It’s not straightforward to choose the winner of a serious championship in girls’s golf.
During the last 21 majors there have been 20 completely different champions. The latest: Allisen Corpuz, who captured the US Girls’s Open at Pebble Seashore earlier this month for her first tour victory.
Will the development proceed on the Amundi Evian Championship, which begins on Thursday on the Evian Resort Golf Membership in France? The possibilities are fairly good given the numerous proficient gamers who may get on a roll.
Listed below are 5 golfers to regulate.
Rose Zhang
Nobody in girls’s golf has generated extra buzz not too long ago than Zhang.
Whereas a pupil at Stanford, she claimed her second straight N.C.A.A. particular person championship, which no girl had finished. Then, after turning skilled, she defeated Jennifer Kupcho on the second gap of a playoff within the Mizuho Americas Open to change into the primary girl since Beverly Hanson, in 1951, to win her professional debut.
Zhang, 20, performed nicely in her first two makes an attempt at successful a serious this 12 months: a tie for eighth on the KPMG Girls’s P.G.A. Championship in June, the place she was in rivalry till discovering the water together with her tee shot on the 18th gap, and a tie for ninth on the U.S. Girls’s Open.
Zhang has an opportunity to be a member of the U.S. squad at this 12 months’s Solheim Cup matches in Spain.
Allisen Corpuz
What can Corpuz probably do for an encore? Win her second main.
Corpuz, 25 — who virtually backed up her Open triumph with one other win every week later on the Dana Open, ending second by three — was unflappable in the course of the last spherical of the Open, as she grew to become the primary American girl to win it since Brittany Lang, in 2016. Corpuz performed the final 11 holes in a single beneath par and was the one one to interrupt par in every of the 4 rounds.
“It was one thing I had dreamed of,” she mentioned, “however on the identical time sort of simply by no means actually anticipated it to occur.”
The victory wasn’t a complete shock. In late April, she was tied for the lead after three rounds of the Chevron Championship, the primary main of the 12 months, earlier than taking pictures a 74 to complete in a tie for fourth. She tied for fifteenth on the KPMG Girls’s P.G.A.
Corpuz grew to become the second participant from Hawaii to win the U.S. Girls’s Open. The primary was Michelle Wie West in 2014.
Lydia Ko
Poor Ko. It has been that sort of 12 months.
Can she get well from what occurred two weeks in the past within the last spherical of the Dana Open, when she was assessed six penalty strokes for taking part in most popular lies, and one other for selecting up her ball?
Most well-liked lies come into play when a golfer is allowed to maneuver the ball due to the course changing into too moist. It had rained closely on Saturday, so the gamers have been allowed to play most popular lies on holes No. 1 and 10, however Ko additionally adjusted her ball place on three different holes. Because of this, her rating was a 78, dropping her right into a tie for sixty fifth.
It was truthful to anticipate a stellar 2023 from Ko, 26, after what she completed final season when she was the Participant of the Yr and received the Vare Trophy for the bottom scoring common (68.9).
Early within the season, nonetheless, Ko of New Zealand missed the reduce on the Chevron Championship, tied for 57th on the KPMG and tied for thirty third on the Open.
Nelly Korda
The 12 months was going very nicely for the No. 2-ranked Korda, with six top-six finishes in her first seven begins — till an ailing again compelled her to overlook tournaments in Could and June. Nonetheless in pursuit of her first tour victory this 12 months, she has a possibility to make up for misplaced time.
And it seems like she may do exactly that.
Two weeks in the past, Korda received the person title within the Girls European Tour’s Aramco Group Collection.
She hopes to “take that momentum into the following two large occasions.”
Within the majors, she completed third on the Chevron Championship, missed the reduce on the KPMG and closed with an 80 on the U.S. Girls’s Open to complete in a tie for sixty fourth.
Korda, who turns 25 on Friday, received her lone main on the 2021 KPMG Girls’s P.G.A.
Jin Younger Ko
Ko of South Korea is because of get away of her small droop. She hasn’t posted a top-10 consequence since a victory on the Cognizant Founders Cup in Could.
She actually is aware of learn how to come up large in large occasions. In 2019, she received the ANA Inspiration and the Evian Championship.
With 13 top-10 finishes in 2018, Ko, 28, was the L.P.G.A.’s Rookie of the Yr, and in 2019 she was the Participant of the Yr, an honor she acquired once more in 2021. In late June, she handed the previous star Lorena Ochoa of Mexico to set a document for essentially the most weeks (159) at No. 1.
“It’s an honor individuals saying with Lorena and me in the identical sentence,” she mentioned. “It makes me comfortable, but additionally it makes me humble.”