ‘Just channel your Cristie Kerr.'”

Yin hasn’t yet won on the LPGA and co-leads the 2023 Chevron Championship with Allisen Corpuz, another American player looking for her first LPGA victory at the year’s first major. The third-round leaderboard at the Club at Carlton Woods is littered with players looking for a break-through week – whether that’s a first-time LPGA victory or a maiden major win.

Only a trio in a share of sixth know what it’s like to win a major – Nelly Korda, Hyo Joo Kim and A Lim Kim, who won her first major down the road in Houston at the 2020 U.S. Women’s Open at Champion Golf Club.

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Here’s a breakdown of the top 10 players at the Chevron, and what some are saying about the champion’s leap:

Mina Harigae just misses albatross, Celine Boutier leads, three 63s tie tournament record at 2023 LPGA Drive On Championship

The weather has improved steadily each day and so has the scoring.

SUPERSTITION MOUNTAIN, Ariz. — The weather has improved steadily each day and so has the scoring at the 2023 LPGA Drive On Championship.

On Saturday during the third round, Korea’s Amy Yang shot the best score of the week, a 9-under 63. She had 10 birdies, five on each side, and just one bogey. Her 63 ties the tournament’s low round in its official two-year history.

“I hit it so solid out there, especially my second shot going into the green was really solid,” she said. “My putting worked really well today. I could see the break. Just over the ball I could see the break and the speed, just one of those days you just got the good feeling about your playing. So I just enjoyed it out there.”

Yang opened 70-70 to get to 4 under through 36 holes. She made the cut by a shot and started her Saturday round at 9 a.m.

She seemed to like the course conditions early in the day.

“I think it helped the ball wasn’t release so much like yesterday afternoon. I think that really helped.”

Yang, 33, turned pro in 2008 and has four LPGA victories, three of them in the Honda LPGA Thailand. A win in Arizona on Sunday would be her first in the U.S.

A few hours later, Norway’s Celine Borge matched Yang’s 63. Playing in her first LPGA event since 2019, Borge opened with four straight birdies, then closed out her round birdie-eagle for a back-nine 31.

Not to be outdone, Ariya Jutanugarn shot a third-round 63, riding nine birdies without a bogey to claim a share of the clubhouse lead. Jutanugarn, who said she missed some short putts which could’ve made her score even lower, had five birdies in a row on Nos. 6-10. She then closed with three straight birdies on Nos. 16, 17 and 18.

Near albatross

Mina Harigae, one of the nearly dozen LPGA players with special membership status at Superstition Mountain, had her second shot on 18 lip out during Saturday’s third round.

Yep, she was oh-so-close to recording an albatross. It would’ve been the second in as many days.

The near-miss comes one week after she got married at the course to Travis Kreiter.

Yuka Saso recorded one Friday on the par-5 second hole, the first one on the LPGA in three years.

Boutier holds solo lead

Celine Boutier shot a third-round 65 to get to 16 under. When Moriya Jutanugarn hit her second shot into the lake on the 18th hole en route to a closing bogey, Boutier claimed the solo 54-hole lead.

Boutier eagled the par-5 second hole and sprinkled in six birdies, including one at the last. She had just one bogey on her card.

“I feel like I had a lot of birdie opportunities today,” she said. “I didn’t even make all of them, but I feel like because I was playing really steady and focusing on hitting good shots and having the birdie chances.

“It was definitely very solid round all around.”

Jutanugarn had bogeys on her last two holes, as well as her first hole. Her second-round 69 dropped her into a tie for second with Alison Lee and LPGA rookie Hae Ran Ryu, who eagled the 18th to shoot a 64.

Go low on 18

The par-5 18th hole, measuring just over 500 yards this week, is playing as the easiest hole during the first two rounds. The scoring average through 36 holes was 4.594 and players racked up 82 birdies in the first round and, despite a back-left pin location that was guarded by the lake that runs down the left side of the hole, another 57 in the second. There were also three eagles on 18 in the first round and another in the second.

The final hole is likely to provide scoring opportunities all week and could set the stage for some final-round theatrics from the contenders.

“I feel like you need to take advantage of all the par-5s out here,” said Nelly Korda, the second-ranked player in the women’s game. “I think whenever you par a par 5 you definitely lose one on the field because they’re all pretty reachable.”

About that tournament history

The two 2020 Drive On events as well as the 2021 tournament were at the time staged as one-offs as the LPGA was seeking to create playing opportunities for its players during the COVID pandemic.

The event didn’t become an official, regular LPGA tournament until last year. Also, when Leona Maguire won it a year ago, it was a 54-hole event. Whoever wins it this year will establish the tournament’s 72-hole scoring record.

The future status of the Drive On is unclear. The 2024 schedule has not been finalized, nor has Superstition Mountain been named as a future host of the event.

