26 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY july 6-12, 2023 www.montereycountyweekly.com If Ko is in the hunt, there is another reason to celebrate. Her birthday is Friday, July 7, the second round of play. She will be 28. Lydia Ko It’s hard to believe that Lydia Ko hasn’t lofted the Harton S. Semple trophy. After all, she pretty much dominated the game even before turning pro (she held top spot in the world amateur rankings for 130 consecutive weeks). Ko captured two major titles before the age of 20, became the youngest player to climb to the top of the Rolex Rankings (17 years, 9 months) and is currently number three on the chart. She has accumulated 19 LPGA Tour victories. And she’s still at the top of her game, or so the 2022 Rolex Player of the Year award suggests. She is not known for length and is 60-40 when it comes to hitting her target off the tee, perhaps liabilities at Pebble Beach. However, she is playing solid golf. Nelly Korda First off, Nelly Korda is an Olympic gold medalist. She also hovers at or close to the top of the Rolex Rankings, currently sitting second. And she has eight wins on the LPGA Tour. Korda is coming off a difficult season. She was sidelined by an injury for several months in 2022 and missed the cut twice in 15 events—a down year. Yet she still managed a win and eight top 10s. So a struggling Nelly Korda is still a fiercely competitive Nelly Korda. She plays fewer strokes because she tends to find the fairway, reach the greens in regulation and is deft with the putter. She has played in every U.S. Open since qualifying in 2013 at the age of 14. Last year Korda found a little trouble in the final round at Pine Needles, but still fired 2-under for the tournament for an eighth-place tie. Minjee Lee Minjee Lee is the defending U.S. Women’s Open champion. And if she plays to last year’s form, watch out. At Pine Needles, Lee fired a 67-66-67-72 for a 271—a whopping 13-under for the event, four strokes clear of the rest of the field. Her performance was so dominant that she broke the scoring mark previously held by a few names you might know: Annika Sörenstam and Juli Inkster. Yet the U.S. Women’s Open had been a bane in the years before Lee’s big win. For instance, she finished deep in the field in 2020 and 2021—54th and 46th, respectively. Otherwise, she has been strong. Lee has eight LPGA titles to her name and 66 career top 10s. So Yeon Ryu The winner of the 2011 U.S. Women’s Open, So Yeon Ryu has reduced her playing schedule and accepted a special exemption to appear at Pebble Beach. Just four years ago at Charleston, however, the veteran golfer finished in a tie for second at the Open. Throughout her career, Ryu has proven capable of winning, no matter where. She earned six victories on the LPGA Tour and was named 2017 Player of the Year. But she also won on the LPGA of Korea, the LPGA of Japan and the Ladies European Tour. But Ryu tends to show her best game at the Open. In addition to the win, she owns six finishes in the top 5. Annika Sörenstam The greatest of all time when it comes to women’s golf. Yes, some argue the merits of Mickey Wright or Babe Didriksen Zaharias, but it’s hard to top Sörenstam’s legacy. She is a threetime U.S. Women’s Open champion, a member of the World Golf Hall of Fame, won 72 LPGA Tour events (and tallied 90 wins in all tours), achieved the career grand slam—capturing all four majors—and was named Player of the Year eight times. She was such a powerhouse in her prime that the PGA Tour invited her to compete against the men. Oh, there’s more. But we’ll cut it short. Sörenstam retired in 2008 and played sparingly after, winning the 2021 U.S. Senior Women’s Open. Such is her stature in the sport that the USGA granted Sörenstam a special exemption into the Pebble Beach event, matching the greatest of all time against one of the most storied courses of all time. Atthaya Thitikul Atthaya Thitikul leads all LPGA professionals in rounds played under par, thanks to a habit of hitting greens in regulation. That and putting accuracy should pay dividends on the small but often wickedly fast greens at Pebble Beach. Thitikul enters the tournament seventh in the Rolex Rankings. She has yet to win on tour this season after posting two victories in 2022. But Thitikul has landed in the top 10 in seven of the eight events she played leading up to the Women’s PGA Championship in late June. So she is in a groove. Lexi Thompson Although she hasn’t topped the leaderboard since 2019 on the LPGA Tour, Lexi Thompson did record four seconds in 18 events during the 2022 season. More to the point, the 11-time tour winner has kept close in four of the past five U.S. Women’s Opens. Thompson tied for fifth in 2018, tied for second the next year and claimed third in 2021, one stroke back. Last year she managed a top 20 finish. In her favor at Pebble Beach is distance off the tee. On average, she flies the ball almost 270 yards, which could put her in good shape on a course where a couple of the par 5s are notorious. This will be the veteran golfer’s 17th U.S. Women’s Open appearance. She first qualified in 2007 at the age of 12 and hasn’t missed the tournament since. Lilia Vu In her second year on the LPGA Tour, Lilia Vu has started to roll. She won the Honda LPGA Thailand and dispatched Angel Yin in a playoff to capture the Chevron Championship crown. Add eight top-10 performances and a level of play that has seen her make 21 cuts in 24 outings. Last year at Pine Needles she put together three respectable rounds and was looking at a top 20. The final round bit her badly, however. A 79 on championship Sunday sent Vu toppling into a tie for 34th. But that was last year. Michelle Wie West Despite competing in LPGA Tour and USGA events for more than 20 years, Michelle Wie West’s full-time career on the circuit has been relatively brief. She qualified for her first national amateur event at the age of 10, turned pro when she was 15 but did not become a tour regular until 2009. Between 2009 and 2018—when she scaled back to 16 events—Wie West recorded five LPGA Tour wins, including the 2014 U.S. Women’s Open crown. She also added 62 top 10 finishes. Yet her audacity as a young golfer is still admired. As an amateur at the age of 13, she made the cut at an LPGA tournament, as well as the U.S. Women’s Open. At 14, she shot a round of 68 during a men’s PGA Tour event. Wie West has announced that Pebble Beach will be her last appearance in competition. Ruoning Yin In her only previous Open—2021— Ruoning Yin missed the cut. And she completed just seven events on tour a year ago. Since then, however, the 20-year-old from China has found her stride. She won the L.A. Open in April and, more notably, the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship at Baltusrol two weeks ago, confidently edging 2021 Open winner Yuka Saso by a stroke. Yin is strong off the tee and has a driving accuracy of 77 percent, helpful against the ragged roughs of a major layout. Like Rose Zhang, Yin put the golf world on alert from the moment she turned pro. Joining the China LPGA Tour in 2020, she won her first three tournaments, the only golfer to do so. Rose Zhang Golf fans have flashbacks to the heyday of Tiger Woods. But Rose Zhang has already bested Woods. Her 12 collegiate wins in just two seasons at Stanford eclipsed his mark. And that’s nothing. The accolades for Zhang have piled up beyond overflowing. The first time she teed up as an LPGA Tour pro, she won—something that hadn’t happened since 1951. Such is her control that she found sand only three times at the Mizuho Americas Open, and Pebble Beach rewards accuracy. Zhang is a U.S. Women’s Amateur Champion, U.S. Girls Junior Champion, topped the leaderboard at this year’s Augusta National Women’s Amateur, the nation’s top women’s college player and held the world’s top amateur post for 141 weeks. This will be her fifth U.S. Women’s Open. Oh, and she holds the women’s course record at Pebble Beach, where she fired a round of 63. Atthaya Thitikul of Thailand. Golfers from 29 countries are taking part in the first U.S. Women’s Open at Pebble Beach Golf Links. The course will also host the Women’s Open in 2035, 2040 and 2048. U.S. Women’s Open • Pebble BEach There are 156 storylines, all intriguing. Elsa/Getty Images
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