THE WOODLANDS, Texas — The Chevron Championship is kicking off the 2024 LPGA Tour major season this week as the world’s best players take on The Club at Carlton Woods in The Woodlands, Texas. All of the top 10 in the Rolex Women’s World Golf Rankings are set to tee it up, as are all five of this season’s tournament champions, including world No. 1 and 12-time LPGA Tour winner Nelly Korda, who is working to collect her fifth straight LPGA Tour title in the year’s first major. Eleven past champions will also compete, most notably 2023 Chevron Championship winner Lilia Vu and Republic of Korea native So Yeon Ryu, and 12 LPGA Tour rookies are playing in their first major as LPGA Tour members, including Epson Tour graduates Isabella Fierro, Auston Kim and Gabriela Ruffels. A $7.9 million purse is up for grabs, as are 650 Race to the CME Globe points, 150 more than a regular-season LPGA Tour tournament, a worthy prize for whatever deserving champion emerges at this week’s major.
Take a look at just a few of the featured groups at the 2024 Chevron Championship, using KPMG Performance Insights:
Thursday, 8:10 a.m.* – Jin Young Ko/Patty Tavatanakit/So Yeon Ryu
Jin Young Ko won the 2019 edition of The Chevron Championship and is looking for her first major title since winning The Amundi Evian Championship in July of that same year. In addition to that victory, she has recorded two additional top-10 finishes in this event, tying for seventh in 2021 and tying for ninth last year at The Club at Carlton Woods after posting rounds of 72-71-70-68 on the challenging layout. This week is Ko’s third start of the 2024 season, and in her previous two tournaments this year, she finished in a tie for 20th at the Honda LPGA Thailand and a tie for eighth in her title defense at the HSBC Women’s World Championship. Despite her lack of starts in 2024 and even though she’s only won two majors since joining the Tour in 2018, Ko is a player who loves the big stage of a major championship. Her 70.68 scoring average is ranked second of all players with 30 or more rounds at the majors in the last five years, according to KPMG Performance Insights. So, pay close attention to Ko this week as she’s bound to record a few numbers deep in the red at this challenging venue in The Woodlands, Texas.
Patty Tavatanakit won The Chevron Championship in 2021 as a rookie, and until she captured this year’s Honda LPGA Thailand title in her home country, that major was her lone victory on the LPGA Tour. In addition to her win in February, the 24-year-old UCLA alum has collected one other top-10 finish this season, tying for eighth at the HSBC Women’s World Championship in Singapore, and one other top-25 result, tying for 22nd just down the road from her alma mater, UCLA, at the FIR HILLS SERI PAK Championship. Statistically, Tavatanakit is ranked inside the top 10 on the LPGA Tour in several notable categories, including strokes gained around the green (3, +0.67), strokes gained tee to green (5, +1.50), strokes gained driving (5, +0.82) and strokes gained total (7, +1.68). She’s also eighth in scoring average and ninth in birdie-or-better percentage. She finished in a tie for 41st in this event in 2023, but considering the strength of her recent form, don’t count out Tavatanakit as a contender in Houston.
So Yeon Ryu took home her second career major title at the 2017 Chevron Championship, winning in a playoff over Lexi Thompson at Mission Hills Country Club, and will now play for the last time on the LPGA Tour at the storied event in The Woodlands, Texas. She hasn’t competed on the LPGA Tour since the 2023 BMW Ladies Championship in the Republic of Korea last October, ultimately finishing in a tie for 28th, and after struggling a bit last season, the former Rolex Rankings No. 1 knew that she’d wrap up her playing career fairly quickly in 2024. While the moment is a bittersweet one, the 34-year-old is more than ready to walk the fairways of the Tour she’s called home over the last 13 years for the final time this week at The Club at Carlton Woods as she bids farewell to her fans and friends at the 2024 Chevron Championship.
Thursday, 12:59 p.m.* – Celine Boutier/Allisen Corpuz/Ruoning Yin
This week marks Celine Boutier’s seventh start in The Chevron Championship, and the Frenchwoman finished in a tie for 14th last year in the tournament’s debut at The Club at Carlton Woods. It was her second-best finish in the major championship, only behind a tie for fourth that came in 2022 at Mission Hills Country Club, and it’s a performance that she’ll be working to build upon this week just outside of Houston, Texas. The Chevron Championship is her seventh event of the 2024 LPGA Tour season, and while she has yet to miss any cuts, it’s been a bit of a rollercoaster for the 29-year-old, who began the year looking for more of what she found in her four-win season in 2023. She tied for 16th and tied for 49th in her first two tournaments of the year and then finished solo second at the HSBC Women’s World Championship in Singapore, tying for 12th the next week at the Blue Bay LPGA. But Boutier wasn’t able to hang on to that momentum, finishing T35 and T47 at the Ford Championship presented by KCC and T-Mobile Match Play presented by MGM Rewards, respectively, ahead of this week at The Chevron Championship. However, she’s still very much in form, on paper ranking in the top 20 in strokes gained tee to green per round (18, +1.08), strokes gained approach per round (18, +0.81) and strokes gained around the green per round (20, +0.39), according to KPMG Performance Insights. The Rolex Rankings No. 3 is also 11th in birdies (94), 14th in putts per green in regulation (1.74) and 22nd in strokes gained total (+1.08).
