KLPGA: 2023 NH Investment & Securities Championship

Really fun leaderboard for this one. Yewon can establish herself as a budding superstar if she gets a second win so soon after her first. Bang is in her group, hovering over everyone with her insane length. Can she finish the job she started at the KLPGA Championship and get a win and full status?

Meanwhile, Hyun Kyung is sporting the biggest gallery (the press has been talking about it in Korea) and a chance to get her first win in a while, and there are other young players on the rise like Youmin Hwang, Ye Been Sohn and Uhjin Seo just a few shots further back. They're probably not going to win unless one of them does what Lee did today, but you never know.

Hwaiting!

Bang! Bang! Bang! is going after this golf course the way Saso tore into the JLPGA as a rookie.  Grace and the broadcaster guy fell out of the booth when she hit a 214-yard iron to 9 feet at #4 ... and now she just dropped it to 5 feet at the par-3 5th.  Huge mob following the last group ... not a surprise considering the players in it and Suwon CC is only 20 km south of Seoul.  This place didn't make the top-50 ROK online list, but it looks nice ... might have Japanese roots as it has double greens and I recall seeing a tree in the middle of a fairway earlier in the week.

It's hard to win Tournaments, lose concentration for one minute and something bad can happen.

What a great clutch bogey, the young golfer showed a lot of heart to make that putt.

This tournament came down to a four-way battle between the final group: Yewon Lee, Jin Hee Im and Shin Shil Bang, and Ji Young Park, who was in the group ahead of them.

Yewon played great on the front nine, and had a putt early on the back to take a three-shot lead. But she missed, after which the other three started making everything in sight. Lee hung onto a one shot advantage for several holes, making several clutch lengthy par saves in the process. But she was obviously feeling the heat, and her irons abandoned her.

Bang finally moved into a tie for the lead on the 15th when Yewon missed a par saver, then took the lead on 16. She got to the par 5 17th, which she alone had the power to reach, looking like the tournament was hers, and promptly hit a nervy drive into the trees and lost it. She hit her provisional a mile down the fairway, but decided for some reason to lay up, guaranteeing no better than a bogey. Her fifth hit the green but settled about thirty feet from the flag, then she inexplicably drained that for a bogey to fall back into a tie for the lead with Ji Young Park. I'm astounded she didn't get double there, but she got away with it.

Park finished at 14 under, Im and Bang were also at 14, while Lee could not drain a birdie on 17, which pretty much eliminated her.

Bang hit another banger on 18, but her approach soared over the green and she could not get up and down; that bogey dropped her to 13 under and out of the contest. Yewon had a chance to get to 14 but just missed. Didn't matter; Im made the putt to get to 15 under and improbably win the event. She had not looked like a likely winner until pretty much the end, but she made two birdies to finish and claimed the title.

Congrats to her, but I gotta say it was a big letdown after the brilliance of Yewon early and Bang late. They'll both have many more wins in their future.