[PHOTO: Adam Hunger]
Just two regular-season tournaments remain in the LPGA’s 11-month-long season before the most impactful cut-off of 2024 happens. After this week’s Lotte Championship and the finish of The Annika on November 17, the top 60 players on the Race to the CME Points List will advance to the CME Group Tour Championship, vying for its historic $US4 million first-place prize, the largest-ever award in all of women’s sports. Three-time tour winner Gaby Lopez holds the 60th position heading into this week in Hawaii with 625 points. Nearly anyone who wins the final two events will make up enough ground to get into the Tour Championship, as a victory comes with 500 points.
It’s not just the race to the top 60 and a spot at Tiburon Golf Club in Naples, Florida, that’s on the line, however, in the next two weeks. For others, the magic number is 100, as in making sure to be inside the top 100 in CME points to keep full status on the LPGA Tour in 2025. Falling outside that number can be the difference from expecting a healthy double-digit-start season to scrambling for only a handful of chances.
With the LPGA season nearly at its close, here are seven notable players to watch during the tour’s final two events as they attempt to earn their way into the tour finale and/or gain better status for 2024.
Bailey Tardy
Race to the CME Points List position: 54
Tardy won in her second start of her 2024 campaign at the Blue Bay LPGA, and was thought at the time to have locked up a spot in Florida for the season-ending CME. However, her season sputtered, when she made only one cut in next 13 starts and fell out of the top 60 of CME points. It took a T-4 at last month’s Maybank Championship, the next-to-last event of the LPGA’s Asia Swing, to move back inside the top 60. In the next fortnight Tardy will play only The Annika, and will be well aware what’s on the line when she tees it up at Pelican Golf Club.
Hyo Joo Kim
Race to the CME Points List position: 61
The No.4 player on the 2023 CME points list is in danger of missing the CME Group Tour Championship. The 29-year-old South Korean has played a spare schedule in recent years, last eclipsing 20 events in a season with 21 in 2019, but the six-time winner has played so well in limited starts that Kim still finished in the top 20 in CME points the past three seasons. She churned out a pair of top-10s over her first four starts of 2024 but hasn’t had another since her T-8 in the Ford Championship.
Kim is playing in both the Lotte, where she won in 2022, and The Annika to try to get into the CME field. When asked about her season in her pre-tournament press conference in Hawaii, she mentioned that this week could be the determining moment for her CME points – she is just six points behind Lopez.
Alexa Pano
Race to the CME Points List position: 62
Pano’s frustrating final-round finish at the Portland Classic in August – she was T-2 heading into Sunday, shot a 74 and fell to T-14, losing 222 CME points in the process – lost her a guaranteed ticket to the CME. Now she’s battling to get into the Tour Championship again. The 2023 ISPS Handa World Invitational winner was No.2 in CME points after the first event of the season, finishing runner-up to Lydia Ko during the Tournament of Champions in January. The 20-year-old Florida resident is just 12.5 points behind Lopez, but is only giving herself one chance to move into the top 60 by passing on playing in the Lotte this week.
Ashleigh Buhai
Race to the CME Points List position: 63
Buhai, 35, seemed to have recovered from playing through a broken toe during the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, moving back into the top 60 of the CME points list last month, only to be surpassed while resting during the Toto Japan Classic. The reigning Australian Open champion fell three spots, with Buhai having two chances to make up her 16-point deficit to 60th to break into the tour championship field.
Anna Nordqvist
Race to the CME Points List position: 71
The 37-year-old Swede is in danger of missing her first tour championship since 2011. Nordqvist has not earned a single top-10 in 2024 and has only The Annika remaining on her schedule to continue a streak of at least one top-10 in every year on tour since her 2009 rookie season. Nordqvist had a chance to cut into her 155-point gap to Lopez with three starts in the Asia Swing, but earned a little more than four points combined in her past two starts (T-67 at the BMW Ladies Championship; T-70 at the Maybank Championship). Nordqvist will have to finish in a two-way tie for fourth or better at The Annika to eke into the current top 60 of CME points.
Dewi Weber
Race to the CME Points List position: 128
Weber roared during the Portland Classic, making her way into the field for her second start of the season thanks to several players above her on the LPGA’s priority list competing in the Olympics in Paris. Ironically, she, too, qualified for the Olympic field at Le Golf National for the Netherlands, but her home country chose not to send her since they didn’t think she had a chance to contend. With a commanding 66-62 start, Weber held the 36-hole lead at Columbia Edgewater and a chance to earn two years of LPGA status. Her 70-72 weekend knocked her down to eighth place. She has made only five LPGA starts in ferrying back and forth between the Epson and LPGA circuits this year. With the Epson finale wrapping up in October, Weber is in the field for both the Lotte and The Annika, giving her two opportunities to make up the 99-point difference between CME points No.100 Haeji Kang’s 207.8 points and Weber’s 108.6 points. That can happen with an outright seventh or better in one tournament.
Danielle Kang
Race to the CME Points List position: 138
It is confounding to see Kang, a 13-year LPGA veteran with six wins including a major to her credit, this far down the CME points list – and with her status for 2025 in serious doubt. She has just one top-20 finish in an individual event, a T-20 in February in the limited-field, no-cut Honda LPGA Thailand. Her best finish in a tournament with a cut this year is a T-51 in the US Women’s Open, a tumultuous drop off amid a stupefying season. Since Kang’s rookie year in 2012, the 32-year-old has had at least one top-10 every season.
If Kang doesn’t deliver a throwback performance in one of her next two starts, she is looking at either going to Q-Series or using a top-40 career moneylist exemption to improve her status. She has earned 87 CME points over 18 starts and is 130 points outside the top 100, which would take a two-way T-5 or better to make up in one start.
