Five Players to Watch at the LPGA's Second Major, the KPMG Women's PGA Championship
The LPGA season stretches from January through November, but a two-month span starting right now will determine the year's most iconic players.
Four of the next seven events on the calendar are majors, starting this week with the KPMG Women's PGA Championship. Baltusrol Golf Club in Springfield, N.J., is the host, and no stranger to major championship golf with a list of champions including Jack Nicklaus, Phil Mickelson and Mickey Wright.
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The field is playing for a $9 million purse, trailing only the $10 million U.S. Women's Open, the very next event on the schedule in two weeks at Pebble Beach. (Editor's Note: KPMG announced Thursday that the purse would indeed be increased to $10 million.)
Here are five players to watch this week on the Lower Course at Baltusrol:
Rose Zhang
Arguably the game's best female amateur in history, 20-year-old Rose Zhang now owns a perfect record as a professional: 1-for-1 after winning her pro debut at the Mizuho Americas Open earlier this month. That triumph was at Liberty National in Jersey City, N.J.; for her professional major debut she's just 20 miles west at Baltusrol.
This will be her first start in the KPMG women's PGA but Zhang has had two starts in every other women's major, with a remarkable six made cuts in the combined eight starts. She was T10 at the 2020 Chevron Championship at age 17 and a year ago made cuts in all three of her major starts with a best of T28 at the Women's British Open.
Nelly Korda
The world No. 2 is still searching for major No. 2 after having won the 2021 KPMG Women's PGA at Atlanta Athletic Club. The question around the 24-year-old lately has been more around the state of her health than her game, and she reported this week that she's pain-free.
"Last year was the blood clot at the beginning of the year, and this time it was just my lower back that I just wanted to make sure it didn't turn into something worse," said Korda, who last played a month ago at the Cognizant Founders Cup, missing the cut.
Korda said she was cleared to start playing two weeks ago. She was third in April at the Chevron Championship, the season's first major.
Lilia Vu
Current world No. 1 Jin Young Ko was the last player to win two majors in a season, taking the 2019 Chevron Championship and Amundi Evian Championship.
It's a feat that players can especially appreciate after winning just one major and juggling all the expectations that come with that. Case in point would be Lilia Vu, who took the inaugural winner's plunge in Texas in April after winning the relocated Chevron. But since that win, the 25-year-old has two missed cuts, failed to reach the later rounds at the LPGA's match play event and withdrew from the Mizuho Americas Open three weeks ago with back pain.
"I think it's been a whirlwind for me trying to manage everything," Vu said at Baltusrol. "I feel like I've just been going nonstop on everything and kind of had like a back scare injury at Mizuho so I had to pull out, and I was just trying to get my body healthy for the next couple of weeks."
Jin Young Ko
The world No. 1 and No. 1 in the Race to CME Globe has been sensational this season with a pair of wins in eight starts and only two finishes worse than T13.
With such a busy stretch of majors, Ko would be a favorite to grab one of them. Oddly, the KPMG Women's PGA is her worst statistically, with no top 10s and a T30 last year. But if she were to prevail at Baltusrol it would be her third different major title, with the two others—the U.S. Women's Open and Women's British Open—still attainable this year.
Lydia Ko
Remember Lydia Ko? The New Zealander won three times including the CME Group Tour Championship and returned to No. 1 in the world. She'd been around for so long it was as if a grizzled old veteran had clawed her way back to the top—albeit at 26 years of age.
Yet that success hasn't carried over to 2023, as Ko just has one top-10 finish, at her first start in February. She missed the cut at the Chevron Championship and just last week at the Meijer LPGA Classic in Michigan.
"I just try to keep being positive, and I think that's sometimes been a struggle," Ko said Wednesday. "I think if people say, oh, no, like it's just rainbows and sunny days after missing a cut, I feel like that wouldn't be the most honest answer. I think it's been frustrating the last couple months, but my team and my family have been trying to keep me grounded and say, hey, we're still moving in the right direction."
The two-time major champion's best finish at the KPMG Women's PGA was a runner-up in 2016 when she lost in a playoff to Brooke Henderson.