It was arguably the most controversial decision on the major international Tours in the past year. In the first women’s Grand Slam tournament of 2017, Lexi Thompson was penalized four strokes on Sunday after a spectator emailed the LPGA Tour to report a possible infraction in the third round, the previous day’s round.
The referees reviewed the video and ruled that Lexi had replaced her ball inaccurately on the green. She was subsequently penalized two shots for the infraction and two more for signing a lower score, even though she was unaware of it at the time.
She was notified of the penalty after the 12th hole of the final round, when she was leading the tournament by two strokes and, understandably annoyed and bewildered, asked, “Is this a joke?”. It wasn’t, and although she admirably regained her composure to force a play-off , she ultimately lost it to So Yeon Ryu.
This, along with other widely criticized rulings in recent years, led the sport’s official referees to decide late last year that television viewers will not be able to report on possible penalties on the world’s most important circuits.
Too late for Lexi, but at least she had previously won the 2014 Kraft Nabisco, her first and so far only Grand Slam title, and finished 2017 as winner of the very lucrative Race to the CME Globe.
Several golfers had a lot at stake as the 2017 LPGA Tour concluded in Florida. It all came down to the 72nd hole to determine the winner of this year’s CME Group Tour Championship. One of the four players leading the tournament at the start of the day, Ariya Jutanugarn birdied four of her last six holes to win by one stroke and avoid a three-way playoff with Thompson and fellow American Jessica Korda.
The afternoon seemed to belong to Thompson, who had a one-stroke lead after 71 holes, but missed a sub-one-meter putt on the 72nd hole for par, which meant he was tied for the lead with Korda and had to wait for Jutanugarn to complete his round. The Thai star dashed Thompson’s hopes by holing an eight-meter putt for birdie that gave him the victory by one stroke and an overall score of 15 under par.
As consolation, Thompson took home the Race to the CME Globe and its $1 million prize, and also sealed the 2017 Vare Trophy by finishing the season with the lowest average on Circuit: 69.114 strokes per round.
For the first time in LPGA Tour history, there were two Players of the Year, Sung Hyun Park and So Yeon Ryu finishing the season tied; while Park also made history by becoming the first player since Nancy Lopez in 1978 to win Rookie and Player of the Year honors in a single season. She also finished 2017 at the top of the earnings list with $2,335,883.
Golf family
Born in Coral Springs, Florida on February 10, 1995, Lexi Thompson was passionate about golf from an early age. Her older brother, Curtis, was a successful junior golfer and currently plays on the Web.com Tour, while her other brother, Nicholas (12 years her senior), is a member of the U.S. PGA Tour who won on the 2007 Nationwide Tour (now Web.com).
At 12 years, four months and one day, Lexi became the youngest player in U.S. Women’s Open history (a record broken in 2014 by 11-year-old Lucy Li). In June 2010 she announced she was turning pro and, later that year, the LPGA Tour waived its minimum age requirement of 18 for Tour membership, which would allow entry into the 2011 Qualifying School.
In 2011 she won the Navistar LPGA Classic and became the youngest winner on the LPGA Tour, at 16 years, seven months and eight days (Lydia Ko broke that record the following year). Three months later she also set a new record as the youngest champion of a European Women’s Tour tournament (Dubai Ladies Masters).
In total, she has won nine times on the LPGA Tour, including her 2014 major, two victories in each season in 2013, 2015 and 2017, and one in 2016 (plus in 2011 and 2014).
Multinational world ranking
When Lexi begins a new season with the Pure Silk-Bahamas LPGA Classic on January 25, she will face the daunting challenge of ending the current dominance of Asian players in women’s golf, as reflected in the world rankings.
Since its creation in 2006, this ranking has been led by twelve players representing nine countries. Those who have reached number one in the last 11 years range from teenager Lydia Ko to veteran Annika Sorenstam. In November, South Korea’s Sung Hyun Park made history by overtaking compatriot So Yeon Ryu at the top of the world rankings to become the fourth Korean to reach number one (after Ryu, Inbee Park and Jiyai Shin) and the fourth number one in 2017 (she was followed in that order by Ko, Ariya Jutanugarn and Ryu).
However, Park’s reign was short-lived. Just one week later, Shanshan Feng won the Blue Bay to overtake her in the rankings. The victory enabled Feng to become the first golfer – male or female – from China to rise to the top of the world golf rankings.
Annika Sorenstam (Sweden) was the first number one when the world ranking was established, in 2006, followed (for varying periods) by Lorena Ochoa (Mexico), Jivai Shin (South Korea), Ai Miyazato (Japan), Cristie Kerr (United States), Yani Tseng (Taiwan), Stacy Lewis (United States), Inbee Park (South Korea), Lydia Ko (New Zealand), Ariya Jutanugarn (Thailand), So Yeon Ryu (South Korea), Sung Hyun Park (South Korea) and Shanshan Feng (China).
At the end of 2017, the top 10 female golfers in the world were as follows: 1) Shanshan Feng, 2) Sung Hyun Park, 3) Then Yeon Ryu, 4) Lexi Thompson, 5) In Gee Chun, 6) Ariya Jutanugarn, 7) Anna Nordqvist, 8) I.K. Kim, 9) Lydia Ko, 10) Cristie Kerr.
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