{"id":21651,"date":"2016-10-31T09:32:46","date_gmt":"2016-10-31T09:32:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/the-great-duel\/"},"modified":"2016-10-31T09:32:46","modified_gmt":"2016-10-31T09:32:46","slug":"the-great-duel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/the-great-duel\/","title":{"rendered":"The Great Duel"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Lydia Ko, with four victories this year, and five-times champion Ariya Jutanugarn are engaged in a riveting battle at the top of the world rankings<\/strong><\/p>\n

They are both indefatigable fighters, currently two of the most talented golfers in the sport, and they are immersed in a silent battle to be number one on the US LPGA Tour at the end of the season -effectively the leading player in the world.<\/p>\n

At the moment, the war is intensifying and there are skirmishes every week, with advances and retreats on both sides. Leading the way, and fiercely defending her position, is the Korean-born New Zealander Lydia Ko. And challenging her with solid and accurate shots, Thailand\u2019s Ariya Jutanugarn. <\/p>\n

The state of the battlefield at the time of going to press was illuminating\u2026 Lydia was number one both on the LPGA Tour and in the world rankings; while Ariya was second on both lists. The New Zealander, who debuted on the tour in 2015 (while her main rival did so in 2016), had accumulated $2,424,950 in prizemoney, compared with $2,300,957 by the Thai, although the latter had competed in three more tournaments \u2013 albeit missing the cut in one of those (no doubt a cause of some displeasure, even if it was the only time so far this year). The Thai star had surpassed her colleague in number of victories: five to Lydia\u2019s four. <\/p>\n

Both won Grand Slam titles in 2016: Lydia the Ana Inspiration and Ariya the Women\u2019s British Open. In the Women\u2019s PGA Championship, the New Zealander was second and the Thai third. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lydia Ko, with four victories this year, and five-times champion Ariya Jutanugarn are engaged in a riveting battle at the top of the world rankings They are both indefatigable fighters, currently two of the most talented golfers in the sport, and they are immersed in a silent battle to be number one on the US […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[125],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21651\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}