Chun In-gee heads back to site of U.S. Women's Open win

Golf

Published: 29 May. 2024, 13:08 Updated: 29 May. 2024, 17:25

Chun In-gee heads back to site of U.S. Women's Open win

Korea's Chun In-gee raises the championship trophy after winning the U.S. Women's Open at Lancaster Country Club on July 12, 2015 in Lancaster, Pa. [AP/YONHAP]

A total of 20 Korean golfers will tee off at the U.S. Women’s Open on Thursday, including past winners Kim A-lim, Lee Jeong-eun6 and Chun In-gee, as the oldest women’s major returns to Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

A packed 156-player field, including six-time 2024 winner Nelly Korda, will vie for the biggest slice of the $12 million purse at Lancaster Country Club, where Chun in 2015 won her first LPGA major at 20 years old — without a Tour card.

Chun carded an eight-under-par, 272, to come from behind and finish one stroke ahead of fellow Korean golfer Amy Yang. That year, she also won major tournaments on both the KLPGA and JLPGA Tours.

The Open victory earned her an LPGA Tour card, and she won the following year’s Evian Championship, adding a second LPGA major to her collection.

Three of Chun’s four total LPGA titles have been major victories — she won the 2022 KPMG Women's PGA Championship, the most recent major win by a Korean golfer. She hasn’t yet made the top 10 at any tournament so far this season, but she heads into the Open off her best finish so far, tied 14th at the Mizuho Americas Open in Jersey City, New Jersey earlier this month.

Korea's Chun In-gee plays her shot from the 15th tee during the second round of The Chevron Championship at The Club at Carlton Woods on April 19 in The Woodlands, Texas. [AFP/YONHAP]

Also heading to Pennsylvania is Kim, the last Korean winner of the U.S. Women’s Open. She won the tournament — her major debut — in 2020, played in December due to the Covid-19 pandemic, by finishing one stroke ahead of then-World No. 1 Ko Jin-young at Champions Golf Club in Houston, Texas.

Korea's Kim A-lim plays her shot from the seventh tee during the first round of The Chevron Championship at The Club at Carlton Woods on April 18 in The Woodlands, Texas. [AFP/YONHAP]

Lee6 won the tournament a year earlier, in 2019 at the Country Club of Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina, with a six-under-par, 278, to edge out runners-up Ryu So-yeon, Lexi Thompson and Angel Yin by two strokes.

Both Lee6 and Kim have yet to see another LPGA title since their U.S. Women’s Open wins.

Korea's Lee Jeong-eun6 plays her shot from the fourth tee during the second round of the Ford Championship presented by KCC at Seville Golf and Country Club on March 29 in Phoenix, Arizona. [AFP/YONHAP]

Ko, who heads into the weekend as World No. 7, will be vying for her first win of the season. Her last win was at the 2023 Cognizant Founders’ Cup in Montclair, New Jersey last May. The 15-time LPGA winner has struggled with a wrist injury and knee pain over the last few years, and her best finish so far this year was tied fourth at the JM Eagle LA Championship in Los Angeles in April.

Ko will tee off alongside New Zealand’s Lydia Ko, the 2022 winner of the BMW Ladies Championship in Korea, and England’s Charley Hull at 8:28 a.m. in Lancaster, starting from the back nine.

At the same time, Korea’s Kim Hyo-joo will tee off at Hole No. 1 with Japan’s Ayaka Furue and Sweden’s Maja Stark. It will be Kim’s first time playing in a tournament in a month, last finishing tied 47th at the JM Eagle.

The only other Korean golfer besides Ko in the Rolex top 10, Kim came close to her first U.S. Women’s Open win in 2018 but lost the playoff to Thailand’s Ariya Jutanugarn. She does have a recent win to her name, though, claiming the individual title at the Aramco Team Series in Goyang, Gyeonggi earlier this month.

A total of 11 Korean golfers have won the U.S. Women’s Open, the first being Pak Se-ri in 1998. And Korean golfers have won half of all editions in the past two decades.

But a Korean golfer has yet to win any tournament on the LPGA Tour this season. Amy Yang was the last Korean golfer to lift a trophy, winning the season-closing CME Group Tour Championship last November.

Yang will be in the field this weekend, and she’ll look to record her first top-10 finish of the season. Her best performance so far was tied 22nd at the first tournament of the year, the Hilton Grand Vacations Tournament of Champions at Lake Nona in Orlando, Florida, in January.

Among the other previous major winners from Korea who will be in Lancaster are former World No. 1 Shin Ji-yai, winner of the Women’s British Open in 2008 and 2012, and Kim Sei-young, who won the 2020 Women’s PGA Championship and has 12 career LPGA wins.

Shin, 36, hasn’t won an LPGA title since 2013 and mostly plays on the JLPGA. But she was a runner-up at the 2023 Open, finishing three strokes behind winner Allisen Corpuz, and tied for fifth at the Fir Hills Seri Pak Championship, in March.

Korea's Shin Ji-yai reacts on the 18th green after sinking a birdie putt to tie for second place in the U.S. Women's Open at Pebble Beach Golf Links on July 9, 2023 in Pebble Beach, Calif. [AP/YONHAP]

Jenny Shin, Ryu Hae-ran and Lee Mi-hyang are the other Korean golfers with at least one title playing in this weekend’s Open. Ryu took fifth place at last month’s Chevron Championship, the first major of the year, to notch the highest finish by any Korean golfer.

Rookies Lee So-mi and Im Jin-hee will also be teeing off in Lancaster. Lee made the cut for the two previous editions in 2023 and 2022, while Im will be making her Open debut. Im was one of three Korean golfers, alongside Ryu and Kim A-lim, to finish in the top 10 at the Chevron.

Cardholders Joo Soo-bin, An Na-rin, Choi Hye-jin and Jeon Ji-won are also in the field, and Park Hyun-kyung, Kim Min-byeol and Kim Su-ji are playing as nonmembers. But the three nonmembers are all among the top 10 in the KLPGA, with No. 4 Park coming off a win at the 2024 Doosan Match Play tournament earlier this month.

No Korean golfer has won a tournament on the LPGA Tour this season, and all will face a tough cut this weekend. Only the top 60 and ties will move on to the weekend, shrinking down the field to half its size.

Every Open champion from Chun in 2015 to Corpuz last year will be teeing off in Lancaster except for 2017 winner Park Sung-hyun, a former World No. 1 now ranked No. 307.

The first groups tee off at 6:45 a.m. and the last groups are scheduled to start at 2:42 p.m. It’s set to be a partly cloudy and sunny weekend with temperatures reaching 80 degrees on Sunday.

BY MARY YANG [mary.yang@joongang.co.kr]