Illinois: Newly crowned women’s world number one Ryu So-Yeon is living the dream and hoping to give herself a major birthday present at the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship starting on Thursday.
She heads a stellar field for the second major on the women’s calendar at Olympia Fields, the scene of Jim Furyk’s victory at the 2003 US Open. Ryu became the third number one in as many weeks with her victory at the Arkansas Championship on Sunday, supplanting Thai Ariya Jutanugarn, who only a week earlier had displaced New Zealander Lydia Ko.
Ryu, who celebrates her 27th birthday on Thursday, is going for consecutive major victories, after winning the ANA Inspiration in a playoff with Lexi Thompson.
Ryu, the 2011 US Women’s Open champion, has tightened her swing recently which she says has helped reduce the damage of loose shots.
She certainly did not hit many poor shots in her second-round 61 last week, a score she knows will be difficult to accomplish at Olympia Fields, where she says the severely sloping greens will demand precise approach shots that stop under the hole. Not that she is ready to plan her victory speech just yet.
“I’m not a robot, so sometimes I play bad, sometimes great,” she said. Ryu is part of a never-ending Korean juggernaut that currently has five players ranked among the world’s top 10, with Chun In-Gee, Park In-Bee, Park Sung-Hyun and Amy Yang also high on the list. But the Korean contingent is unlikely to have it all its own way this week, with many players running into form at the right time, among them former child prodigy Michelle Wie, who has finished third, second and fourth in her past three starts.
And Canadian Brooke Henderson is not ready to surrender her title without a fight, coming off a victory at the Meijer LPGA Classic.
“I feel like my game is in a great place right now,” Henderson said on Wednesday. — Reuters
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