The CPKC Women’s Open is the latest tournament on tap for the LPGA Tour and the 156-player field is chock full of the game’s top superstars. Nine of the top 10 in the Rolex Women’s World Golf Rankings are set to tee it up at Shaughnessy Golf and Country Club as are eight past champions, including home-country hero Brooke Henderson. A $2.5 million purse is up for grabs and so are valuable Solheim Cup points for those working to lock up a spot on the United States team. Take a look at a few of the featured groups at this week’s CPKC Women’s Open.
Thursday, 7:55 a.m.* – Ally Ewing/Angel Yin/Rose Zhang
Three Solheim Cup hopefuls will go off No. 10 at 7:55 a.m. on Thursday at Shaughnessy. Ally Ewing is ninth in the United States Solheim Cup standings, two spots outside the top seven who will qualify via points, and is 34th in the Rolex Women’s World Golf Rankings, just a couple of spots behind her two groupmates who are currently qualified via the world rankings. The 30-year-old comes to Vancouver after recording back-to-back top 10s at the FREED Group Women’s Scottish Open presented by Trust Golf and the AIG Women’s Open, where she finished T9 and T6 respectively. Those two results were her third and fourth top-10 finishes this season – Ewing finished T5 at the LPGA Drive On Championship at Superstition Mountain and T8 at the Meijer LPGA Classic for Simply Give – and will provide her plenty of momentum as she looks to make a late push to automatic qualify for the United States Solheim Cup team. The three-time LPGA Tour winner is making her fifth appearance at the CPKC Women’s Open and will look to improve upon her best finish of T31 that came in 2019.
Sitting at No. 32 in the Rolex Rankings, Angel Yin will need to play well enough to hold on to her position this week in Canada to automatically qualify for the U.S. team. It’s been a solid season for the 24-year-old who has missed just one cut and recorded four top-10 finishes, including a solo second at The Chevron Championship after losing in a playoff to Lilia Vu which is her career-best finish in a major. According to KPMG Performance Insights, Yin ranks inside the top 10 on the LPGA Tour in two statistical categories, currently sitting at third in strokes gained putting (+1.16) and eighth in strokes gained around the green (+0.40). Like Ewing, this is Yin’s fifth time playing the CPKC Women’s Open, and in her four previous starts, she’s missed one cut and earned two top-10 results, most notably finishing runner-up to Brooke Henderson in 2018.
Mizuho Americas Open winner and 2023 LPGA Tour rookie Rose Zhang rounds out this grouping. Alongside Yin, she is also currently qualified for the 2023 United States Solheim Cup team via the Rolex Rankings as the 20-year-old is 31st in the world at the moment. In addition to her win at Liberty National Golf Club in Jersey City, N.J., Zhang has recorded three other top-10 finishes, all of which were in major championships, including a T8 at the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship and a pair of T9s at the U.S. Women’s Open and The Amundi Evian Championship. She has missed just one cut in her six total starts this season at the Dana Open and finished in a tie for 44th at the AIG Women’s Open. This week at Shaughnessy Golf and Country Club will mark her first time teeing it up in the CPKC Women’s Open.
Thursday, 12:59 p.m. – Stacy Lewis/Celine Boutier/Linn Grant
United States Solheim Cup captain Stacy Lewis will get a good look at the games of two players on the European Solheim Cup team over the next two days in Vancouver as she’s set to go Thursday afternoon alongside Celine Boutier and Linn Grant. Balancing captaincy and a full-time LPGA Tour playing schedule is a tall order for anyone, but Lewis has unsurprisingly handled the pressure quite well, missing just four cuts in 16 total starts this year and notching two top 10s at the LPGA Drive On Championship at Superstition Mountain where she finished T7 and the Dow Great Lakes Bay Invitational where she finished sixth alongside partner Maria Fassi. Statistically, the 38-year-old ranks inside the top 20 in two categories on the LPGA Tour this season, driving accuracy (14, 80.70%) and strokes gained putting (17, +0.69).
Celine Boutier has been one of the hottest players on Tour this year and is now considered a threat to win every time she tees it up. Boutier became the winningest French player in LPGA Tour history after capturing her third career LPGA Tour victory at the LPGA Drive On Championship at Superstition Mountain in March, defeating her fellow European Georgia Hall in a playoff. The 29-year-old then took home her first major title at The Amundi Evian Championship in Evian-les-Bains, France, the first French winner in the tournament’s history. Just a week later, Boutier was again hoisting a trophy at the FREED Group Women’s Scottish Open at Dundonald Links in Ayrshire, Scotland, becoming the first player to win back-to-back tournaments since Jin Young Ko won the Cognizant Founders Cup and BMW Ladies Championship in 2021. After taking a much-needed break last week and solidifying her spot on the European Solheim Cup team, the five-time LPGA Tour winner is making her fourth appearance at the CPKC Women’s Open, an event in which she’s only recorded one top-25 finish in her three previous starts.
