It’s not often that an LPGA rookie rises to No. 1 in the world, but Atthaya Thitikul proved to be a special player last season. Will anyone be able to make such a strong showing in 2023?
This year’s rookie class is once again highly global. In fact, an American hasn’t won the Louise Suggs Rolex Rookie of the Year Award since Paula Creamer in 2005.
There are, however, a couple of American hotshots who made headlines before they graduated from elementary school in the 2023 rookie class. Could Lucy Li or Alexa Pano break that drought?
Here are a dozen LPGA rookies to keep an eye on in 2023:
“You can play professionally and play Division II,” her coach told her, noting the number of NFL players who make it.
There was a time when Kiira Riihijarvi thought she might need an upgrade from her Division II digs. Ultimately, she wanted one thing: a better place to practice. Head coach Missey Jones, who runs the program at the University of Tampa, delivered on that request and Riihijarvi wound up staying five years, winning 12 times and earning a master’s degree in entrepreneurship.
“You can play professionally and play Division II,” Jones told her, noting the number of NFL players who make it from small schools.
It didn’t take long for Riihijarvi, 25, to prove Jones’ point. In her first full season on the Epson Tour, the Finnish player finished fourth on the money list to earn her LPGA card for 2023. She won once and placed in the top five in each of her last three starts.
“I very much enjoyed my time in Division II,” Riihijarvi told Golfweek. “Whenever I started college, I wasn’t the best player. It gave me the space to compete and play and keep getting better. I think it’s a very good option that a lot of people don’t think about.”
World Golf Hall of Famers Hollis Stacy and Peggy Kirk Bell were early examples of Division II players making a mark as both hailed from Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. More recent Division II players who have reached the LPGA include Sandra Changkija from Nova Southeastern and Florida Southern’s Jackie Stoelting.
“The grass is greener where you water it,” said Jones.
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There are two golf courses in Oulu, Finland, where Riihijarvi took up the game at a junior clinic at Virpiniemi Golf Club at age 9. Golf has exploded in Finland, she said, since the COVID-19 pandemic. Where Riihijarvi lives in the northern part of the country, the golf season lasts about five months.
The desire to play golf year-round led her to the Darlington School in Rome, Georgia. Riihijarvi’s brother, Paavo, went with her to Rome to play soccer. Jones had a player from Sweden who attended Darlington, and when she got word about Riihijarvi, Jones asked a friend who coached high school golf in Georgia to give her a scouting report.
Word came back: “Oh, she’s going to be a player.”
Riihijarvi, who averaged 78 at the time and was just learning to speak English, went down for a visit and liked what she saw.
Xiaowen Yin of China (from left), Gabriella Then of USA, Yan Liu of China, Kiira Riihijarvi of Finland, Linnea Strom of Sweden, Gina Kim of USA, Celine Borge of Norway, Grace Kim of Australia and Hyo Joon Jang of Republic of Korea celebrate receiving their LPGA cards during the card ceremony following the final round of the Epson Tour Championship at the Champions course at LPGA International on October 09, 2022, in Daytona Beach, Florida. (Photo by Mike Stobe/Getty Images)
Jones started the program from scratch at Tampa in 2010, and in 2017, Riihijarvi became the first player in Spartans history to earn a bid to the NCAA South Super Regional, which she won. Before she even left the parking lot at regionals, Riihijarvi vowed to come back with her team, which she did in 2019.
After the pandemic cut Tampa’s promising 2020 season short, Riihijarvi didn’t like the idea of her college career ending so abruptly. She decided to come back for a fifth season, with the goal of leading her team to its first NCAA Championship appearance.
With organized practices only held three times a week, Riihijarvi could set additional practices around her own specific goals. She came back sophomore year with a golf swing that could produce different ball-flights. There was a drive and a focus that bled into the rest of the team. Back home, she won multiple national amateur titles.
“There’s an inner something in her that’s different,” said Jones.
Riihijarvi led the Spartans to their first NCAA regional title in the spring of 2021, earning a spot in the national championship. Riihijarvi was named NCAA Division II National Player for a second consecutive year.
“I think I just kept getting better every year,” said Riihijarvi, who in four years cut nearly six strokes off her average. This weekend, Riihijarvi will work as an assistant coach for her alma mater at the Rollins Invitational.
