NAPLES, Fla. – Sunday upsets are uncommon on the LPGA season-ender.
Lydia Ko owns the most important come-from-behind victory on the CME Group Tour Championship, coming from three again to say the title in 2014. Since then, each winner of the CME has held no less than a share of lead heading into Sunday at Tiburon Golf Membership except Jin Younger Ko, who got here from one shot again in 2020.
Whereas that doesn’t bode effectively for the chasers in Naples, Florida, it’s additionally price noting that no in a single day chief has gone to mattress fascinated with a $4 million paycheck. That is unchartered territory within the ladies’s recreation.
Lydia Ko of New Zealand sits on a stack of 1 million {dollars} in money with the CME Tour Championship trophy and the CME Race for the Globe trophy following the ultimate spherical of the CME Group Tour Championship at Tiburon Golf Membership on November 23, 2014 in Naples, Florida. (Picture by Sam Greenwood/Getty Photos)
For perspective, Lorena Ochoa owns the single-season earnings report at $4,364,994. That got here in 2007 after Ochoa received eight occasions on the LPGA.
Ko, a two-time winner of the CME, stated the cash is the very last thing on her thoughts this week. She merely needs to complete the season on a excessive word. A 3rd-round 67 places her at 8 below for the match and 7 again of leaders Angel Yin and Jeeno Thitikul, who shot 9-under 63 to high the board at 15 below.
“I know [when] I won a few events – I had no idea how much the winning purse is,” stated Ko when requested about if there was a examine earlier in her profession that was significantly impactful. “Clearly what Terry [Duffy] has achieved to offer this type of alternative and the largest purse that girls’s golfers are taking part in for is unbelievable.
“He retains breaking his personal report and simply retains going up there. I’m excited to see how far ladies’s golf goes to go and I believe I we deserve that. Not solely in my era, however for the long run generations which are out right here watching us play.
“But yeah … I think the coolest moment was when I guess there was that $1 million in that glass box. I remember taking a photo of it, sitting on it. That was a really cool moment.”
5 gamers are inside 5 photographs of the lead, together with Ruoning Yin at 12 below, Charley Hull and Narin An at 11 below and Lucy Li and Nataliya Guseva at 10 below.
