The inaugural Blue Bay event on Hainan Island was held in the fall of 2014.
The Blue Bay LPGA returns this week for the first time since 2018, and much has changed. World No. 1 Lilia Vu, for example, was still in college.
Shanshan Feng, China’s trailblazing LPGA player and 2017 Blue Bay champion, has since retired from golf. Ruoning Yin, the fresh-faced major champion poised to challenge Feng’s records, was years away from even turning professional.
Mexico’s Gaby Lopez, the defending champion, has won twice since 2018 and recently married her longtime sweetheart, Santiago Carranza.
“I’ve always wanted to play in front of a home crowd,” said Yin, a two-time winner on tour and short-term No. 1. “Last week in Singapore, after the last hole, I heard people in the crowd cheering for me in Chinese. It was heart-warming to see.”
Gaby Lopez of Mexico celebrates after winning the Blue Bay LPGA on November 10, 2018, in Hainan Island, China. (Photo by Zhe Ji/Getty Images)
The inaugural Blue Bay event on Hainan Island was held in the fall of 2014. It was halted after five stagings due, in part, to the global pandemic. Three past champions are in the field this week, including Minjee Lee, Sei Young Kim and Lopez.
“I think that every single time you’re in a place where you’ve played good and you have performed well,” said Lopez, “there is this kind of sort of calmness that comes with good memories.”
There are 25 China Golf Association members in the field of 108. Unlike the previous two Asian events, this one features a 36-hole cut to top 65 and ties and a purse of $2.2 million.
Vu, who withdrew during Sunday’s final round in Singapore with an illness, sounds like she’s on the mend, though she didn’t offer many details during a pre-tournament press conference.
“Last week my body wasn’t feeling great overall physically,” said Vu, “and it was just Sunday that I couldn’t handle. So I took the whole day off yesterday, and hopefully I can regroup and have a good week this week.”
“(Lexi) has been a huge supporter of our events and always comes and clears her schedule without hesitation.”
Morgan Pressel’s competitive career on the LPGA might be over, but her impact in the game and beyond continues to flourish. The 35-year-old major champion turned lead analyst for Golf Channel’s LPGA coverage raised $900,000 this week at her annual Morgan & Friends charity event.
The event, held annually at St. Andrews Country Club in Boca Raton and Banyan Golf Club in nearby West Palm Beach, Florida, has raised a total of $12.5 million over the years in the fight against breast cancer. Pressel’s mother Kathy died of breast cancer in 2003, and her memory is at the heart of the mission.
Golfweek caught up with the former phenom to talk about her foundation, the friends who step up every year to help and the 2024 LPGA season, which gets started next week with the Hilton Grand Vacations Tournament of Champions:
Here’s a look at which top players are in the field for this year’s TOC and which ones are sitting out.
The LPGA season kicks off next week with the Hilton Grand Vacations Tournament of Champions, and World No. 1 Lilia Vu headlines the field. It marks the first time that Vu has been eligible for the field given that she won her first career title last February at the Honda LPGA Thailand and went on to win three more times, including two majors.
The season-opener takes place Jan. 18-21 at Lake Nona Golf and Country Club in Orlando, Florida. LPGA winners from the past two seasons are invited to compete for a $1.5 million purse while a field of celebrities vie for $500,000.
Once again, Lake Nona resident Annika Sorenstam will compete in the celebrity field along with NBC’s Dylan Dreyer, U.S. Soccer Hall of Famer Landon Donovan, eight-time NBA All-Star Vince Carter, country music star Chris Lane and World Series Champion John Smoltz.
While Vu and No. 2 Ruoning Yin begin their 2024 seasons next week, six players inside the top 10 of the Rolex Rankings are skipping the first event. For many international players, the lure of a longer offseason outweighs the perks of the TOC.
While there are two events in Florida to start the season in 2024, with the LPGA Drive On event in Bradenton the following week, the tour then has three weeks off before beginning the spring Asian swing in Thailand.
Here’s a look at which top players are in the field for this year’s TOC and which ones are sitting out:
Last January, few would’ve put anyone on this short list in the LPGA Player of the Year conversation.
At the start of the 2023 season, it’s safe to say that few would’ve put anyone on this short list in the LPGA Player of the Year conversation.
The start of the year seemed primed for another Lydia Ko show, especially after she opened 2023 with a victory on the LET in Saudi Arabia. Nelly Korda won late in 2022 after an injury-plagued year. Would she continue what she started in 2021?
Instead, both Ko and Korda were among the winless on the LPGA this season, while three new heavy hitters emerged.
