2023 KPMG Women's PGA Championship

I am on my way to this championship!

My field rating for this event is a super 85%, up from 84% last year. This ties the Chevron Championship for the strongest field of the year.
My breakdown is a super high 91% from the LPGA Priority List and 79% from the Rolex Rankings.
Forty-nine of the top 50 players from the LPGA Priority List will be in action.
The entire top 16 players from the Rolex Rankings will be teeing it up.

Top players not teeing it up this week include:
Jessia Korda (injury)
Inbee Park (maternity)
So Yeon Ryu (23rd alternate)

Sponsor invitees:
Gabriela Ruffels
Mariah Stackhouse

There are eight former KPMG champions in the field:
Ingee Chun, Nelly Korda, Sei Young Kim, Hannah Green, Sung Hyun Park, Danielle Kang, Brook Henderson, Cristie Kerr, Anna Nordqvist, and Laura Davies.

Other Stuff:
Leona Maguire's win this past weekend was the 1st this year by a player from Ireland, and the 9th different country to have a winner in the first 13 events.

There was some noticeable movement in the Rolex Rankings this week by LPGA players:
Leona Maguire made the most important move, jumping from No. 20 to No. 12.
Ally Ewing surged from 39-33
Amy Yang 56-45
Ariya Jutanugarn 89-58
There was some really big moves outside the top 100:
Manon De Roey 137-126
Lindsey Weaver Wright 139-129
Stephanie Meadow 167-151
Jasmine Suwannapura 211-168
Mi Hyang Lee 310-264
Ruixin Liu 302-267

In Gee talks during her practice round




link

I caught Golf Central last night, which was broadcasting live from Baltusrol. They showed the In Gee Chun piece I linked on the photos thread (there's like 20 seconds more at the end that for some reason they didn't include on YouTube). Then they had a long, long, long discussion about In Gee while they showed her practicing her short game (at one point we saw In Gee being playfully bugged by "little sister" Hye Jin Choi). No kidding, it was at least 8 minutes long, but alas is not available online.

The long and the short of it was that they talked about her mental health issues and her bravery at coming forward with them. This led to talking about their own issues when they were on tour and how they handled them. They revealed there is a tour psychiatrist that travels with them. They also talked about the challenge of this course, and that it would benefit long hitters (what else is new?), but they thought that would be the case last year and In Gee still won.

After that was done, they had a segment about Jin Young Ko! Did someone kidnap the program director at Golf Channel and replace him with a Korean? This was led by Tom, who basically said that Jin Young dropped out of her scheduled press conference that morning (uh oh), but that she would have another on Wednesday so it's all good. She seemed healthy when he asked (I think he said she gave him thumbs up when he asked, but she declined to come on camera). You could see Jin Young practicing in the distant background, but no close shots of her.

So disappointing to me that So Yeon Ryu isn't at this Tournament.
I guess she could have tried to qualify at one of the sites.
Maybe she thought that she might get an invite.

By the way the Tournament last year favored the long hitters,
It just that Lexi Thompson putted really bad.

In Gee had to hit a lot of hybrids into the greens which will be hard to duplicate.

I really expect that Jin Young Ko and Nelly Korda will be in the mix this year.
As long as Jin Young putt really well and Nelly Korda has the length and can putt.
Nelly's brain just gets in the way sometimes.

Fixed it! I guess my brain got in the way,
 



 

Interesting list of players to watch that not only excludes world #1 Jin Young Ko but also golden girl Rose Zhang...



link