On Saturday, millions of golf fans sat up on their sofas and gasped as LPGA rookie Sei Young Kim holed out not once, but twice at the LOTTE Championship Presented by Hershey in Hawaii en route to her second win of the season.
People shook their heads in amazement, social media went crazy and Kim’s legacy as an ice-in-her-veins star grew by another degree or 12. Kim got everyone’s attention by forcing a playoff with Inbee Park via a chip-in birdie from 18 feet on the 72nd hole after she had dunked her initial tee shot in the water.
But she wasn’t done there.
Kim decided to one-up herself on the first hole of sudden-death, holing out from 154 yards for eagle and the tournament championship. Considering Kim aced the 17th hole in the final round of a 2013 Korean LPGA tournament en route to that event’s title, these theatrics should come as no surprise.
And LPGA fans shouldn’t be surprised by Kim’s heroics either. After all, they have been treated to some amazing shot-making in recent years on a regular basis.
Kim’s walk-off eagle may hold up as the shot of the year, but it already has company in the running for that honor from the Tour’s preceding tournament. Two weeks before, Brittany Lincicome eagled the 72nd hole at the ANA Inspiration – the season’s first major – to post a clubhouse number that would eventually earn her a spot in a playoff against Stacy Lewis that she went on to win.
Last season was a banner year for big shots on Tour. Who can forget Paula Creamer sinking a 75-foot monster eagle putt to defeat Azahara Munoz on the second extra hole at the HSBC Women’s Champions in Singapore?
That bomb earned Creamer the 2014 Kia Most Compelling Performance Award, and it topped one heck of a shot from one of the Tour’s major championships for that honor. Mo Martin laced a 3-wood from 240 yards to within six feet for eagle on the final hole of regulation in the RICOH Women’s British Open at Royal Birkdale in mid-July, then made the putt to earn her first LPGA victory.
World No. 1 Lydia Ko got in on the action as well in 2014, birdieing the 72nd hole of the Swinging Skirts LPGA Classic to edge Lewis by a single shot and claim one of her three wins of the season. Throw in Danielle Kang’s holes-in-one on consecutive weeks at the Blue Bay LPGA in China and Fubon LPGA Taiwan Championship to win new cars just eight days apart, and 2014 was arguably one of the most impressive shot-making seasons in LPGA history.
Lewis may have been on the short end of two of the aforementioned great shots, but she hit one of her own at the 2013 RICOH Women’s British Open at St. Andrews en route to her second major championship. Lewis striped a 5-iron from roughly 200 yards on the par-4 17th to three feet for birdie, then sank a 25-footer for birdie on the closing hole to finish two shots clear of Na Yeon Choi and Hee Young Park on a brutally windy day.
It was an epic shot for the top-ranked American.
“It’s one of those shots I’ll remember for the rest of my life,” Lewis said after the victory. “To birdie 17 and 18 at the ‘Home of golf’ in a major championship – it just doesn’t get any better than that.”
Later in 2013, Sweden’s Anna Nordqvist would register the first hole-in-one in Solheim Cup history on Saturday of the competition to end a Foursomes match with a victory. Playing the par-3 17th at Colorado Golf Club in Parker, Colo., Nordqvist’s 7-iron tee shot found the cup in hers and Caroline Hedwall’s match against Morgan Pressel and Jessica Korda and put and exclamation point on the Europeans’ 2&1 triumph.
And those are just the highlights from the last three years! Who knows what else is in store for LPGA fans this season?
It could literally be anything, and that’s yet another aspect that makes watching the action on Tour exciting on a weekly basis.
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