LPGA Tour
Nelly Korda and other big stars fall before reaching Match Play weekend, and remaining contenders are just fine with that
Ariya Jutanugarn plays her shot on the ninth hole during the third round of the T-Mobile Match Play.
David Becker
The beauty of match play is its utter unpredictability, especially when you gather the best players in the world together and the margins between them are razor thin. It can be dramatic to watch, but tour sponsors and TV partners can get a bit quesy while they sweat out seeing if the most notable players can go deep into the bracket.
And let’s just say this week’s LPGA Tour T-Mobile Match Play didn’t enjoy nearly the chalk results of this year’s NCAA men’s basketball tournament.
With the end of round-robin play late on Friday afternoon at Shadow Creek Golf Club in Las Vegas, the tour saw a handful of its biggest stars eliminated, including World No. 1 Nelly Korda, No. 3 Lydia Ko and No. 6 Charley Hull.
With the Round of 16 and quarterfinals set for Saturday, only three players from the world’s top 10—No. 3 Jeeno Thitikul, No. 7 Haeran Ryu and No. 10 Angel Yin—remain in the hunt to win the $300,000 first-place prize.
With 16 groups of four players each, there is no margin for error, or usually even a single loss, and Korda, the event’s defending champion, managed just one victory. Playing in Group 1, the six-time winner from last season needed to defeat unbeaten Ariya Jutanugarn in Friday’s final match. She gave it a strong running, coming from 2 down through 6 to leading 1 up through 14. But Korda bogeyed the 14th to be tied, and Jutanugarn got the advantage she would hold with a birdie at the par-5 16th.
Korda had a chance to make it dramatic if she could win the par-3 17th, but after her opponent hit into a tough lie in the back bunker, the American’s 9-iron came up short inside the penalty area, and they both made bogey to end Korda’s hopes of getting the win she needed.
Thailand's Jutanugarn, 29, a two-time major winner and former World No. 1, admitted that she didn’t think she had much of a chance to reach the weekend when she saw she was in Korda’s group.
“I would say I have pretty bad week last week, so to be honest I'm already [planning] what I'm going to do on Sunday,” she said. “I thought I'm not going to be able to play the weekend, so I kind of like chilling, no expectation at all.”
Lydia Ko, the recent qualifier for the LPGA Hall of Fame, was eliminated when Carlota Ciganda beat her 2 up on Friday. Hull was routed 5 and 4 by Germany’s Esther Henseleit.
Nine of the group winners were a perfect 3-0—Jutanugarn, Thitikul, Sei Young Kim, Brooke Henderson, Maja Stark, Celine Boutier, A Lim Kim, Madelene Sagstrom and Narin An.
Easily the freshest player from the first three days is the Canadian, Henderson, who’s only played 36 holes because her Day 3 opponent, Jin Young Ko, withdrew after nine holes with Henderson leading 2 up.
In Saturday’s Round of 16, Thitikul takes on World No. 50 Nataliya Guseva, while Henderson faces Stark. American Lauren Coughlin, a two-time winner last year who has risen to No. 13, plays 12-time tour winner Sei Young Kim.
With Korda out, the fifth edition of the event will have a first-time winner.