HONOLULU — Youmin Hwang won the LOTTE Championship on Saturday for her first victory in an LPGA Tour event, making a big late charge to run the season-opening streak without a repeat winner to 25 tournaments.<\/p>\n
A Korean LPGA member in the field on a sponsor invite, Hwang birdied the final four holes and five of the last six at breezy Hoakalei Country Club for a 5-under 67 and a one-shot victory over Hyo Joo Kim.<\/p>\n
As a non-member of the LPGA Tour, the 22-year-old Hwang has the option to accept immediate membership or defer to next season. The two-time KLPGA winner won in her sixth career LPGA start and fourth of the season — after making the weekend cuts in the major U.S. Women’s Open, KPMG Women’s PGA and Evian Championship.<\/p>\n
Tied for the lead with Kim and Minami Katsu after her birdie on the par-4 17th, Hwang got a break when Katsu and Kim each bogeyed the hole in the group behind. On the par-5 18th, Hwang hit her second shot through the green into rough and chipped to a foot.<\/p>\n
Hwang finished at 17-under 271. She shot a career-best 62 on Thursday to open a three-stroke lead, then had a 75 on Friday to drop into a tie for second — a shot behind Akie Iwai.<\/p>\n
Kim birdied the 18th for a 68.<\/p>\n
Katsu was third at 15 under after a 69.<\/p>\n
Second-ranked Nelly Korda<\/a> closed with a 69 for finish three back at 17 under with Peiyun Chien<\/a> (70), Jessica Porvasnik (70) and Iwai (71). Coming off a seven-victory season, Korda hasn’t won this year.<\/p>\n The LPGA Tour now heads to Asia for tournaments five straight weeks in Shanghai, South Korea, Malaysia and Japan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HONOLULU — Youmin Hwang won the LOTTE Championship on Saturday for her first victory in an LPGA Tour…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":190709,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-190708","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-golf","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190708\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/190709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}