Starting the final round four shots behind the world No. 3 is usually how you end up with a nice top-10 check and a flight home. Yuri Yoshida treated it like a dare instead. Eagle on the second hole, three straight birdies after that, and by Sunday evening in South Korea she had her first LPGA Tour title.
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A Front Nine That Changed the Week
Haeran Ryu went into Sunday at the BMW Ladies Championship, at Pine Beach Golf Links in Haenam, with a four-shot lead. Yoshida, a 26-year-old from Japan, wiped that out in about an hour. She eagled the par-5 2nd, rattled off three birdies in a row, and turned in a bogey-free 31. She also hit every fairway on Sunday, which is a polite way of saying she didn’t give anyone a reason to hope she’d crack.
It got tense late. Yoshida bogeyed the 15th, then birdied the 17th, and that birdie ended up being the one that won it. She bogeyed the last for a 68 and finished at 17-under 271, then had to wait to see if it was enough.
Ryu’s Long Day of Pars
Ryu didn’t collapse so much as stall. She made 15 straight pars on Sunday while Yoshida passed her, and all her movement came in the last three holes: a bogey at 16 that handed over the lead, a birdie, and a bogey at 18. Her putt to force a playoff rolled out of the cup. She led the field in greens in regulation for the week and still closed with a 73, her only round over 70. Golf can be cruel like that.
Ryu and Hye-Jin Choi tied for second at 16 under. Yoshida became the first Japanese player to win the event and the fourth first-time winner on the LPGA Tour this season. That comes two months after she finished runner-up to Miyu Yamashita at the CPKC Women’s Open. “It’s a special moment for me, and actually, I was nervous,” she said. If that was nervous, the rest of the tour should be worried about what calm looks like.
Meanwhile, Someone Won a Car
The best side quest of the week belonged to Andrea Lee. On Friday she holed a 9-iron from 122 yards on the par-3 8th hole and won a fully electric MINI Countryman. Her review: it was the “most quiet hole-in-one” she’s ever hit, because “no one even screamed on the green.” She also called the car “very cute” and admitted she hadn’t even been looking at it. That’s either peak focus or the most casual way anyone has ever won a car.
So Yuri Yoshida got the trophy, Andrea Lee got the car, and Haeran Ryu got 15 pars and a lip-out. Somebody always takes the long drive home.
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