{"id":439946,"date":"2026-01-31T01:35:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-31T01:35:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/439946\/"},"modified":"2026-01-31T01:35:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-31T01:35:11","slug":"lydia-ko-lottie-woad-share-lead-in-lpga-tours-opener","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/439946\/","title":{"rendered":"Lydia Ko, Lottie Woad share lead in LPGA Tour&#8217;s opener"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Jan 30, 2026, 07:37 PM ET<\/p>\n<p>ORLANDO, Fla. &#8212; Lake Nona member <a data-player-guid=\"12521dc3-67a0-4784-204c-dad6d159dcfd\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/golf\/player\/_\/id\/7956\/lydia-ko\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Lydia Ko<\/a> shot a 5-under 67 on Friday for a share of second-round lead with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/golf\/player\/_\/id\/5201229\/lottie-woad\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Lottie Woad<\/a> in the LPGA Tour&#8217;s season-opening Hilton Grand Vacations Tournament of Champions.<\/p>\n<p>Ko, the 2024 tournament winner and a Hilton Grand Vacations ambassador, is the lone player in the 39-woman field without a bogey after two days. The Hall of Famer has 23 LPGA Tour victories.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve had to hole some good par putts, but I really haven&#8217;t put myself in that many difficult positions as of yet,&#8221; said Ko, from New Zealand. &#8220;I think that&#8217;s why I had the two bogey-free rounds. I&#8217;m hoping to kind of continue that good momentum this weekend.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Woad shot a 69 to match Ko at 8-under 136 in mostly sunny conditions with 12 mph wind at the most in the 70-degree afternoon.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I looked at the leaderboard quite a lot today because I was getting annoyed,&#8221; Woad said. &#8220;Seemed like there weren&#8217;t that many low scores out there, so kind of knew I was still in it. The pins were probably a little trickier so weren&#8217;t as many birdies as yesterday.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The 22-year-old English player won the ISPS Handa Women&#8217;s Scottish Open last year, weeks after taking the KPMG Women&#8217;s Irish Open as an amateur on the Ladies European Tour.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/golf\/player\/_\/id\/10484\/nasa-hataoka\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Nasa Hataoka<\/a>, also a Lake Nona member, was a stroke back with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/golf\/player\/_\/id\/8807\/amy-yang\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Amy Yang<\/a>. Hataoka had a 71, and Yang shot 69.<\/p>\n<p>Defending champion <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/golf\/player\/_\/id\/4396037\/a-lim-kim\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">A Lim Kim<\/a> was 6 under after her second 69. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/golf\/player\/_\/id\/5141008\/youmin-hwang\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Youmin Hwang<\/a> (67) and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/golf\/player\/_\/id\/4569920\/ingrid-lindblad\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Ingrid Lindblad<\/a> (69) also were 6 under.<\/p>\n<p>Top-ranked <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/golf\/player\/_\/id\/10982\/jeeno-thitikul\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Jeeno Thitikul<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/golf\/player\/_\/id\/9012\/nelly-korda\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Nelly Korda<\/a> were 5 under. Thitkul had a 72, and Korda shot 71.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I think the weather is going to get a little worse so I&#8217;m going to go to the putting green, go to the range because wasn&#8217;t hitting it the best today,&#8221; Korda said. &#8220;Just going to figure some things out ahead of the weekend.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Baseball player <a data-player-guid=\"332c7dcb-a40c-d04f-6060-b3671cd20123\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/golf\/player\/_\/id\/251591\/aaron-hicks\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Aaron Hicks<\/a> topped the celebrity field.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jan 30, 2026, 07:37 PM ET ORLANDO, Fla. &#8212; Lake Nona member Lydia Ko shot a 5-under 67&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":439947,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-439946","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-golf","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=439946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439946\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/439947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=439946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=439946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=439946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}