Rookie of the Year
And the Winner Is: Hae Ran Ryu
Hae Ran Ryu, still a teenager, destroyed the competition in 2020 in the KLPGA rookie race. Unlike in 2019, where the KLPGA saw multiple rookie winners, only Ryu was able to break through as a winner in 2020. That win came at the Jeju Samdasoo Masters in late July; it was a successful title defense of an event she won in 2019 before even joining the tour.
The event was star-packed in 2020, featuring among others recent Korea Women’s Open winner So Yeon Ryu, Hall of Famer Inbee Park, and world #1 Jin Young Ko. Hyo Joo Kim and Jeongeun Lee6 were other LPGA golfers in the field. But Ryu got off to an amazing start with a first round 65 to tie for the lead. She followed that with a 67 to take a one-shot lead, then a 67 to move to five shots ahead of Lee6. She finished the week with a 68 and a 23 under total, one of the lowest under par results in the history of the KLPGA tour. It was good for a three shot win over Hot Six.
Ryu had started her year with an 11th, and by late May just missed her first win of the season with a second at the E1 Charity Open. She had nine total top tens, including the win, three runner-up finishes, and a third. She wound up 2nd on the tour money list with about 628 million won earned. Only Hyo Joo Kim, normally an LPGA golfer, made more money in 2020 on the KLPGA. She was 6th in Player of the Year standings, and 6th in scoring average.
Ryu also played her first LPGA Major, the US Women’s Open in December, where she finished tied for 13th.
A fantastic rookie year all around for Hae Ran Ryu!
Other Nominees:
Yealimi Noh
As mentioned before, Yealimi had a solid rookie year on the LPGA. Had they awarded a Rookie of the Year award, she would have won it.
She didn’t win like Hae Ran Ryu did, but she did manage two top threes, including a tie for second at the Volunteers of America. Still just 19, she finished 25th on the money list with nearly half a million dollars earned in just 16 events.
Andrea Lee
Andrea Lee was a surprise Rookie star, especially at the start of the year. Late in the season, she tested positive for Covid and was forced to drop out of the US Women’s Open. She seems to have recovered just fine, as she played the following week at the CME.
Her best results were a tie for 5th at the Marathon Classic, and a tie for 7th at the AIG Women’s British Open. The 22-year-old, a Stanford graduate, finished 48th on the LPGA money list with around $242,000 earned.
Most Improved Player
And the Winner Is: Song Yi Ahn
Song Yi Ahn joined the KLPGA in 2010, but it wasn’t until 2012 when she earned enough money to maintain her tour card. She continued to play decently over the next few years, but though she had a few close calls, did not win her first event until the final event of 2019.
Afterwards, she told the press that she was planning on staying on tour until she won ten times. Given that it had taken her nearly a decade to get her first win, the idea that she would ever win nine more times seemed a bit farfetched.
But in 2020, Ahn has improved enough to earn our Most Improved Player award. Perhaps ten wins is not so crazy after all?
Ahn grabbed her second career win in late September at the Fantom Classic. She followed that up with several more top tens, including a fifth at the Hana Financial Group Championship. She then proved tough in defense of her ADT-Caps title; in fact, she held the second-round lead before she struggled to a 79 in the third and final round and fell out of the top ten.
Ahn made 250 million won in the short season, good for 15th on the money list. She also finished 15th in 2019, but if you consider that much of the money she earned that season came in her final event of that year, you can see that the past season + one event has been a major improvement in her game. She isn’t quite in the top ranks, but she’s getting closer!
Other Nominees:
Na Rin An
The ‘Breakthrough Player of the Year’ could also be considered as the most improved; after all, she went from zero wins before 2020 to two this season.
Da Been Heo
Da Been Heo joined the KLPGA as a teenager in 2017. Although she hasn’t had too much trouble maintaining a tour card, she really hadn’t done many impressive things in her first three years on tour. For instance, in 2019 she finished 50th on the money list, with a couple of top tens.
But she had a great leap forward in her career in 2020. That year she made over 200 million won in the shortened season, good for 18th on the money list, by far her career best. She had four top tens, including a 7th at the year’s first Major and a career best 2nd at the Fantom Classic (behind this category’s winner Song Yi Ahn in fact!). Even when she was not in contention, she often put together a good week. She only missed one cut all year, and had four additional top 20s.
Another sign of the heightened level of respect for her game: in 2020, she was featured in an SBS golf competition TV program for what I believe to be the first time in her career.
Player of the Year
And the Winner Is: Sei Young Kim
Sei Young Kim has for years been the secret weapon of the Koreans. She won a lot of tournaments, more than any golfer other than Inbee Park the past seven years, but she wasn’t winning Majors or the post season hardware. And she was not nearly as consistent as the big stars, producing more than her share of dud tournaments. So she tended to fly under the radar.
In 2020, however, she finally got past that roadblock, claiming her first career Major – the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship — with a record setting score and a five-shot margin. A few weeks later, she claimed a second win at the Pelican Women’s Championship, the 12th of her career. In all, she played nine LPGA events in 2020, had two wins, a runner up, two more top fives, a tie for 7th, and three more top twenties. Her WORST finish of the year was a tie for 20th at the US Women’s Open. She rose to second in the world rankings, best of her career, and finished second on the money list with $1.4 million earned. She also won the LPGA Player of the Year award for the first time in her career. She did not play enough rounds to qualify for the Vare Trophy, but her average was an astounding 68.69 strokes, close to the all-time best score ever achieved on the LPGA, and more than a stroke better than Danielle Kang, the player who actually won the Vare. Kim was #1 in Greens in Regulation (77.62%), first in putts/Greens (1.73), and first in rounds in the 60s and rounds under par.