Clockwise: Kiira Riihijarvi, Emily Montagnino, Emilie Bjorge, Sophia Cadavid, Heather Kipness, and head coach Missey Jones (courtesy photo)
Riihijarvi’s first LPGA event of the 2023 season won’t come until late March. She’s currently enjoying some well-earned time away from practice.
Jones talks a lot about the way the 5-foot-11-inch Riihijarvi walks – like a person who knows where she’s going. Assured, but never arrogant.
“People were going to buy into her work ethic, or they weren’t,” said Jones. Either way, it wasn’t going to impact Riihijarvi and her keen attention to detail.
Riihijarvi heads to the LPGA a prolific winner. She also has the added benefit of a player who has paved the way in Matilda Castren. Last year, Castren became the first player from Finland to win on the LPGA. She was also a key player in Europe’s 2021 Solheim Cup victory, going 3-1-0. A supportive Castren has already offered to help.
“I do think it’s a skill,” said Riihijarvi of winning. “It’s something you have to learn.”
Riihijarvi left Division II with an advanced degree in that, too.
The top 10 players on the Ascensus Race for the Card earned LPGA status for the 2023 season.
Hyo Joon Jang, a 19-year-old rookie from South Korea, entered the Epson Tour Championship ranked 11th on the money list with $74,202, just $1,076 behind No. 10 Alexa Pano. Jang’s T-11 finish was enough to push her into the 10th spot, forcing Pano to head to Q-Series to earn her LPGA card.
The top 10 players on the Ascensus Race for the Card earned LPGA status for the 2023 season. The top three players – Linnea Strom, Xiaowen Yin and Lucy Li – had their cards locked up coming into Daytona Beach, Florida.
For the second time in three years, Bailey Tardy missed her card by one spot. In 2020, Tardy missed her card by $343. She held the lead on Sunday at the Tour Championship on the strength of five birdies in six holes on the front nine. A back-nine 37, however, dropped her down to third place. This time, the former Georgia standout missed the 10th spot by $1,765.
Jaravee Boonchant birdied the 18th to win her first Epson Tour title at LPGA International and moved up to 12th on the money list. While it wasn’t enough to earn her LPGA card, the former Duke player will get to skip the second stage of Q-School.
Find out more about the card winners for the 2022 Epson Tour season:
Maja Stark was the last woman to earn a spot on Augusta National for the final round of the ANWA after a day of moving cut numbers.
AUGUSTA, Ga. – Kate Smith intended to go to bed at 9 p.m. on Wednesday night. It took much longer than that to drift off.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “Normally you can look at the TV or phone as distraction; I just laid there. I just thought about my opportunities for the next day, those six holes a lot.”
Smith, a fifth-year senior at the University of Nebraska, was at 4 under and had a three-shot lead when the first round of the Augusta National Women’s Amateur was suspended because of weather. She had only played 11 holes.
When Smith returned on Thursday morning to finish, the temperature had dipped below 50 degrees. She played her remaining seven holes in 4 over. Shortly after lunch, she was back on the first tee for her second round and slowly slipped down the leaderboard. When Smith three-putted the 17th green, it moved the 36-hole cut from 6 over to 7 over.
Smith landed in a playoff with four other women – Maja Stark, Lauren Hartlage, Amari Avery and Yu-Sang Hou – that ended quickly when Stark dropped an 18-footer for birdie on the No. 10, the first extra hole.
Like the rest of the 81-player field, Smith has a practice-round tee time at Augusta National on Friday even if she won’t be one of the 30 women competing on Saturday. Friday’s round might even be a little more enjoyable now.
“I was already trying to mentally prepare for that while being here,” Smith said of a wandering mind where the final round at Augusta National was concerned, “and I don’t think I was in the present all the time. It’s a long week and you’ve got to keep your head down and focus on what’s in front of you.”
Smith owned the start of the day, but Stark was squarely in the spotlight 12 hours later when she drained the birdie putt that sent her to Augusta National. It couldn’t have been better timed. The Oklahoma State sophomore only made three birdies in the past two days: One came on the 36th hole to help her get in the playoff and another was on the extra hole.
Interestingly, Stark had bogeyed No. 10 in regulation both days.
For a few short minutes—and with memories of an 11-for-10 playoff in the inaugural ANWA were still fresh—it looked like extra holes would be avoided on Thursday.
Kiira Riihijarvi is the only NCAA Division II player in the field this week. The fifth-year senior at the University of Tampa made tidy work of the cutline when she rolled in a birdie putt on No. 18 in the fifth-to-last group. That moved her from 7 over to 6 over and brought the cut with her.
