Taeguk Nangja, Will This Year Be Different from Last Year?

Tournament of Champions Opens on the 18th
Three Koreans Including Yu Hae-ran, Yang Hee-young, and Jeon In-ji Enter
Top Rankers Including Bu, In-ruoning, Koda, and Henderson Gather

Taeguk Ladies faltered last year. Only four players combined for five wins on the U.S. Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) Tour. Ko Jin-young (HSBC Women’s World Championship, Cognizant Founders Cup), Kim Hyo-joo (Ascendant LPGA Benefiting VOA), Yoo Hae-ran (Walmart NW Arkansas Championship), and Yang Hee-young (CME Group Tour Championship) were the only ones to collect winning trophies.

Last year's Rookie of the Year Yoo Hae-ran will challenge for the title at the Tournament of Champions, the opening event of the 2024 LPGA Tour season.

Korean women’s golf has been on the decline since combining for 15 wins in 2019. They fought hard with seven wins each in 2020 and 2021, but managed only four wins in 2022 and fell short of expectations again last year. Korea once had as many as seven players ranked in the world’s top 10. As of the 17th, only two players are in the top 10: Ko Jin-young (6th) and Kim Hyo-joo (7th).

Facing fierce challenges from competing countries, what kind of results will Korea present in the new year? The season-opening tournament that can forecast the season is finally here. On the 18th (local time), the LPGA Tour will hold the first event of the 2024 season, the Hilton Grand Vacations Tournament of Champions (total prize money $1.5 million), at Lake Nona Golf & Country Club (par 72, 6,617 yards) in Orlando, Florida, USA. This is the “champion of champions” event where only winners of LPGA Tour tournaments from the past two years can participate. This year, 35 players will compete for the top spot.

Korea will send three players: last year’s Rookie of the Year Yoo Hae-ran, veteran Yang Hee-young, and “Flying Dumbo” Jeon In-ji. They are the leading figures who will carry Korean women’s golf on the LPGA Tour stage in the 2024 season. No Korean players participated last year. Since Ji Eun-hee became the inaugural champion in 2019, no Korean player has won this event.

This tournament features a large number of top-tier players. World No. 1 Lydia Bue (USA), who swept four wins including two majors last year, and world No. 2 Yin Ruoning (China), winner of the major KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, are strong favorites. Also joining are world No. 5 Nelly Korda (USA), defending champion Brooke Henderson (Canada), and New Zealand Korean Lydia Ko. It is a “big match” that offers a glimpse of the season’s landscape.