The field for this week’s Chevron Championship, the first major event of the LPGA season, filled up with the kind of bang that few could have seen coming.
Australian Grace Kim – the latest in what is becoming a long list of players inspired and mentored by World Golf Hall of Fame member Karrie Webb – birdied her last two holes in regulation to reach 12 under par and share the lead in the Lotte Championship at Hoakalei Country Club in Hawaii. Kim then sank a fast downhill 5-footer for birdie on the first playoff hole to beat Yu Jin Sung and Yu Liu. In so doing, the 22-year-old Aussie became the last player to earn a spot in the Chevron.
Kim was a rising star in her homeland, even if audiences in the Northern Hemisphere didn’t know her name. She contended late into the back nine at the ISPS Handa Women’s Australian Open in December, and her amateur record was stellar. She won the 2021 Australian Women’s Amateur by seven shots, and won the TPS Sydney, an Australian Ladies Professional Golf event, as an amateur that same year, which earned her an invitation to the Augusta National Women’s Amateur. She also won a couple of times on the Women’s All Pro Tour as an amateur, adding an element of irony to that mini-tour’s name.
"I'm still speechless that it's kind of done already and I got the job done.”
Grace Kim
As a rookie last year on the Epson Tour, Kim won once and finished comfortably inside the graduating class. But few saw this breakout performance coming, not even Kim herself.
“I really didn't have high expectations,” Kim said after the win. “I just really tried to play my game, didn't try to force anything, just trying to, I guess, go with the flow. I'm still speechless that it's kind of done already and I got the job done.”
She also was surprised that she got into the Chevron, which kicks off Thursday at a new course and in a new city for the first time in 50 years.
“I actually didn't register (for the Chevron Championship) until (the Drive On Championship at) Superstition (Mountain) because I thought I had no chance of getting into Chevron,” she said. “Hearing other people saying that they could get a chance, I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, you know what? I'll just enter.’ I just topped it off today, so very excited.”
Kim is the latest Karrie Webb Scholar to become an LPGA winner, following Minjee Lee and Hannah Green, both of whom were mentored by Webb.
Kim also proved that the Epson Tour has, like the PGA Tour’s developmental Korn Ferry Tour, become the perfect feeder system for future champions.
“I think I learned a lot through the Epson Tour last year,” Kim said. “I did my whole year except the first two events, and just being in contention every week, week in, week out, you know, living out of a suitcase, just being in tour life, I think hit reality for me. It was kind of the taste-tester of what life on the LPGA Tour is like.
“I would say (this win in Hawaii) was probably the least nerve-racking playoff I've ever had. I'm quite surprised at that myself. Yes, I was nervous over the (final) putt, but I was focused enough to block that out.
“But I think having that year on the Epson Tour, even though I missed final stage (of Q Series) the year before, was, yeah, the greatest plan for me.”
Steve Eubanks