Allisen Corpuz slept on the 54-hole co-lead at last year’s Chevron Championship, sitting in a tie for first with Angel Yin after posting back-to-back 67s in the second and third rounds at The Club at Carlton Woods. While she ultimately faded to a tie for fourth on Sunday, it set the University of Southern California alum up for even more major success later in the 2023 season. Just a couple of months after playing well in The Woodlands, Texas, Corpuz became a Rolex First-Time Winner at the U.S. Women’s Open at Pebble Beach Golf Links, winning by three shots over Charley Hull and Jiyai Shin and becoming the first woman to win a professional event at the venue. And it wasn’t just in those two majors that the Hawaii native showed her mettle. According to KPMG Performance Insights, Corpuz gained the most strokes per round in major championships in 2023, picking up 2.6 shots on the field with her performances in those five tournaments. Her ball striking can be credited with that major success as she ranked first in strokes gained ball striking (+1.79), third in strokes gained approach (1.41) and fifth in greens in regulation (71.1%) per round in majors last year, making Corpuz a player to keep an eye on at this week’s Chevron Championship.
Like her groupmates, Ruoning Yin won her first major title in 2023, victoriously emerging from a crowded leaderboard at Baltusrol Golf Club’s Lower Course to capture the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, her second Tour title in just under three months. That performance is something she’ll hope to copy and paste as she readies herself for this week’s Chevron Championship at The Club at Carlton Woods, an event in which Yin recorded a ho-hum T41 finish last year, a benchmark she’s excited to better in 2024. The key to that improvement will be her performance with the flat stick as Yin lost two-tenths of a stroke to the field with her putting in the major championships in 2023, a devastating statistical blow considering she gained over a stroke with her ball striking in those five events last season. This is Yin’s second start in The Chevron Championship and is her eighth event of the 2024 LPGA Tour season, a year that’s seen a ton of consistency from the 21-year-old as she has recorded five T26 or better results thus far, the best of which is a tie for eighth at the FIR HILLS SERI PAK Championship.
Thursday, 1:10 p.m.* – Nelly Korda/Minjee Lee/Lilia Vu
Nelly Korda will be working to pick up her fifth straight victory this week at The Chevron Championship having won in her last four starts on the LPGA Tour. After finishing T16 at the season-opening Hilton Grand Vacations Tournament of Champions, Korda collected her ninth Tour title at the LPGA Drive On Championship at Bradenton Country Club, defeating Lydia Ko in a two-hole playoff to win in her hometown of Bradenton, Fla. She took a seven-week break right after and then continued her winning ways with another playoff victory at the FIR HILLS SERI PAK Championship, this time beating Ryann O’Toole in extra holes at Palos Verdes Golf Club to reach double-digit victories on the LPGA Tour. Korda won again the next week at the Ford Championship presented by KCC in regulation with a four-day total of 20-under, backing that up with another victory at the T-Mobile Match Play presented by MGM Rewards the very next week, one that saw her beat Leona Maguire 4 and 3 in the championship match at Shadow Creek. Korda is the first player since Annika Sorenstam in 2005 to enter a major championship off four straight victories, according to KPMG Performance Insights, and her recent strength of play can be attributed to her impeccable ball striking this season. She is currently ranked first in strokes gained tee to green on the LPGA Tour, picking up 2.19 shots on the field with her long game, a nearly nine-tenths of a stroke improvement from last year. Korda also leads the Tour in strokes gained total (+2.76), percentage of rounds in the 60s and par-4 scoring, and will be looking to use that combination of statistics to become the first American to win five tournaments in a row since Nancy Lopez in 1978. Her chances seem quite good as Korda has finished in the top five at The Chevron Championship in her last three appearances, tying for second in 2020, tying for third in 2021 and finishing solo third last year at The Club at Carlton Woods.
After collecting two victories in her last four starts of the 2023 season, Minjee Lee has gotten off to a quiet start thus far in 2024. She has earned just two top-15 results in four tournaments this season, tying for fourth at the Blue Bay LPGA and then tying for 15th at the T-Mobile Match Play presented by MGM Rewards. But statistically, the Australian is in form, currently ranking in the top 20 in both strokes gained total (20, +1.11) and strokes gained approach (2, +1.43), according to KPMG Performance Insights. Lee has 10 LPGA Tour victories to her credit, two of which are major championships, as she won The Amundi Evian Championship in 2021 and the U.S. Women’s Open at Pine Needles in 2022. This week marks her 11th career start in The Chevron Championship and her 10th since becoming an LPGA Tour member in 2015. She has earned three top-12 finishes in this event, tying for third in 2017, tying for seventh in 2020 and finishing 12th in 2022, all at the old tournament venue, Mission Hills Country Club. Lee tied for 41st at The Club at Carlton Woods last season, carding rounds of 70-75-77-69, a performance she’ll definitely be working to improve upon this year as she tries to chase down a third major victory.
Lilia Vu became a first-time major winner at the 2023 Chevron Championship after defeating Angel Yin in a playoff at The Club at Carlton Woods and is looking to successfully defend a title for the first time in her LPGA Tour career this week in The Woodlands, Texas. It’s been a mixed bag of results for the 26-year-old so far in 2024, as she has earned two top-20 finishes at the Hilton Grand Vacations Tournament of Champions (18) and the Honda LPGA Thailand (T7) and then had two withdrawals at the HSBC Women's World Championship and Blue Bay LPGA during the LPGA Tour’s spring Asian swing. According to KPMG Performance Insights, Vu was in much better form entering The Chevron Championship last season than she is this season – she was fifth in strokes gained total in 2023 compared to 28th in the same metric in 2024 – but the California native isn’t too worried about what her game looks like on paper. She’s instead trying to treat this week like just any other tournament and is hoping to keep expectations low as she works to recreate the magic she found in 2023 in her second title defense of the 2024 season.
*Off No. 10
For a full list of tee times, please click here.
The first major of the year is on the horizon for the @LPGA.
— KPMG Golf (@KPMGGolf) April 16, 2024
Will @NellyKorda continue her winning streak at the @Chevron_Golf? #KPMGInsights pic.twitter.com/bB8Ugc3y1w
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