Sunday was one dramatic day for the LPGA Tour. All year their players vie for points in the Race to the CME Globe and it all came down to the last hole on the last day of the last tournament of the season.
It was all Mike Whan and his team could want and three of his biggest names all did their best to finish the season with one big bang.
Teenage sensation Lydia Ko and Inbee Park had battled all year for the top honors and it was all decided on this final stage. Cristie Kerr who is the epitome of hard fought doggedness shared the stage with those two as Kerr surged to the lead and took home the CME Group Tour Championship title.
There were winners all around.
Kerr’s dramatic eagle on the seventeenth sealed her win, her eighteenth LPGA victory and the with it a $500,000 check. It is Kerr’s eighteenth win in her eighteen years on tour and pushed her over the $17 million mark in career earnings.
Park who won five times this season finished in sixth place but her finish was good enough for her to claim the LPGA’s Vare Trophy which is awarded to the player with the lowest scoring average for the season. More importantly, the Vare Trophy comes with a point towards the LPGA Hall of Fame and that was the last point needed to give Park the twenty seven points needed to qualify for the hall. She has been on tour for nine seasons and when she completes her tenth next year she’ll be in the Hall of Fame. The LPGA’s is the toughest in all of sport to gain entry to and Park was thrilled to have earned that last point.
Ko, who three putted her last hole to fall one shot behind Park and finish in a tie for seventh still earned enough points to claim the season long CME Group title and the million dollar bonus. It is the second straight year that Ko has won the bonus and her finish also gave her the LPGA’s money title for 2015 with $2,800,802. And in her constant history making trend she has become another “youngest ever.” She is now the youngest ever Rolex Player of the Year at eighteen.
It was another successful week on the LPGA Tour with three big names making history. Mike Whan and his ladies know how to get things done.
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