Kim also played five events on the KLPGA before returning to the LPGA in late August. She had a 46th place finish in the first of these events, the KLPGA Championship, but other than that was always well within the top 20. Three of the finishes were top tens, including a playoff loss to Hyo Joo Kim at the Lotte Cantata; the remaining event was a 19th place. Other than Hyo Joo, she was the most consistent of the LPGA golfers who played in Korea in the summer.
For all those reasons, Kim thoroughly earned our Player of the Year award.
Other Nominees:
Hyo Joo Kim
Hyo Joo Kim is an LPGA star who, like Sei Young Kim, played on the KLPGA while the LPGA was out of action in the Spring and early Summer. But unlike Sei Young, Hyo Joo never returned to America this year. When she finished her KLPGA season, she simply stayed in her home country.
Part of the reason she did that was because she was having so much success in Korea. She wound up leading the KLPGA money list, making nearly 800 million won in just 15 events played. She started the year with a 4th at the KLPGA Championship, and two events later beat Sei Young Kim in a playoff to win the Lotte Cantata. She notched a second dominating win at the year’s final Major, the KB Financial Group Star Championship, which she won by 8 shots over Jin Young Ko in mid-October (see ‘Most Dominating Performance’ for more details). In all, she achieved 8 total top tens: those two wins, two seconds, two thirds and two fourths. Besides leading the money list, she also led the league in scoring: her 69.56 average was the lowest in tour history, beating the record previously held by Sung Hyun Park. She was second in the Player of the Year race, and even won the Most Popular award as chosen by the fans.
She finished the year in 9th place in the world rankings, which allowed her to bump Sung Hyun Park off the Olympic team for the time being (Park, now 10th in the rankings, is the fifth ranked Korean in the world, and only the top four will make the team).
I chose Sei Young Kim over Hyo Joo because Hyo Joo chose to limit herself to the KLPGA this year. With the way she was playing, she had a great chance to win or at least contend at the US Women’s Open or the CME Championship (provided she could have qualified for the event, which would have been hard). To be frank, she is too good a player to spend her time beating up on the KLPGA players. So even though she had a great year in her own right, it does not compare to what Sei Young Kim achieved on both sides of the Pacific in 2020.
Hye Jin Choi
Hye Jin Choi managed to win the Player of the Year award on the KLPGA for the third straight year, despite the constant presence of Hyo Joo Kim and many other LPGA players. Despite being the top player, wins were harder to come by for the young star in 2020. In fact, she did not get her first and only win on tour this year until the very last KLPGA event she played, the ADT-Caps.
Make no mistake about it, she might not have gotten as many wins as usual, but it was another great year for her. She did not finish outside the top ten until her 8th event of the season. She played 17 events and notched 15 top tens. The other two events were a 17th and a 33rd. Besides the win, she had a second tournament that she “won”, the S-OIL, that didn’t count because it was reduced to one round due to heavy rain. Surprisingly, she had no runner-up finishes and just two thirds, with the majority of her top tens in the 7th – 10th place range.
Besides her Player of the Year, she also finished 6th on the money list and third in scoring average with 70.17, more than half a stroke behind Hyo Joo Kim. So despite being consistent, it was a weaker-than-normal year for Choi in some ways.
Choi also played at the US Women’s Open in December, but she never contended, finishing tied for 30th.
Clearly, although it was another strong year for Choi, she just didn’t have the numbers to compete with Hyo Joo or Sei Young Kim for our Player of the Year honor.
Jin Young Ko
Jin Young Ko did not play enough to match the numbers we saw this year from Sei Young or Hyo Joo Kim, but when she did play, she was almost always great.
Her first action in Korea came in early May, when she played a special Skins Game against (then) World’s #2 Sung Hyun Park. The two stars split the money evenly, although Ko won two more skins than Park.
She focused on the KLPGA much of the year, although she only played six events and took several breaks in that stretch. She started poorly with a tie for 45th at the Lotte Cantata in early June. She finished 6th at her next event, the Korea Women’s Open. After a 20th at the Samdasoo Masters, she did not play again until mid-October, when she finished her KLPGA run with a third, a second and an 8th.
She came to the States in mid-November, playing her first event of the year at the Pelican Women’s Championship. She finished just tied for 34th there. But she turned it around massively in December. She contended at the Volunteers of America, finishing 5th, then came within one shot of forcing a playoff at the US Women’s Open, finishing tied for 2nd. In just three events, she accumulated enough points to qualify for the season-ending CME Group Tour Championship, which she would go on to win by five shots, destroying Sei Young Kim in an epic match-up of #1 vs. #2. This also gave her the LPGA money list title for the second straight year. Amazingly, she made the most money on tour in just four events played!
Ko spent the entire year at #1 in the world. She only had two bum events all year. But despite this, she just didn’t play enough to qualify for the Seoul Sisters Player of the Year award.