Newly crowned Greg Norman Medallist Hannah Green has been afforded star billing as Australia’s golfing queens chase the biggest purse in women’s golf history at the LPGA’s season-ending Tour Championship.
Green, dual major winner Minjee Lee, Grace Kim and 2024 rookie of the year contender Gabriela Ruffels are among the 60 players jostling for an eye-popping $US4 million ($6.13 million) winner’s pay day in Florida.
The champion’s cheque, double that of last year, is part of a record $US11 million purse on offer at the Tiburen Golf Club in Naples.
Fresh off her seventh victory of an extraordinary season, world world number one Nelly Korda is the warm favourite and acknowledges the monster money up for grabs is nothing to be sneezed at.
Korda says she still recalls earning her first pay cheque from her professional debut in the Bahamas in 2011 and being grateful to “have enough money to get me for the next couple weeks”.
“So to see the steps and the progress that has been made since 2011 has been incredible,” she said.
“Hopefully we keep taking advantage of the trend in women’s golf and all the amazing stories and women in sports and continuously rising from it.”
Nelly Korda won her seventh LPGA title of the year at The Annika last weekend — now she’s favourite for the Tour Championship. (Getty Images: Douglas P. DeFelice)
Green joyously revealed how she planned on splashing out on a house when she banked a “life-changing” $US1 million bonus for winning the LPGA Tour’s season-long AON Risk Reward Challenge in 2021.
Now the 27-year-old world number five is among the pre-tournament fancies to pocket four times that much on Sunday after carving out an-already dazzling three-win season in the US.
Fittingly, Green will play with Chinese sensation Ruoning Yin, the world number three and fellow former Women’s US PGA champion, in one of the feature groups for the opening two rounds on Friday and Saturday (AEDT).
Green’s West Australian stablemate Minjee Lee will tee off with Thailand’s Arpichaya Yubol as she fights to land a first trophy and avoid a rare winless season.
Kim will go out with Swiss Albane Valenzuela, while Ruffels will play the first two rounds with South Korean Narin An.
Whatever transpires, Korda just hopes it happens faster than her “ridiculous” five-hour, 38-minute final round last week at The Annika with English ace Charley Hull.
“Players just need to be penalised,” Korda said.
“Rules officials need to watch from the first group. Once they get two minutes behind, one minute behind, it just slows everything down.
“To be standing over a putt for two to three minutes, that’s ridiculous.
“When a group in front of me is on the green and I’m in the fairway, I’m already getting ready. I’m getting my numbers ready, talking about the shot, so by the time it’s my turn, I already have my game plan.
“People over-analyse and I think people just need to be ready faster.”
Hull went further, saying serial slow-coaches should be banned from the tour.
“I’m quite ruthless, but I said, ‘Listen, if you get three bad timings, every time it’s a two-shot penalty,'” Hull said.
“If you have three of them you lose your tour card instantly.
“I’m sure that would hurry a lot of people up and they won’t want to lose their tour card. That would kill the slow play, but they would never do that.”
AAP