LPGA giving diversity a new meaning with a record 17 different winners to start the season

The lingering question for the last three months on the LPGA Tour was when Nelly Korda absolutely would win this year Now the question should be who s going to win next The latest entrants into the winner s ledgers were Somi Lee and Jin Hee Im at the Dow Championship the only official gang event on the LPGA schedule That made it straight tournaments with different winners The LPGA has not seen this level of parity or maybe it s lack of dominance in its -year history The previous record to start a season was different winners in and Perhaps even more telling was this amazing streak of different winners was assured long before the South Korean duo birdied the first playoff hole to beat out Lexi Thompson and Megan Khang That s because no one from the top teams on the leaderboard at the Dow Championship had won this year And to think it was a year ago when Korda ran off five straight victories to tie an LPGA record and ended the season with seven wins and as the dominant figure in women s golf It would be asking a lot for her to repeat that Scottie Scheffler is nodding his head though it s still somewhat surprising that Korda hasn t registered a win halfway through the season It s golf Korda disclosed going into the KPMG Women s PGA Championship two weeks ago where she was on the fringe of contention until the wind blew her into reverse Every year is just so different Last year coming into this event I had five wins I think even Hannah Green had multiple wins under her belt too It s just it s just golf she stated You kind of just have to ride the wave and the competition is getting better and better every year To win once to win twice it s really good The competition certainly is more diverse The top players in the women s world ranking represent eight countries The tournaments this year have been won by players from eight countries including South Korea with four wins and three each for the United States Sweden and the potentially emerging power of Japan But the parity is best illustrated by comparisons to the other streaks of different winners There have been five first-time winners on the LPGA six including both Lee and Im from the Dow Championship and only three winners came into this year with at least five career victories on the LPGA When the season began with different winners all of them previously had won on the LPGA and eight of them already had at least five wins In which also featured different winners to start the year there were two first-time winners one of them was World Golf Hall of Fame member Meg Mallon and nine of those players already had five-plus LPGA wins I think winning out here is getting tougher and tougher Carlota Ciganda declared after winning the Meijer LPGA Classic her first LPGA title in more than eight years Lots of really good players especially lots of youngster Also good Japanese and Korean and Asians and even Americans Like I think it s not easy It s either parity or it s just cyclical and these things have a way of working themselves out The season ended with nine multiple winners none with more than two victories South Korean rookie Sung-hyun Park and So Yeon Ryu shared the points-based LPGA contestant of the year the first time for a tie since the award began in Four players left the season-ending CME Group Tour Championship with a trophy of particular variety That was specific serious parity In Mallon went on to win two majors and tied with Pat Bradley with four wins apiece Bradley swept all the big awards by leading the money list and the Vare Trophy for lowest scoring average and winning LPGA player of the year There still are tournaments on the LPGA schedule this year Two of them are majors starting next week with the Evian Championship in France Lee was inquired what she would take away from her first LPGA win and replied Just same feel and same thing Should be this win and forget and then again try to win The previous winners surely were thinking along those lines Instead the LPGA has witnessed a record with straight tournaments and now multiple winners to start a season Stranger still is a glance at the races for LPGA member of the year Mao Saigo who won the first major at the Chevron Championship and tied for fourth in the U S Women s Open has a five-point lead over Women s PGA champion Minjee Lee who is three points clear of Jeeno Thitikul Korda is at No and could move to No in the points race if she wins either the Evian Championship or the Women s British Open three weeks later There s a lot of time left for the season to get particular definition and for Korda to reassert herself as the dominant participant in women s golf That s what Scheffler has done on the men s tour running off three wins in four tournaments including a major For now a mastery by Korda or Green or Ruoning Yin at No in the world would only add to a level of diversity the LPGA has never seen On The Fringe analyzes the biggest topics in golf during the season AP golf https apnews com hub 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