In the end, the winner was clear. Without further ado, here’s Golfweek’s Female Player of the Year …
Jeff Sagarin’s rating system is based on a mathematical formula that uses a player’s won-lost-tied record against other players when they play on the same course on the same day, and the stroke differential between those players, then links all players to one another based on common opponents. The ratings give an indication of who is playing well over the past 52 weeks.
Also, players must have played in at least 10 events to be ranked. Editor’s note: We’ve included the Rolex rankings for the sake of comparison.
May the journeys of those who triumphed in 2023 be a source of inspiration to those on the verge of calling it quits.
Lindy Duncan, the 208th-ranked player in the world, considered 2023 to be a make-or-break year. She began the season with no status, and told herself, I’m either going to get better at golf, or I’m going to do something else.
Last November at The Annika, the penultimate event of the LPGA season, Duncan emerged from the scoring tent on Sunday in a jolly good mood. She’d finished the season 92nd on the CME points list, her card secured for another year.
“I feel like I’m playing some of the best that I’ve played,” she said, “ever.”
While Duncan wasn’t in the headlines this season, her comeback story is one of many. Lilia Vu thought about going to law school not long ago, after a 2019 rookie season on the LPGA left her feeling “destroyed.” Vu’s mother convinced her to keep going.
“I just remember being miserable,” said Vu. “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.”
Lilia Vu celebrates on the 18th green after winning the 2023 AIG Women’s Open at Walton Heath Golf Club in Surrey, England. (Photo: Andrew Redington/Getty Images)
Ruoning Yin missed the cut in seven of her first nine starts as a rookie last year. She, too, called home and told her mom she wanted to quit. She was hitting it poorly, which led her to practice even harder, ballooning from 100 balls per range session to 500.
Now she was fed up and in pain.
“My mom told me, if you cannot swing just don’t swing,” recalled Yin, “just do your putting drills, practice putting and chipping – you’ll be fine. No matter what, we still love you.”
Coming back from maternity leave proved more stressful than Azahara Munoz imagined. The battle to keep her tour card made her feel like throwing up all week at The Annika. Munoz came into the event 100th on the CME points list. The top 100 keep full status for 2024. Munoz said she was so stressed out she didn’t even want to tee it up.
“I was like, if this is how stressful it is, I don’t know if I want to play golf,” she said. “It’s no fun at all.”
Azahara Munoz of Spain plays a shot on the 16th hole during the final round of The ANNIKA driven by Gainbridge at Pelican on Nov. 12, 2023, in Belleair, Florida. (Photo by Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images)
Munoz ultimately played well enough to contend that event, vaulting up to 64th on the points list after taking a share of second at Pelican Golf Club.
Players in all stages of life and career face turning points, and there were stories of triumph around every corner this season.
Alison Lee has been open about her rock bottom. After her parents convinced her in 2019 to give it one more try, Lee Monday-qualified to get into an early-season event in 2020 and knew that if she played well, she’d move up the priority list on the next reshuffle and get into more fields.
But then she had a panic attack on the drive to the golf course.
“Every mile I got closer to the course,” Lee wrote on lpga.com, “the more anxiety overcame my body. I couldn’t breathe, and I could hardly see with all the tears streaming down my face. The feelings became so overwhelming that I began to look at the concrete barrier on the interstate and considered crashing my car into it, because I would rather have been in the hospital than have to tee off and compete. In that moment, anywhere else besides the golf course felt safe.”
The pressure to win on the LPGA took Lee to a dark place.
In 2023, Lee came closer than ever to finally achieving that lifelong goal. And while she didn’t get there, finishing runner-up in her last three events left her feeling rejuvenated. All signs point to Lee’s best golf being ahead of her.
“All the dreams I had when I turned pro nine years ago, I haven’t been able to accomplish any of them,” said Lee.
“If my career starts now at the age of 28, of course I want to keep going. I still have a lot of goals I want to achieve that 19-year-old Alison, when she turned pro, all the things she wanted to accomplish.”
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)
Duncan, 32, was the NGCA National Player of the Year as a junior at Duke. She was a first-team All-American all four seasons and earned LPGA status soon after graduation.
If Duncan could go back 10 years and give her younger self some advice, she’d say to find joy in the pursuit rather than the destination.
“And she wouldn’t understand it,” Duncan said with a laugh.
Duncan still gets a mighty thrill from competition. She loves traveling to Asia for tournaments. She’s hitting it farther than ever and feels healthy enough to keep up the grind.
