LPGA

The next “Champion of Champions” will be crowned on Sunday at the fifth-annual HSBC Women’s Champions at Tanah Merah Country Club in Singapore. Each of the four prior winners of the $1.4 million tournament has come from the upper echelon of the women’s professional game. At the inaugural event in 2008, then-Rolex Rankings No. 1 Lorena Ochoa won the event by a whopping 11 strokes over Annika Sorenstam and set the tournament record with a 7-under-par 65 in the second round. In 2009, South Korea’s Jiyai Shin won the tournament by two strokes and went on to top the LPGA Official Money List and win the Louise Suggs Rolex Rookie of the Year award at season’s end. Shin would go on to hold the Rolex Rankings No.

The third stop on the LPGA's Asia-Pacific swing takes place this week at the fifth-annual HSBC Women's Champions in Singapore.

The drama of a weather suspension on the final hole in regulation and a four-player, three-hole, sudden-death playoff at the HSBC Women’s Champions wasn’t enough to keep Angela Stanford from prevailing to earn her fifth-career LPGA victory. The 34-year-old sank a three-foot birdie putt on the third playoff hole to earn the distinction of the 2012 “Champion of Champions” title. Stanford outlasted Shanshan Feng, who three-putted the first playoff hole, Na Yeon Choi, who missed a four-footer for par on the second playoff hole, and Jenny Shin, who bogeyed the final playoff hole to post the the second win by an American in the first three events of the LPGA season for the first time since 2007.

Angela Stanford earned her fifth-career LPGA title and added Champion of Champions to her resume with a victory at the HSBC Women’s Champions in Singapore. She joins a world-class list of past champions that include Lorena Ochoa (2008), Jiyai Shin (2009), Ai Miyazato (2010) and Karrie Webb (2011). “I feel extremely honored to be in that group of golfers and women, and to be the first American to get to win here is pretty special,” she said.

What does this win mean for Angela Stanford? This is Stanford's 5th career LPGA victory. Standford has increased her LPGA career earnings to $6,757,016 - surpasses Hee-Won Han for 19th on the LPGA Career Money List.

Angela Stanford, Katie Futcher and Jenny Shin are in a three-way tie for the second-round lead at the fifth-annual HSBC Women’s Champions in Singapore. The trio enters the weekend tied at 8-under-par 136 with a three-shot advantage over Hee Young Park, Na Yeon Choi and 2010 HSBC winner Ai Miyazato. On a hot and humid day in Singapore, Shin and Futcher each carded 5-under-par 67’s to join first-round leader Stanford at the top of the leaderboard.