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In Gee Chun battles through neck injury for one-shot lead at LPGA’s HSBC in Singapore

In Gee Chun grabs one-shot LPGA lead over Jin Young Ko and Jeongeun Lee6 in Singapore.

After more than three years without a victory, In Gee Chun wasn’t about to let a pain in her neck slow down her climb up the leaderboard Saturday at the LPGA’s HSBC Women’s World Championship in Singapore.

The three-time winner on the tour focused on her putting after suffering a spasm in her neck earlier in the week, then carded six birdies for a 66 to reach 12-under 204 at Sentosa Golf Club. That was good for a one-shot lead over Jeongeun Lee6 and World No. 1 Jin Young Ko heading into Sunday’s final round.

After hurting her neck Thursday, she considered withdrawing but instead relied on stretching, help from on-site trainers and Advil. She said she has played within herself and let her putter do the talking.

“I tried to make good focus on the putting green because I have spasm in my neck, so I didn’t try to hit hard,” Chun told the LPGA after taking the third-round lead. “I think it went really well on the putting green. …. That’s how I made a good score today.”

Chun’s most recent victory was at the 2018 LPGA KEB Hana Bank Championship. She also won the 2015 U.S. Women’s Open and the 2016 Amundi Evian Championship. She likely will need to make plenty more putts Sunday to hold off the player riding the hottest streak in the women’s game.

Jin Young Ko plays a shot from the ninth tee during her third round at the HSBC Women’s World Championship on March 5, 2022, at Sentosa Golf Club in Singapore. (AP/Paul Miller)

Ko shot a third-round 69, her 14th consecutive round in the 60s. That matched an LPGA record she already shared with Annika Sorenstam and So Yeon Ryu. She is in pursuit of her 13th LPGA victory and her sixth in her past 10 starts.

Lee6 had the lowest round of the day, carding seven birdies – six of them in a front-nine 31 – and an eagle to charge up the board with a 7-under 65 to tie Ko in second at 11 under par. Lee6 has one win on the tour, the 2019 U.S. Women’s Open.

American Danielle Kang fired a third-round 68 to climb into a three-way tie for fourth place at 9 under with Atthaya Thitikul (70) and Amy Yang (71) after three rounds. Brooke Henderson (71) was another shot back at 8 under.

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World No. 1 Jin Young Ko co-leads HSBC in Singapore, records 13th consecutive round in the 60s

With 13 consecutive rounds in the 60s, Jin Young Ko just one off the mark for most in a row – a record she already shares.

Once again, Jin Young Ko finds herself in the midst of an impressive and potentially record-breaking streak. The World No. 1 posted a breezy 5-under 67 at the HSBC Women’s World Championship on Friday, giving her 13 consecutive rounds in the 60s dating back to the 2021 BMW Ladies Championship in South Korea in October.

Last season Ko took a share of the record for most consecutive rounds in the 60s at 14 with Annika Sorenstam and So Yeon Ryu.

Ko now co-leads the HSBC at the midway point with Amy Yang at 8 under.

“It was a great round today,” said Ko. “And I tried to make more birdies and make more opportunity for birdie chance today.”

South Korea’s Yang looks to add a fifth career LPGA title. All four of her previous wins have come on the Asian swing.

Brooke Henderson (left) smiles with Jin Young Ko on the 18th green after their second round of the HSBC Women’s World Championship at Sentosa Golf Club on March 4, 2022 in Singapore. (Yong Teck Lim/Getty Images)

A trio of players are tied for third at 7 under, including Brooke Henderson, Megan Khang and rookie Atthaya Thitikul, who won the 2018 Women’s Amateur Asia-Pacific on the New Tanjong Course.

“I think my game is fine,” said Thitikul. “I mean, not like my A game, anyway, but just trying to give myself a lot of chances to make it and then just like commit to it and then have a good roll-in for the putt, it will be good.”

Khang was scrambling to get situated in Singapore after arriving a day late due to flight issues. That gave her even less time to work with new caddie Missy Pedersen, whose regular boss, Brittany Lincicome, was unable to travel.

“(Missy and I) really haven’t had a full day until yesterday together. And so we’ve just kind of been chatting along,” said Khang. “I obviously know her usual player, Brittany Lincicome, and so we’ve just been kind of sharing some funny stories that we’ve had and really trying to keep our minds off of things.”

This marks Ko’s first start of the 2022 season. She won her last start on the LPGA, the CME Group Tour Championship in November, while battling a wrist injury that kept her from properly warming up before each round. Ko’s back to being able to practice as she’d like, heading to the range Friday after her bogey-free effort, noting that she wasn’t satisfied.

“Like my swing feels is a little different as front nine to back nine,” said Ko. “So I feel more comfortable in the back nine, so I just want to find – I just want to find what happened in the front nine, is it mentally or is it like warmup or like needing more stretch before the tee off? So, yeah, I will go to the range right now.”