When Duncan started 2023 with no status and no sponsors, she thought about what her next chapter might look like, should the season not go as planned. While she didn’t get far enough in that thought exercise to have the details planned out, she came to this conclusion: “I’m going to be OK.”
Lindy Duncan of the United States hits her tee shot on the 10th hole during the second round of the TOTO Japan Classic at the Taiheiyo Club’s Minori Course on November 3, 2023, in Omitama, Ibaraki, Japan. (Photo by Yoshimasa Nakano/Getty Images)
That gave her the peace and the clarity to put it all on the line once more.
Comebacks come in all shapes and sizes, but the feelings of joy and satisfaction are universal.
May the journeys of those who triumphed in 2023 be a source of inspiration to those on the verge of calling it quits.
Just think, Lilia Vu could be nearly done with law school by now.
No American player has won the Rolex Player of the Year since Stacy Lewis in 2014.
Lilia Vu’s breakout season has her in position to become the first American to win the Rolex LPGA Player of the Year Award since Stacy Lewis in 2014. Before Lewis won it for the first time in 2012, no American won the title since Beth Daniel in 1994.
As the LPGA season nears its final stretch, Vu holds a 21-point advantage over Celine Boutier and Ruoning Yin with a total of 154 points. Lydia Ko won last year’s POY Award with 180 points. Those who win a POY title also earn an LPGA Hall of Fame point.
Player of the Year points are distributed only to top-10 finishes on the LPGA. A victory at a non-major is worth 30 points while a runner-up showing is worth 12.
There are seven events left on the LPGA schedule, and this week’s Volunteers of America stop in Texas marks the last domestic event until mid-November.
Here’s how the top five players on the POY list currently stand:
It’s been a head-turning year in women’s professional golf.
It’s been a head-turning year in women’s professional golf. For the first time in the history of the Rolex Rankings (which dates back to 2006), five different women have been ranked No. 1 during a calendar year.
On Sept. 11, China’s Ruoning Yin, a two-time winner on tour this season, rose to No. 1 for the first time. In 2022 and 2017, four different players held the No. 1 spot, which was the previous record.
Yin became the third player to reach No. 1 at the age of 20 or younger, joining Atthaya Thitikul (19 years, 8 months and 11 days in October 2022) and Lydia Ko (17 years, 9 months and 9 days in February 2015 and 18 years, 6 months and 2 days old in October 2015).
While Lilia Vu won two majors this season, Yin’s consistency allowed her to overtake the young American after a strong finish over the weekend in Cincinnati. One year ago, Yin ranked 193rd in the world.
With nine events left on the LPGA’s 2023 schedule, here’s a look at the tour’s revolving door of world No. 1s:
The most staggering feat of Ruoning Yin’s historic victory at the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship was the 37 consecutive greens she hit to close the championship. It’s the longest streak by any player on the LPGA in 2023. That it came on the weekend of a major championship on a brute of a test like Baltusrol’s Lower Course makes it all the more impressive.
Yin, 20, came into the week leading the LPGA in Strokes Gained: Approach per round in the KPMG Performance Insights, a data platform that is now available to fans and media. At the KPMG, she also led the field in that category, gaining 2.39 strokes per round for the championship. Yin was the only player in the field to gain at least 1.5 strokes gained approach in all four rounds.
“I think, more mature,” said Yin of how she’s grown since joining the tour in 2022. “Like before, I just go straight at the flag every shot, and right now I think I play smart, more smart right now.”
Yin, now the second Chinese player to win a major after Shanshan Feng (2012 Wegmans), closed with a bogey-free 67 on Sunday and notched only six bogeys on the weekend, tied for the fewest of any player in the field along with Stephanie Meadow, who finished third.
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Yin hit 66 of 72 greens for the week, or 92 percent. She hit 44 of 48 greens when hitting her approach from the fairway and ranked fourth off the tee in strokes gained driving for the week.
“For the last couple days, my ball-striking was perfect,” said Yin after clinching the title with a dramatic 12-foot birdie putt on the 72nd hole.
Yin won her first LPGA title in March at the DIO Implant LA Open. She practices out of Tranquilo Golf Course in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, former site of the LPGA’s season-opening Tournament of Champions, and works with swing coach Holton Freeman.
“I could tell immediately when I met her a year and a half ago that she had some special intangibles that are difficult to teach if a person/player doesn’t already have them,” Freeman wrote on Instagram after her first victory.
“Trust and self-belief, executing under pressure, refusing to give in when she is faced with chaos and adversity, etc. Those were all on display yesterday when she made three bogeys in a row to lose the lead, followed by four consecutive birdies to reclaim the lead. A great example and lesson for younger players to learn from.”
