Amy Yang won the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship Sunday to capture her first career major championship!
Yang, who won the season-ending CME Group Tour Championship last year, won the KPMG Women’s PGA by three shots at the venerable Sahalee Country Club near Seattle. This ended a long major-less drought for Yang. She has been on the LPGA Tour for 17 years and was surrounded by almost a dozen players on the green on 18 to spray her with champagne after the biggest win of her career.
“I always want to win a major and I came close several times, and I started doubting myself if I ever going to win a major before I retire because I’ve been or Tour quite a while,” Yang said. “I am so grateful and very, very like happy to win a major.”
Yang got off to a tremendous start and was up by a touchdown at one point Sunday. While she stumbled home – she bogeyed 16 and made a double bogey on 17 – the trophy was still very much hers.
“It’s all the hard work our team did together, and I’m so grateful for that. All four rounds it was tough out there, but I just trusted what I prepared and just I did my best all week,” Yang said.
A pair of former world No.1s finished tied for second, with Lilia Vu and Jin Young Ko finishing at 4 under. Vu won last week on the LPGA Tour – her first event in about two months as she was recovering from a back injury.
There was a three-way tie for fourth with perhaps the biggest and most exciting implication coming for Ally Ewing. Ewing, who notched her third top-5 result in a row on the LPGA Tour, likely earned a spot for the American Olympic team with her finish.
The cut off for women’s golf in the Olympics was Sunday night, with the official rankings being announced Monday.
Golf Town Athlete Brooke Henderson, who won the last major contested at Sahalee in 2016, finished tied for 22nd. Brooke has now finished inside the top 25 at every major in four years – save for two missed cuts.
“This was an exciting week. I was so happy to be coming back here. It played pretty tough this week. I felt like fought pretty hard to finish where I did this week. I saw a lot of positives though, being able to grind it out, and I feel like I’m hitting the ball a lot straighter now because you have to around this course,” Brooke said with a laugh. “Lots of positives to take away.
“Playing with Lexi next week at the DOW. A really busy summer ahead with the Evian coming up, the British, the Olympics, the CPKC Women’s Open. A lot of huge events. I’m looking forward to weeks off in-between pretty much all of those and hopefully my game will be pretty sharp.”
The other Canadians in the field, Savannah Grewal and Alena Sharp, both missed the cut. It will be a close race between Sharp and Maddie Szeryk – who finished tied for seventh at the Epson Tour event this week – for the second spot for Canada.