The first four events of the 2024 season have seen four major champions capture victories on the LPGA Tour. And we’re about to figure out who the next elite winner will be this week at the Blue Bay LPGA as the Tour welcomes back a premier event we haven’t seen contested in five years. The Blue Bay LPGA is back on the LPGA Tour schedule after a lengthy hiatus, and 2018 winner Gaby Lopez is serving as the defending champion this week in the People’s Republic of China.
The Jian Lake Blue Bay Golf Course sits on the southeast corner of Hainan, a small island in China that’s located just off the coast of Vietnam. The course was built in 2012 and presents one extreme challenge after another. Twelve of the holes have water in play, and there are bunkers everywhere. We stopped counting at 110 because some of these sandy areas cover acres of landscape!
The Blue Bay LPGA began back in 2014 as a 54-hole event, quickly becoming a 72-hole tournament after its first iteration, and in the five previous editions of the Blue Bay LPGA, the average winning score is 10-under. A field of 108 players will compete for $2.2 million and a first-place prize of $330,000, and for the first time in a month, only the top 65 and ties will play the weekend.
This week marks the last of three straight weeks in Asia for the LPGA Tour, and five of the top 10 in the Rolex Women’s World Golf Rankings are competing this week in the People’s Republic of China, highlighted by No. 1 Lilia Vu, who is playing alongside 2024’s first winner Lydia Ko in the first round. The LPGA Tour will have a week away after the Blue Bay LPGA to get back stateside for the lead-up to their first major championship.
The Blue Bay LPGA has a bit of a major feel. Similar to last week at Sentosa Golf Club, the Jian Lake Blue Bay Golf Course is difficult. To contend, players must keep the ball in play. It’s easy to say that Vu or Ko will do that, but who else has been accurate around the course to start the season?
Albane Valenzuela, Olivia Cowan and Yu Jin Sung are the strokes gained tee to green leaders in this field, and those players will have an advantage because there’s a ton of trouble on this course. Thirteen of the 14 fairways bend off the tee, and all 14 tee shots have either water or sand in play, sometimes both.
For the first time this year, the LPGA Tour’s best won’t be putting on Bermudagrass as the Jian Lake Blue Bay Golf Course is covered in Paspalum. This seaside blade used for the tees, fairways and rough supports the ball, so players will have some great lies in the fairway and can even get lucky in the rough around the green. On the putting surfaces, they are using Platinum Paspalum. A new and improved strain of grass, it’s much more tolerant and can be mown lower to effectively make green speeds more challenging.
Scoring on this course will require a great combination of Paspalum putting and short game. The four best players when you combine putting and around-the-green skill in the field are Jenny Shin, Peiyun Chien, Yuna Nishimura and Ayaka Furue.
We have to go back five years, but the leaderboards and statistics are there. Look across those analytics and you see similar players from that time who consistently contended the Blue Bay LPGA. To round out our preview predictions, pay attention to the best approach players with a mid or long iron in hand. Who has the closest proximity to the hole from long range? Cowan, Valenzuela and Moriya Jutanugarn are ranked one, two and three in the Blue Bay LPGA field for knocking it close to the pin with their irons.
There’s significant talent at the top of this odds-to-win listing. Ko is the betting favorite, but after Celine Boutier’s close call in Singapore, you shouldn’t count her out. Hye Jin Choi continues to impress on this spring run alongside past Blue Bay LPGA champion Sei Young Kim.
Consider this research and maybe pick a couple of players of your own. Four weeks, four impressive winners. Can you pick number five? You’ll never know if you don’t try!
Keith Stewart is an award-winning PGA Professional. He covers the LPGA and PGA TOUR for Sports Illustrated, The Sporting News, LPGA, and PGA of America. If you are looking to raise your golf acumen and love inside information about the game, check out his weekly newsletter called Read The Line.
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