Like Boutier, Linn Grant is also a 2023 LPGA Tour winner, capturing her first LPGA Tour title in resounding fashion at the Dana Open earlier this season. That victory along with one additional top-10 finish on the LPGA Tour and a win at the Jabra Ladies Open on the Ladies European Tour was enough for the 24-year-old Swede to automatically qualify for the European Solheim Cup team earlier this week. Grant hasn’t finished worse than T53 on the LPGA Tour this season and has recorded five additional top-20 results outside of her two top 10s, most notably tying for 11th at the AIG Women’s Open a couple of weeks ago. Despite only playing in nine events this season, the Arizona State University alum is ranked first in strokes gained driving (+1.01), fifth in greens in regulation (73.26%), sixth in scoring average (70.44), sixth in strokes gained tee to green (+1.42) and sixth in strokes gained total (+1.73) on the LPGA Tour.
Thursday, 1:21 p.m. – Brooke Henderson/Nelly Korda/Lilia Vu
Hometown hero Brooke Henderson is looking for her second CPKC Women’s Open win this week at Shaughnessy Golf and Country Club and her first since 2018 when the Canadian defeated Angel Yin by a whopping four shots at Wascana Country Club in Regina, Saskatchewan. Despite winning the first event of the LPGA Tour season at the Hilton Grand Vacations Tournament of Champions, 2023 hasn’t been much to write home about for the 25-year-old. She has only finished in the top 10 once since picking up her 13th career victory in Orlando, Fla., recording a runner-up result in her title defense at The Amundi Evian Championship, and has three other top 15s to her credit, the best of which is a solo 12th that came at the U.S. Women’s Open. This week marks Henderson’s 10th appearance at the CPKC Women’s Open, and in addition to her win in 2018, she has finished in the top 15 three times, most notably tying for third in 2019 at Magna Golf Club in her native Ontario.
Nelly Korda finished in a tie for second alongside Hye-Jin Choi in the 2022 edition of the CPKC Women’s Open, falling just one shot short of winner Paula Reto last year at Ottawa Hunt and Golf Club. This week at Shaughnessy Golf and Country Club will be Korda’s fifth start in this event, and in her four previous appearances in Canada, she has never finished worse than T28. The 25-year-old has had a consistent 2023 LPGA Tour season, despite missing a couple of cuts at the Cognizant Founders Cup and KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, earning eight T11 or better finishes in 12 total starts this year, including a solo third at The Chevron Championship, a T9 at The Amundi Evian Championship and a T11 at the AIG Women’s Open. While she’s still looking to pick up her ninth career LPGA Tour victory, Korda has had a successful year thus far and will continue to build off the momentum she generated at the European majors as the season begins to wind down.
Recently taking the No. 1 spot in the Rolex Women’s World Golf Rankings from her groupmate, Lilia Vu is set to make her first start as world no. 1 at the CPKC Women’s Open. Following her victory at the AIG Women’s Open, the Epson Tour graduate became just the fourth American ever to hold the top spot, joining Korda, Stacy Lewis and Cristie Kerr. Vu has been victorious two other times in 2023, capturing her first career LPGA Tour title at the Honda LPGA Thailand in February and winning again not long after at The Chevron Championship in April, defeating Angel Yin in a playoff to become a first-time major winner. She has one additional top 10 to her credit, a T7 that came at the LPGA Drive On Championship at Superstition Mountain, and statistically, Vu is second in putts per green in regulation (1.75) and eighth in scoring average (70.48) on the LPGA Tour this season.
*Off No. 10
For a full list of tee times, please click here. All times are local.
.@cpkcwomensopen featured groups
— LPGA (@LPGA) August 23, 2023
Brooke Henderson
Nelly Korda
Lilia Vu
Paula Reto
Ayaka Furue
Nasa Hataoka
Minjee Lee
Jin Young Ko
Jennifer Kupcho
Stacy Lewis
Celine Boutier
Linn Grant
Ally Ewing
Angel Yin
Rose Zhang
Lexi Thompson
Lydia Ko
Andrea Lee pic.twitter.com/GIN2mkryxT
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