Koreans look to secure Olympic berths, end long title drought at LPGA major
Koreans look to secure Olympic berths, end long title drought at LPGA major
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Korean players will look to lock down Olympic spots while also ending a long title drought when the LPGA
Tour holds its third major tournament of the season this week in the U.S. Pacific Northwest.
The KPMG Women's PGA Championship will tee off at Sahalee Country Club in Sammamish, Washington,
a suburb east of Seattle, on Thursday (local time). The field of 156 players will include 21 players from
Korea, including the 2020 champion Kim Sei-young and former world No. 1 Ko Jin-young. Chun In-gee,
the 2022 winner, is skipping this week with an unspecified injury.
Korea has not had an LPGA winner after 15 tournaments this year, the longest such drought to begin a
season since 2000.
Once the dominant force in women's golf, Korea also hasn't had an LPGA major champion since June
2022, when Chun won the KPMG Women's PGA Championship. The major drought now sits at nine, the
second-longest dry spell since Pak Se-ri became the first Korean winner of an LPGA major in 1998.
The country's downfall has also had an impact on the Olympic picture, as Korea is expected to have only
two players in Paris this summer, compared to the maximum four players at each of the past two Olympic
Games.
The 60-player field for the women's tournament in Paris will be finalized based on the world rankings
after this week. The top-15 players after the final round on Sunday will be eligible for the Olympics, with
each country able to send a maximum four golfers.
After the top 15, the remaining spots will go to the highest-ranked players from countries that don't
already have at least two golfers qualified. Each nation can have a maximum of two players in this
scenario.
If the Olympic field were set today, Korea would have two players: No. 7 Ko Jin-young and No. 12 Kim
Hyo-joo. The next best Koreans are Shin Ji-yai at No. 24 and Amy Yang at No. 25, both at their season-low
positions. And they would not be eligible for the Olympics because Korea would already have two players
qualified.
When golf returned to the Olympics in 2016 after 112 years away, Korea had six players inside the top 10 in
the women's rankings, including five in the top 10. Jang Hana was the victim of the number's game despite
being 10th-best player in the world at the time, with Amy Yang, Chun In-gee, Kim Sei-young and eventual
gold medalist Park In-bee all ranked ahead of her.
For the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, Korea was represented by four top-10 players: Ko Jin-young, Kim Hyo-
joo, Kim Sei-young and Park In-bee. Kim Sei-young and Ko were the top-performing Koreans as they tied
for ninth.
Shin, former world No. 1 and two-time LPGA major champion, harbored hopes of qualifying for her first
Olympics earlier in the year, but fell from 15th at the start of the year to outside the top 20. Yang, the 2016
Olympian, reached No. 14 on March 18 but fell out of the top 15 on April 29 and then top 20 last week.
No Korean player is inside the top 10 in the Player of the Year points race, with the 2023 Rookie of the
Year winner Ryu Hae-ran being the 토토 highest at No. 16.
Ryu is also the top Korean on the money list at No. 10. She has posted four top-10 finishes in 12 starts this
season, tied for fourth most on the tour.
At the previous major, the U.S. Women's Open that ended on June 2, no Korean player finished among the
top 10 — the first time that had happened at the oldest women's major since 1997.
Among regular tournaments, second-year player An Narin has recorded consecutive top-10 finishes at the
Meijer LPGA Classic for Simply Give on Sunday and the ShopRite LPGA Classic the week prior to that
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