There was a bit of a finally feeling for Hyo Joo Kim on Sunday at The Ascendent LPGA. The 28-year-old from South Korea has had an impressive 2023 season, with eight top-10 finishes in 16 starts. But it wasn’t until signing for a Sunday 69 at Old American Golf Club in The Colony, Texas, that Kim was finally able to close out a win, the sixth of her career.
Fueled by an opening-round 64, Kim finished with a 13-under 271 total, four shots clear of runners-up Bianca Pagdanganan and Atthaya Thitikul and allowing her to become the third wire-to-wire winner on the LPGA in 2023.
With the victory, Kim earned her the $270,000 first-place prize money payout. It also allowed her to pass the $2 million mark in prize money for the season, the first time she’s done that in her nine years on the LPGA Tour. The most Kim has made in a single season on Tour is $1,533,497 in 2022.
The overall purse this week in Texas was $1.8 million. Here’s the prize money payout for every golfer who made the cut.
Lexi Thompson set to become seventh woman to play in PGA Tour event
Public The Old American Golf Club: Old American The Colony, TX 3.9 45 Panelists From Golf Digest Architecture Editor emeritus Ron Whitten: A decade after golf architect Tripp Davis created one of the finest replica courses in the country, The Tribute Golf Club on the shoreline of Lake Lewisville north of Dallas, he returned and built another 18 adjacent to it called Old American Golf Club. The two have same architect, the same owner, a shared clubhouse and a shared shoreline, but they differ in many respects. The Tribute, a compact core layout with returning nines, duplicates famous British golf holes. Old American, a residential development course laid out in loop design—nine holes out and nine holes back, to maximize holes along the lakefront—was inspired by National Golf Links and Shinnecock Hills, so it also looks linkslike, with some scattered trees. But there are no template holes on this 18. Old American is a Tripp Davis original. As befits a design by one of the more talented golfers among the golf architecture community, it features options and bunkers galore and holes that demand oodles of local knowledge. When it opened in 2010, Tripp told a reporter that Old American was, “the most strategic course I’ve done.” Now over a decade later, I suspect he still feels that way. I say that because, in advance of my first round on the course, Tripp sent me his handwritten guide on how to analyze and play each hole. This was no ordinary yardage book with generic advice like, “Par is a good score on this hole.” No, his opus runs for 49 pages! When I later saw Tripp, I joked that it took me almost as long to read his course guide as it did to play his course. As a quick example, I’ll briefly summarize a just a bit of Tripp’s description of Old American’s par-4 eighth hole, a dogleg-left with the approach shot over a ravine. Tripp’s hole diagram and narrative read like a caddie whispering into your ear. “The green has nine distinct pin locations in four basic areas of the green,” Tripp writes. One of those areas is “…middle back, a shallow section high in the middle, falling to the back but most sharply to the front…” This green is uniquely challenging, he says, because everyone will probably be playing a short iron into it. He then proceeds to suggest how to play to each distinct pin position, plotting your tactics from the tee. So, for example, to reach that middle back area, “…staying short left in the fairway is best…Use the slope in the fairway to work the ball to the left [on the ground]…Better to miss long [into the chipping area] rather than short when pins are back of the middle of the green. But “…If your tee shot is well to the right or too far down the fairway, the green gets very shallow and you should favor a line just left of these pins. Don’t miss long right…” Oh, if I only had enough command of my game to be able to follow Tripp’s detailed instructions. Old American Golf Club is the consummate shot-maker’s course, to be sure, with lots of doglegs, target bunkers, carry bunkers, cross bunkers, penal bunkers and buffer bunkers, so much sand that it approaches the point of being monothematic. When I first played Old American, I did so with my old buddy, golf architect Jeff Brauer. Brauer had previously toured the course with Tripp, and said Tripp pointed out to him that every green has a knob or mound in the middle because Justin Leonard, the former British Open champion who served as his design partner on the project, told him that the only thing that screws up good tour pros are double-breaking putts. So Old American’s greens has lots of double-breaking putts. In fact, I’m pretty sure there are double-breaking putts on every hole. As I said, almost monothematic. View Course
Win: Hyo Joo Kim, -13, $270,000
T-2: Bianca Pagdanganan, -9, $143,411
T-2: Atthaya Thitikul, -9, $143,411
4: Sarah Kemp, -8, $93,286
5: Lexi Thompson, -7, $75,085
6: Cheyenne Knight, -6, $61,433
T-7: Katherine Muzi, -5, $45,658
T-7: Leona Maguire, -5, $45,658
T-7: So Yeon Ryu, -5, $45,658
T-10: Jodi Ewart Shadoff, -4, $34,280
T-10: Sarah Schmelzel, -4, $34,280
T-10: Frida Kinhult, -4, $34,280
T-13: Sarah Jane Smith, -3, $28,092
T-13: Yuna Nishimura, -3, $28,092
T-13: Celine Boutier, -3, $28,092
T-16: Ally Ewing, -2, $22,753
T-16: Marina Alex, -2, $22,753
T-16: Lindsey Weaver-Wright, -2, $22,753
T-16: Sofia Garcia, -2, $22,753
T-16: Nicole Broch Estrup, -2, $22,753
T-21: Xiaowen Yin, -1, $19,477
T-21: Weiwei Zhang, -1, $19,477
T-21: Wei-Ling Hsu, -1, $19,477
T-24: Jeongeun Lee6, E, $16,746
T-24: Jenny Shin, E, $16,746
T-24: Yu-Sang Hou, E, $16,746
T-24: Dottie Ardina, E, $16,746
T-24: Maria Torres, E, $16,746
T-29: Minami Katsu, +1, $14,562
T-29: Eun-Hee Ji, +1, $14,562
T-31: A Lim Kim, +2, $11,945
T-31: Aline Krauter, +2, $11,945
T-31: Hannah Green, +2, $11,945
T-31: Maria Fassi, +2, $11,945
T-31: Cydney Clanton, + 2, $11,945
T-31: Azahara Munoz, +2, $11,945
T-31: Gerina Mendoza, +2, $11,945
T-31: Mariajo Uribe, +2, $11,945
T-39: Ana Belac, +3, $8,750
T-39: Min Lee, +3, $8,750
T-39: Lucy Li, +3, $8,750
T-39: Jaravee Boonchant, +3, $8,750
T-39: Yealimi Noh, +3, $8,750
T-39: Ruixin Liu, +3, $8,750
T-39: Jing Yan, +3, $8,750
T-46: Hyo Joon Jang, +4, $7,190
T-46: Gemma Dryburgh, +4, $7,190
T-46: Annie Park, +4, $7,190
T-49: Karis Davidson, +5, $6,207
T-49: Lauren Stephenson, +5, $6,207
T-49: Amelia Lewis, +5, $6,207
T-49: Louise Ridderstrom, +5, $6,207
T-49: Charley Hull, +5, $6,207
T-54: Chanettee Wannasaen, +6, $5,279
T-54: Maddie Szeryk, +6, $5,279
T-54: Pavarisa Yoktuan, +6, $5,279
T-54: Jennifer Chang, +6, $5,279
T-54: Emily Kristine Pedersen, +6, $5,279
T-59: Luna Sobron Galmes, +7, $4,642
T-59: Kiira Riihijarvi, +7, $4,642
61: Gabriella Then, +8, $4,460
T-62: Caroline Inglis, +9, $4,278
T-62: Albane Valenzuela, +9, $4,278
T-62: Dewi Weber, +9, $4,278
T-65: Lauren Miller, +10, $4,050
T-65: Wichanee Meechai, +10, $4,050
T-67: Brittany Lang, +11, $3,777
T-67: Polly Mack, +11, $3,777
T-67: Pornanong Phatlum, +11, $3,777
T-67: Su Oh, +11, $3,777
71: Paula Creamer, +12, $3,596
72: Jeongeun Lee5, +14, $3,549
73: Ilhee Lee, +16, $3,503
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