Smith’s late bogey gave the other four players at 7 over second hope.
“I tried not to look at the leaderboard while I was playing,” Riihijarvi said of coming down the final holes. “They made it difficult because they’re really big.”
Regardless of what the leaderboard said, a number became more and more difficult to pin down as wind swirled all day and made the closing stretch particularly difficult.
The second round of the Augusta National Women’s Amateur on Thursday, April 1, 2021. (Photo: ANWA)
Ana Pelaez Trivino, a fifth-year senior at South Carolina, felt that as much as anyone. She fired a 1-under 71 and went to bed Wednesday with a share of second place. She played the front nine in 2 under on Thursday but was 5 over on the back. At 6 over, she snuck in to the third round on the number.
Pelaez Trivino said the big numbers on the back – three bogeys and a double – weren’t even a product of focusing too much on the cut because she wasn’t focusing there at all. Mental game is an advantage for the firey Spaniard.
“I can look at the scoreboard and not feel pressure at all, just know what I have to do,” she said. “It’s a fact that I’m going to have to accept that knowledge at the end of the day, so why not look at the scoreboard or whatever?”
Erica Shepherd played the last three holes in 2 over to land at 6 over, which eventually left her safely inside the cut. It was a similar scenario to the one that played out in 2019, when Shepherd also narrowly avoided the playoff.
“Kind of had the same feeling heading down the last hole,” she said. “I guess that experience from being there two years ago may have helped me a little bit.”
Shepherd, who finished T-23 after a final-round 75 at Augusta National in 2019, bogeyed No. 18 on Wednesday, and only after laying up on the par 5 realized she could have reached the green with her 3-wood. She missed a downhill slider for par but bogey was still enough.
Having made the cut here once, Shepherd was extra motivated to secure another Saturday tee time.
“Just to see in person how it’s actually better than it is on TV and just being part of that experience and to see how much that did for women’s golf and just to have been there,” she said, “just kind of that pressure that I put on myself to get back, it’s kind of a relief to know that that’s secured now.”
For a handful of women in the ANWA field, a bonus year of college golf came with another carrot: A trip to Augusta National.
When Brooke Riley finds herself with extra time on her hands, she pulls up a familiar YouTube video. Riley, a graduate student at Northwestern, watched the final-round broadcast of the inaugural Augusta National Women’s Amateur in 2019 in real time. Now she watches the rerun so often it’s become familiar background noise in her apartment.
“Whenever I sit down and have a break, I pretty much put it on that final round at Augusta,” she said, “and just seeing Maria (Fassi) and Jennifer (Kupcho) shown so much and just seeing how they played the golf course is actually super beneficial.”
This time, Riley will be at the Augusta National Women’s Amateur. Having qualified in 2020, she finally gets to make good on the invitation. So much has happened since she found out she’d be in the 2020 ANWA – a tournament that ultimately was canceled because of COVID.
Augusta National indicated early on it would honor invitations from the 2020 tournament the following year. Riley knew she’d have a spot in Augusta before she was even certain she’d be able to return to her college roster for a fifth year.
“I kind of was running myself through scenarios, of if I don’t get a fifth year in college golf, this is such an incredible opportunity, will I stay an amateur the rest of the year to be able to get that back?” Riley said. “I definitely think I would have done that just for the opportunity to play a competitive tournament at Augusta.”
The NCAA announced it was granting spring-sport athletes a fifth year March 30, 2020, the day Riley turned 22. She finished her bachelor’s degree in communications and returned last fall to start a master’s degree in sports administration.
“It’s been a pretty ideal year,” she said.
Next up: Augusta National. Riley and three Northwestern teammates played the course in January 2019 with an alum. It was a kid-in-a-candy-shop day, and Riley knows she’ll have to look at it from a completely different perspective in competition.
In 2019, Northwestern sent Stephanie Lau to the ANWA. Lau, who graduated later that spring, will return to caddie for Riley this week. Neither is overthinking it.
“I think we’re really similar in that way,” Riley said of being confident in her prep work. “I think we just talked about keeping it fun with each other.”
Among this year’s 84-player ANWA field are 10 fifth-year college seniors. Half of them are ANWA returners – including USC’s Allisen Corpuz and South Carolina’s Pimnipa Panthong, who tied for 17th in 2019 – while the other half are competing for the first time. Riley and Illinois’ Tristyn Nowlin gained entry into the field through a new qualification category: one that brought in players who qualified for the 2020 tournament but wouldn’t have secured an invitation in 2021.