Yin’s caddie, Jon Lehman, called his new boss wise beyond her years, saying she plays more like a 35-year-old under pressure. Yin called Lehman in to help her on the greens this week, and after losing more than six strokes to the field putting in rounds two and three, she gained 0.41 putting on Sunday. She mostly struggled with speed control.
Yin rose to No. 5 in the world after becoming only the second woman to win on the Lower Course, joining 1961 U.S. Women’s Open winner Mickey Wright. She heads next to Pebble Beach Golf Links, where she’ll make her second USWO appearance.
SPRINGFIELD, N.J. — Ruoning Yin used to tell her mom that if she’d been 10 centimeters taller, she would’ve played basketball rather than golf. She has been a Steph Curry fan for nine years, which is a long time for someone who’s only 20 years old. Yin’s stature in the sports world back home in China surely rocketed overnight as she joined Shanshan Feng as the only Chinese players to win a major championship.
Shanghai’s Yin, a chronic leaderboard watcher, knew standing on the 18th tee at the KPMG Women’s PGA that she held a one-shot lead, and after she watched Yuka Saso birdie the final hole in front of her, Yin knew she needed a birdie of her own to win the title.
“I actually kind of felt that I was going to make it,” said Yin, “and I made it. It’s a very weird feeling.”
Yin, who shot 67 in the final round at Baltusrol’s Lower Course and hit a staggering 36 greens over the weekend, wasn’t even playing golf when Feng became the first Chinese player to win a major at the 2012 Wegmans Championship, now known as the KPMG Women’s PGA. The player known on tour as “Ronnie” was 10 ½ when she first picked up a club, the same year her good friend and landlord, Xiyu Lin, joined the LPGA. Lin had a good chance of her own to win this week and finished with a flood of emotion after a closing bogey left her two shots short.
Lin was standing at the mic talking to the media when Yin drained the winning putt.
“It’s amazing,” said Lin. “She’s young, and she’s so talented. She’s definitely really good at dealing with pressure.”
Yin rents Lin’s second home in Orlando, Florida. Lin joked earlier in the week that she thought about raising the rent after Yin won on the LPGA earlier this season. When Yin was asked after her victory if she thought rent might go up after that $1.5 million winner’s paycheck, Yin said: “Actually, I’m thinking about buying her house right now.”
The interview room erupted in laughter.
While Yin was the one lifting the trophy by day’s end, another 20-year-old in the field, Rose Zhang, certainly generated great buzz on Sunday. The former Stanford star, who won in her professional debut on the LPGA earlier this month, trailed by one stroke on the back nine but ultimately finished three shots back in a share of eighth.
“It was definitely very tense,” said Zhang. “I felt a lot of energy from the crowds.”
Yin turned professional in 2020 and set a record when she won her first three consecutive tournaments on the China LPGA Tour. She earned her LPGA card at 2021 Q-Series.
Since coming to the U.S., Yin said her English has improved significantly and her game is more mature. She used to fire at the pin on every hole and now has a more strategic approach.
She also has a new caddie in Jon Lehman, a veteran Korn Ferry Tour looper who recently reached out to some friends who worked on the LPGA to see what jobs might be available. Lehman’s text came through about 20 minutes after Yin let her previous caddie go. They started out together at the ShopRite LPGA Classic, then Lehman came out to Baltusrol the following week for a preview.
“I kind of had a feeling when I was walking it the first time, this is right up her alley,” said Lehman, “a ball-striker’s course.”
This marked Lehman’s first time caddying in a major championship. He tried to keep his player patient when the putts weren’t falling early in the round. Yin had five three-putts on the week but played Sunday bogey-free.
“He knows the course very well,” said Yin. “Like especially on the greens. He just knows every part of the green.
“We start, I think our first tournament at ShopRite, I just read my greens by myself, and this week he just told me he’s really good at reading. I was like, OK, let’s see. Yeah, he’s amazing.”
Yin joins a list of past champions at Baltusrol that includes Hall of Famers Jack Nicklaus, Phil Mickelson and Mickey Wright. She got goosebumps just listening to her name being mentioned among those greats.
After one week off, Yin returns to action at the U.S. Women’s Open at Pebble Beach, where a women’s major will be contested at the iconic track for the first time. Yin played there once at age 12 during a winter camp. All she remembers is that the rough was thick, and she shot 88.
While Yin was too young to play alongside the trailblazing Feng, she said the 10-time LPGA winner and former No. 1 is the person who has inspired her the most.
“I would say,” said Yin, “she’s definitely the goal that I’m chasing.”
