It’s not simple to decide the winner of a serious championship in girls’s golf.
Over the final 21 majors there have been 20 completely different champions. The most up-to-date: Allisen Corpuz, who captured the United States Women’s Open at Pebble Beach earlier this month for her first tour victory.
Will the development proceed at the Amundi Evian Championship, which begins on Thursday at the Evian Resort Golf Club in France? The likelihood is fairly good given the many proficient gamers who might get on a roll.
Here are 5 golfers to control.
Rose Zhang
No one in girls’s golf has generated extra buzz not too long ago than Zhang.
While a pupil at Stanford, she claimed her second straight N.C.A.A. particular person championship, which no girl had executed. Then, after turning skilled, she defeated Jennifer Kupcho on the second gap of a playoff in the Mizuho Americas Open to turn out to be the first girl since Beverly Hanson, in 1951, to win her professional debut.
Zhang, 20, performed properly in her first two makes an attempt at successful a serious this 12 months: a tie for eighth at the KPMG Women’s P.G.A. Championship in June, the place she was in competition till discovering the water along with her tee shot on the 18th gap, and a tie for ninth at the U.S. Women’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 presumably do for an encore? Win her second main.
Corpuz, 25 — who virtually backed up her Open triumph with one other win per week later at the Dana Open, ending second by three — was unflappable throughout the closing spherical of the Open, as she grew to become the first American girl to win it since Brittany Lang, in 2016. Corpuz performed the final 11 holes in a single underneath par and was the just one to break par in every of the 4 rounds.
“It was something I had dreamed of,” she mentioned, “but at the same time kind of just never really expected it to happen.”
The victory wasn’t a complete shock. In late April, she was tied for the lead after three rounds of the Chevron Championship, the first main of the 12 months, earlier than capturing a 74 to end in a tie for fourth. She tied for fifteenth at the KPMG Women’s P.G.A.
Corpuz grew to become the second participant from Hawaii to win the U.S. Women’s Open. The first was Michelle Wie West in 2014.
Lydia Ko
Poor Ko. It has been that form of 12 months.
Can she recuperate from what came about two weeks in the past in the closing spherical of the Dana Open, when she was assessed six penalty strokes for taking part in most well-liked lies, and one other for choosing up her ball?
Preferred lies come into play when a golfer is allowed to transfer 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 well-liked lies on holes No. 1 and 10, however Ko additionally adjusted her ball place on three different holes. As a end result, 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 Player of the Year and gained the Vare Trophy for the lowest scoring common (68.9).
Early in the season, nonetheless, Ko of New Zealand missed the lower at the Chevron Championship, tied for 57th at the KPMG and tied for thirty third at the Open.
Nelly Korda
The 12 months was going very properly for the No. 2-ranked Korda, with six top-six finishes in her first seven begins — till an ailing again compelled her to miss tournaments in May and June. Still in pursuit of her first tour victory this 12 months, she has a possibility to make up for misplaced time.
And it appears to be like like she may just do that.
Two weeks in the past, Korda gained the particular person title in the Ladies European Tour’s Aramco Team Series.
She hopes to “take that momentum into the next two big events.”
In the majors, she completed third at the Chevron Championship, missed the lower at the KPMG and closed with an 80 at the U.S. Women’s Open to end in a tie for sixty fourth.
Korda, who turns 25 on Friday, gained her lone main at the 2021 KPMG Women’s P.G.A.
Jin Young Ko
Ko of South Korea is due to get away of her small hunch. She hasn’t posted a top-10 end result since a victory at the Cognizant Founders Cup in May.
She actually is aware of how to come up large in large occasions. In 2019, she gained 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 Year, and in 2019 she was the Player of the Year, an honor she acquired once more in 2021. In late June, she handed the former star Lorena Ochoa of Mexico to set a report for the most weeks (159) at No. 1.
“It’s an honor people saying with Lorena and me in the same sentence,” she mentioned. “It makes me happy, but also it makes me humble.”