It’s a sweet second chance, and Nowlin is more grateful than ever for such things.
In the months leading up to the 2019 ANWA, Nowlin was sidelined with an injury to her right wrist. Combine that with a pandemic, and Nowlin, who missed the 36-hole cut at the inaugural ANWA, has a newfound appreciation for golf.
“I’ve played with a little bit more of a sense of freedom,” Nowlin said. “I think this whole process of not necessarily being able to compete in the fall has brought back a lot of joy into the game. I’m just really looking forward to the ANWA. It’s so special.”
Tristyn Nowlin, an Illinois fifth year, returns to the ANWA for a second time. (Illinois Athletics)
Nowlin was on the Illinois team that advanced to the NCAA Championship for the first time in program history in 2019. It was a huge motivator, and an experience that brought her team together. Nowlin, from Richmond, Kentucky, knew she wanted to finish her career at Illinois. The ANWA would be a nice carrot.
“I think for me, it came as a bonus,” she said. “It was kind of secondary to wanting to come back and be with the team because I consider Illinois my home.
“It certainly did come up in the thought process, thinking, ‘Oh I will be able to play the ANWA again,’ and just the fact that they extended those invitations because we weren’t able to play, very grateful for that.”
Spain’s Ana Pelaez was at Augusta National for the final round of the ANWA in 2019, she just wasn’t inside the ropes. That changes this year.
Only 30 players make the cut to compete at Augusta National on the final day and Pelaez, who is completing a fifth year at the University of South Carolina, managed to get an extra ticket in 2019 from compatriot Marta Perez. The Spaniards fared well that day with Perez finishing T21 and Pelaez’s former Gamecock teammate Ainhoa Olarra finishing T12.
Ana Pelaez, South Carolina (South Carolina Athletics)
Pelaez is one of four Gamecocks in this field this time, joining Pauline Roussin-Bouchard, Paula Kirner and Panthong, another super senior.
In January 2020, Pelaez was No. 176 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking, which is used to determine the majority of the field. With the ANWA on her mind, she made it a goal to move up. A year later was ranked inside the top 15.
All four Gamecocks received their invitation on the same day, after a team workout.
“We opened it and it was just like magic,” she said. “I cried. I cried a lot.”
Pelaez had imagined she’d turn pro after her senior season, but COVID shook up that plan. As head coach Kalen Anderson put it, Pelaez had unfinished business in Columbia. Coming back, Pelaez realized, would also allow her to repay the debt she felt to her coaches.
“I think it’s also a way to show them how thankful I am for these past five years,” she said.
COVID threw another wrench in the plans because for several months, it was unclear whether college golf would even happen in the fall. South Carolina, in the SEC, was among the lucky teams to compete, but Pelaez didn’t return until the spring season. She hasn’t finished worse than sixth in four starts with the team.
Unlike Pelaez, Kiira Riihijarvi didn’t think about the ANWA much after she found out that anyone who received an invitation in 2020 would be invited back in 2021. She figured most of the field was already accounted for. Her thinking changed in December when she got an email indicating she was in consideration for an invitation. Then she started playing closer attention to her position in the World Amateur Golf Ranking – even dropping a few tournaments that she knew wouldn’t help her ranking.
Kiira Riihijarvi of the University of Tampa Women’s Golf during the Peggy Kirk Bell Invitational at Golden Bear Club, Keene’s Point. (Photo: Mike Watters)
Ultimately, Riihijarvi, who grew up in Finland, got an invitation. She will be the lone NCAA Division II player in the 84-woman field.
Back in 2019, Riihijarvi followed much of the ANWA online, and tuned in to the end of the broadcast.
“I watched the last five holes I think on TV but I did follow it the whole time because I thought it was such a cool event to actually get the best women amateurs to play in Augusta,” she said. “That was such a cool concept to me so I was following a lot.”
Riihijarvi could be playing the Symetra Tour by now after earning status at LPGA Q-School in 2019. COVID brought such uncertainty, however, that after graduating with her undergraduate degree in marketing, Riihijarvi decided to return to Tampa to compete a master’s degree.
“I decided before I knew they were going to start playing again but I don’t regret it, I really like that I took an extra year,” she said. “The Augusta Women’s Amateur just makes it all worth it.”
