LPGA giving diversity a new meaning with different winners this season

The lingering question for the last three months on the LPGA Tour was when Nelly Korda finally would win this year. Now the question should be who's going to win next? The latest entrants into the 2025 winner's ledgers were Somi Lee and Jin Hee Im at the Dow Championship, the only official team event on the LPGA schedule. That made it 17 straight tournaments with different winners. The LPGA has not seen this level of parity — or maybe it's lack of dominance — in its 75-year history. The previous record to start a season was 15 different winners in 2017 and 1991. Perhaps even more telling was this amazing streak of different winners was assured long before the South Korean duo birdied the first playoff hole to beat out Lexi Thompson and Megan Khang. That's because no one from the top 16 teams on the leaderboard at the Dow Championship had won this year. And to think it was a year ago when Korda ran off five straight victories to tie an LPGA record and ended the season with seven wins and as the dominant figure in women's golf. It would be asking a lot for her to repeat that (Scottie Scheffler is nodding his head), though it's still somewhat surprising that Korda hasn't registered a win halfway through the season. "It's golf," Korda said going into the KPMG Women's PGA Championship two weeks ago, where she was on the fringe of contention until the wind blew her into reverse. "Every year is just so different. Last year coming into this event, I had five wins. I think even Hannah Green had multiple wins under her belt, too. "It's just ... it's just golf," she said. "You kind of just have to ride the wave, and the competition is getting better and better every year. To win once, to win twice, it's really good." The competition certainly is more diverse. The top 10 players in the women's world ranking represent eight countries. The 17 tournaments this year have been won by players from eight countries — including South Korea with four wins, and three each for the United States, Sweden and the potentially emerging power of Japan. But the parity is best illustrated by comparisons to the other streaks of different winners. There have been five first-time winners on the LPGA (six including both Lee and Im from the Dow Championship), and only three winners came into this year with at least five career victories on the LPGA. When the 2017 season began with 15 different winners, all of them previously had won on the LPGA and eight of them already had at least five wins. In 1991, which also featured 15 different winners to start the year, there were two first-time winners — one of them was World Golf Hall of Fame member Meg Mallon — and nine of those players already had five-plus LPGA wins. "I think winning out here is getting tougher and tougher," Carlota Ciganda said after winning the Meijer LPGA Classic, her first LPGA title in more than eight years. "Lots of really good players, especially lots of youngster. Also good Japanese and Korean and Asians, and even Americans. Like, I think it's not easy." It's either parity or it's simply cyclical, and these things have a way of working themselves out. The 2017 season ended with nine multiple winners, none with more than two victories. South Korean rookie Sung-hyun Park and So Yeon Ryu shared the points-based LPGA player of the year, the first time for a tie since the award began in 1966. Four players left the season-ending CME Group Tour Championship with a trophy of some variety. That was some serious parity. In 1991, Mallon went on to win two majors and tied with Pat Bradley with four wins apiece. Bradley swept all the big awards by leading the money list and the Vare Trophy for lowest scoring average and winning LPGA player of the year. There still are 15 tournaments on the LPGA schedule this year. Two of them are majors, starting next week with the Evian Championship in France. Lee was asked what she would take away from her first LPGA win and replied, "Just same feel and same thing. Should be this win and forget and then again try to win." The previous 16 winners surely were thinking along those lines. Instead, the LPGA has witnessed a record with 17 straight tournaments and now multiple winners to start a season. Stranger still is a glance at the races for LPGA player of the year. Mao Saigo, who won the first major at the Chevron Championship and tied for fourth in the U.S. Women's Open, has a five-point lead over Women's PGA champion Minjee Lee, who is three points clear of Jeeno Thitikul. Korda is at No. 11 and could move to No. 1 in the points race if she wins either the Evian Championship or the Women's British Open three weeks later. There's a lot of time left for the season to get some definition, and for Korda to reassert herself as the dominant player in women's golf. That's what Scheffler has done on the men's tour, running off three wins in four tournaments, including a major. For now, a victory by Korda or Green or Ruoning Yin at No. 4 in the world would only add to a level of diversity the LPGA has never seen. ___ On The Fringe analyzes the biggest topics in golf during the season. AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf