LPGA Rd. 1 Leaderboard
By Amy Rogers
HAMILTON TOWNSHIP, Ohio – There wasn’t a cloud in the sky as the first round of the Kroger Queen City Championship presented by P&G began its fourth edition on Thursday morning. And the players who went out in the early wave took advantage of the crisp and cool conditions before warmer temperatures and a light breeze arrived at TPC River’s Bend.
Chanettee Wannasaen teed off in the fifth group of the day and, with a freshly re-tooled swing, tied the tournament record set by defending champion Lydia Ko with a nine-under par round of 63. Wannasaen holds a two-stroke lead on day one ahead of Gigi Stoll, who carded the low round of the afternoon with a 65.
Wannasaen got off to a hot start with a bogey-free front nine of 33, but the real fireworks happened on the backside as she made the turn with an eagle at the 390 yard par four, 10th hole when she hit what she described as a perfect 9-iron that rolled up close to the pin and then dropped into the bottom of the cup.
Wannasaen took advantage of the par fives throughout her round and added another birdie at the 11th. At the par four, 17th hole, the Thai’s approach came to rest on the fringe 50 feet short of the hole, and she hit a bump-and-run-9-iron into the hole for her sixth birdie of the day. At the closing par five, Wannasaen once more took advantage of the scoring opportunity and went for the green in two. Her eagle putt from 40 feet above the hole slid by on the high side, but left her with a makeable birdie putt to match the tournament record at nine-under par.
Wannasaen’s round is a bright spot in what has otherwise been a tough run for the two-time LPGA Tour winner who has missed the cut in three of her last four starts. Since the AIG Women’s Open, she says she hasn’t been able to make clean contact with the ball. Unable to troubleshoot her own swing troubles, Wannasaen turned to Wichanee Meechai, a fellow Thai LPGA Tour member, along with her coach and caddie for guidance. Wannasaen says Meechai helped her make some changes with her stance, moving her nearer to the ball and with her feet closer together. To maintain that stance, Wannasaen has practiced on the range this week with an alignment rod. The improvement helped as she missed only two fairways and two greens on Thursday and needed only 26 putts.
“I’m just like hit the ball like better, so it’s really tough because like in Evian, in Portland, in Canada, and in Boston I just feel like I cannot hit the ball; really cannot hit the ball. So that made me lose confident,” Wannasaen said about her struggles in recent months. “But this week is pretty like earn more confident from today, so I just want to enjoy. Right now, just hit good. Just want to continue to hit like this until end of this year.”
Stoll threatened the lead for much of the afternoon as the second-year member went out in 33 and kept her momentum rolling on the inward nine by going birdie, eagle at the turn to jump with within three strokes of the lead. Her lone mistake of the day came at the par four, 17th hole where Stoll missed her only fairway of the day and then failed to get up and down from the greenside bunker. But Stoll recovered at the reachable par five, 18th hole to cap off her day with a closing birdie to record her career low round on the LPGA Tour.
“I feel like I’m maximizing my driver really well out here. Hit a lot of fairways,” said Stoll, who missed a single fairway on Thursday. “Just being able to attack with good hybrids and some longer clubs into those par-5s. I feel like I hit a lot of good shots into the par-5s which gave me some good looks.”
Like Wannasaen, Stoll has faced challenges with her game throughout the season and has put in extra work on her putting heading into this week’s Kroger Queen City Championship presented by P&G. While Stoll still needed 30 putts on Thursday, she felt like she was able to get more putts to drop on day one than she has in recent weeks.
“I feel like I’ve been striking the ball pretty well all year; just haven’t really capitalized on playing well by making putts,” Stoll said, having missed the cut in her last two starts. “I felt like today a lot of putts fell for me. I’ve just been working hard on it, so it’s good to see results.”
Major champions Sei Young Kim, A Lim Kim, and Patty Tavatanakit, along with Peiyun Chien, Kumkang Park, and Jenny Bae sit three strokes off the lead with opening rounds of six-under par.
Nelly Korda’s opening round of 67 put her in a pack at five-under par along with Bianca Pagdanganan, Gabi Ruffels, and Julia Lopez Ramirez. Korda began her day on the back nine and rallied from a tough opening stretch in which she went birdie-bogey-birdie-bogey on holes Nos. 11-14.
“My first birdie I hit a really great shot in; reachable par-5. Kind of let my iron loose out to the right and I didn’t make a five-footer for par. And then the next hole I made a longer putt and then the next hole I chunked a wedge into the bunker and it plugged, so that was great,” Korda said with a laugh. “That’s golf. I was hitting it good and I was putting really well, so I just stayed patient.”
Defending champion Lydia Ko carded a two-under par round of 70 on Thursday while world No.1 Jeeno Thitikul, who finished runner-up to Ko in 2024, opened with a round of 69.
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HAMILTON TOWNSHIP, Ohio – It’s been a year since Lydia Ko’s fairytale run saw her capture Olympic gold to earn her way into the LPGA Hall of Fame, win her third major at the AIG Women’s Open, and follow that up with another victory in her very next start at the Kroger Queen City Championship presented by P&G. The past 12 months have gone quickly for Ko, who says there are still times that she finds herself struggling to believe all that she has achieved in the last year.
“It’s crazy to think that even happened a year ago,” Ko said from the media center on Wednesday at TPC River’s Bend. “Time goes by so fast and maybe I wish I was playing more in that form then than now.”
That’s not to say Ko hasn’t enjoyed success this season on the LPGA Tour. Ko captured her 23rd career win in February at the HSBC Women’s World Championship and she returns to Ohio off of a top-5 finish in her last start at the CPKC Women’s Open, where she led the tour in strokes gained putting and had 35 one-putts over the course of 72-holes.
What did Ko find with her putter in Canada? She doesn’t exactly know. She says her putting “literally went out the window,” at the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship in June as she went on to miss the cut in her next two starts and whatever it was she discovered in Canada she said she was thrilled to have found and celebrated that with her team.
“I have no idea, but I was so excited that my putting was so good,” Ko said with a chuckle, unsure of what was behind her putting prowess in Canada. “I tried so many putters in the off week during that time that I was struggling to see maybe just something new would just change it up a little bit for me. But I realized that the gamer that I had was the one.”
But Ko went ahead and made a change anyway. Sort of.
Ko will put a new putter into competition at the Kroger Queen City Championship. But there’s nothing new about it Ko says, except the color. Ko had been searching for something new, or different, but had a lot of success with the Scotty Cameron she had been using off and on since 2022. So rather than make any technical adjustments, Ko simply changed the color, switching from a brown version of her trusty putter to a black version, which she will be using when play begins on Thursday.
“There is no technical reason behind it. I know black is a slimming color, but that’s about it. The putter head looks exactly the same. It’s built the same,” Ko said about her new flatstick. “I said, ‘yeah, so how about we just color it black so it’s something different.’”
Ko continues to feel the impacts of her remarkable run last season as she returns to Ohio as defending champion. In fact, it was just this week that she was able to formally thank members of her team who helped her win at the Paris Olympics.
Ko had been waiting for months for the arrival of the pin flags from Le Golf National, where she won Olympic gold, for her to sign and distribute to members of her support staff. In January, Ko’s team learned that they needed to order the flags while they were still in Paris, but they had immediately departed following Ko’s victory in order to make it to the LPGA Tour’s next stop in Scotland. In May, Ko’s team was able to connect with a member on the board of the International Golf Federation to get an order placed and to get 100 flags sent to the gold medalist. This week in Ohio, Ko was able to present those flags to some of the members of her team as a way of saying thank you.
While some of those same feelings from last year’s super stretch have carried over for Ko, much will be different too. With the Ohio valley receiving more rain than it did last year, the course is playing softer and longer than it did a year ago. Ko’s ball striking was an area she pointed to as a key to her success last season, which lifted her to a course record and final round of 63 at TPC RIver’s Bend. This season, Ko hasn’t been as pleased with her ball striking as she’s dropped from 81st to 124th in Driving Accuracy and is ranked 50th on Tour in Greens In Regulation. And Ko doesn’t expect that scores will be as low at this week’s Kroger Queen City Championship presented by P&G as she saw with her 23-under par winning total last season.
“It’s a game of inches and a couple shots here and there that can make a huge difference,” Ko said ahead of her title defense. “Yeah, hopefully be able to just keep building the momentum and see where that puts me at the end of the year.”
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Maria Fassi is finding joy again in golf and grateful for sponsor’s exemption
By Amy Rogers
HAMILTON TOWNSHIP, Ohio – A playful Maria Fassi is a happy Maria Fassi.
And while there hasn’t been much for Fassi to be thrilled about in recent seasons on the LPGA Tour, especially upon losing her full-time status on Tour in 2025, she says that over the last three months that she’s been having more fun on the golf course than she has in a long time.
“It’s just fun to kind of get back in that mindset. I truly do believe that for me that’s where I need to be. I need to be happy. I need to be playful,” Fassi said while meeting with the media on Wednesday at the Kroger Queen City Championship presented by P&G. “Getting back to that has been a very rocky road. I think I’m starting to see some of it pay off and maybe an easier road down the way.”
It’s all a part of a change in mindset for Fassi, who is trying to get back to playing the great golf she knows she’s capable of playing. And when she has doubted herself, Fassi has pointed to the support of her team and her sponsors for helping her continue to find the motivation to keep working on herself and her game.
For the next two weeks, it’s Fassi’s sponsors who are helping to lift her up as the Kroger Queen City Championship presented by P&G along with next week’s Walmart NW Arkansas Championship presented by P&G have each extended a sponsor’s invitation for Fassi to get into the field.
Fassi says she was nearly brought to tears when she got the call that she would get to return to TPC River’s Bend for the fourth edition of the Kroger Queen City Championship presented by P&G, where she picked up her best career finish with a tie for third in 2022 when the tournament was staged at Kenwood Country Club.
“I love this place so much, and it was amazing, like I said earlier, just to know there are so many people seeing something in me in a time where I’m searching for so much,” Fassi said about getting into the field this week. “It’s really a breath of fresh air to know that people see the work that I’ve put behind the scenes that people that know me a little bit better, [say] ‘hey you’re looking a little bit lighter and happier.’ To be honest, right now that’s all I care about.”
In June, upon receiving a sponsor’s exemption into the Meijer LPGA Classic, Fassi opened up about the soul searching she had been doing at the urging of her team over the last year. That’s what led her to take a hard look at her mindset, her attitude on the golf course, and how she was approaching her practice routine and schedule. Fassi started practicing with more purpose, rather than just hitting balls for hours without any real intention. And she started on a journey towards redeveloping her love of golf, despite the game having let her down in recent years as she’s struggled to find her footing in the professional ranks.
“It’s a very tough life, what we do. It’s lonely. It’s hard, especially when things aren’t going your way. Even though the golf hasn’t quite shown everything that I’m feeling, I’m just proud that I can make that little girl in me proud again,” Fassi said about the progress she’s made in improving her mental outlook. “For a little while there was very little to be proud of on the way I was behaving on the golf course, and just now that obviously like I’ve said, it’s a tougher year, you become a lot more grateful for those opportunities you do have.”
Fassi successfully Monday qualified to make her last LPGA Tour start at the CPKC Women’s Open where she was tied for 57th and made her third cut of the season. She’ll look to use that as a springboard to this week’s Kroger Queen City Championship presented by P&G, which is a Tour stop that has become one of her favorites as she’s come to love the Cincinnati area and its fans. And she’s eager to tackle what TPC River’s Bend serves up this week. Defending champion Lydia Ko and world No. 1 Jeeno Thitikul both pointed to the change in course conditions from last year, as the course is playing softer and longer than it did in 2024, and Fassi echoed a similar sentiment upon completing her nine hole pro-am on Wednesday.
“It’s kind of crazy how different the golf course is playing from last year to this year. You were hitting shots that would release 50, 60 yards last year to now, I mean, I’m getting backspin off the tee,” Fassi said about the course conditions. “It’s kind of an interesting change for this year, but just overall extremely thankful that I’m here and get another opportunity to tee it up against the best in the world and see what my game does.”
Fassi says she’s relishing the challenge to compete again at TPC River’s Bend, excited to think her way strategically around the golf course, and eager to use her length to her advantage to rack up what she hopes will be another top career finish. And that would make for a very happy Maria Fassi.
