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With Lydia Ko reaching LPGA Hall of Fame, pickings are slim for who will next achieve tough criteria

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1 month ago

August 16, 2024

For the first time in eight years, the golfer next in line to meet the LPGA Tour’s challenging criteria is no longer clear. When Inbee Park became the 34th member in 2016, there was little question that at some point, then-19-year-old Lydia Ko would be next. The teen phenom already demonstrated a dominant staying power, winning 12 times during a long run as the World No. 1.

With Ko completing her Olympic medal trifecta with gold in the Paris Games to earn her 27th and final needed point to enter the hall, it is quite possible that no one else may qualify under the LPGA’s current points structure.

The LPGA requires players to earn 27 points to be eligible for its Hall of Fame, with the number of points needed and ways to gain them changing over the years. Getting to 27 is a slog—players earn a point for a regular victory, winning the Player of the Year or Vare Trophy, or an Olympic gold medal. A major championship is a premium worth two. Players must also win a season-ending award or a major championship, a seemingly superfluous standard with how many points are needed.

The only active players within 10 points of the required 27 are Yani Tseng (23), Jin Young Ko (20), Stacy Lewis (19), Nelly Korda (17) and Ariya Jutanugarn (17). Only two of them have won over the last three seasons—Korda and Ko—and both have been injury-prone over their careers.

Korda, the current World No. 1, and past No. 1 Jin Young Ko have delivered two dominant multiple-point-earning seasons, a near-requisite to get to 27 points. Ko is a 15-time winner, including two majors and three season-ending awards. She earned 70 percent of her 20 points in two years—2019 and 2021.

Ko won four times in 2019, including two majors, and swept the season awards. In her six points from 2021, she ripped two points away from Korda during the CME Group Tour Championship. The pair were part of a four-way tie for the 54-hole lead, and Ko sprinted away with a Sunday 63, winning the tournament and overtaking Korda for the Player of the Year award to earn two points.