LPGA/AJGA Mizuho Americas Open

[sjmcampbell]

Coming up at the beginning of June (June 1-4) will be the LPGA Mizuho Americas Open at Liberty National Golf Club in Jersey City with a purse of $2.75 million (one of the largest non-major purses) and a limited field of 120 players.

Entries: https://www.lpga.com/tournaments/miz...nament-entries
Brooke and Maude-Aimee are in the field, while Maddie is 19th reserve. If there is a reshuffle before then, Maddie may get into the field.

What makes this tournament interesting is that the AJGA (American Junior Golf Association) is holding a girls invitational at the same time on the same course. Apparently they will play from different tees and in separate groups from the LPGA players on Thursday and Friday and then the LPGA players are cut to 50 and paired with AJGA players (no cut) for the weekend. They have said that they will try to get all the juniors on the telecast at some point.

The AJGA players (including five Canadian girls) will be playing their own invitational tournament using Modified Stableford rules, with players encouraged to pick up after double-bogey.

Double-bogey 0 points
Bogey 1 point
Par 2 points
Birdie 3 points
Eagle 5 points
Double-Eagle 8 points.

Because it allows for pickup after double-bogey, the Junior Golf Scoreboard will not be ranking it, but the AJGA ranking will treat it as an invitational (worth the top amount of points).

The AJGA tournament has includes almost all of the top 24 on the AJGA rankings.

https://www.ajga.org/rankings/girls

AJGA Tournament field: https://www.ajga.org/tournaments/202...cas-open/field
Top juniors that have recently being playing LPGA events include Anna Davis (2024) and Gianna Clemente (2026).

The field of 24 includes several Canadian juniors:
#7 Vanessa Borovilos of Toronto, ON (2024)
#14 Vanessa Zhang of Vancouver, BC (2024)
#16 Lauren Kim of Surrey, BC (2023)
#22 Michelle Liu of Vancouver, BC (2024)
#24 Luna Lu of Burnaby, BC (2025)

As well, Michelle Liu and Vanessa Borovilos are on Team Canada with Yeji Kwon that recently qualified for the Toyoto Junior Golf World Cup in Japan in the middle of June.

Some articles:
https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.co...ront/golf.aspx
https://www.lpga.com/news/2023/new-l...entary-lodging
https://golf.com/news/mizuho-america...nal-new-event/

[sjmcampbell]

Brooke and Maude-Aimee are in the field, while Maddie is 19th reserve. If there is a reshuffle before then, Maddie may get into the field.

There was a reshuffle and Maddie is now in the field along with Brooke and Maude-Aimee.

AJGA Tournament field: https://www.ajga.org/tournaments/202...cas-open/field
Top juniors that have recently being playing LPGA events include Anna Davis (2024) and Gianna Clemente (2026).

The field of 24 includes several Canadian juniors:
#7 Vanessa Borovilos of Toronto, ON (2024)
#14 Vanessa Zhang of Vancouver, BC (2024)
#16 Lauren Kim of Surrey, BC (2023)
#22 Michelle Liu of Vancouver, BC (2024)
#24 Luna Lu of Burnaby, BC (2025)

As well, Michelle Liu and Vanessa Borovilos are on Team Canada with Yeji Kwon that recently qualified for the Toyoto Junior Golf World Cup in Japan in the middle of June.

Some news on the some of the juniors mentioned above:

Vanessa Borovilos (with partner Cara Heisterkamp from Ohio) reached the quarter finals of the US Women's Four Ball this week.
https://championships.usga.org/uswom...3/scoring.html

Vanessa/Cara defeated Anna Davis (and her partner Kiera Romero) in the Round of 16 but was defeated in the quarter finals by Gianna Clemente (and her partner Avery Zweig) who ended up winning the whole thing. However, reaching the quarters means that Vanessa and Cara will be exempt as a team into next year's US Women's Four Ball.

Michelle Liu was also in the event, but failed to make it to match play.

Also, Lauren Kim qualified for the US Women's Open this week at the Canadian qualifier in B.C. Vanessa Zhang is first alternate.
( https://www.golfcanada.ca/articles/g...-in-vancouver/ )

[Mr22putt]

#14 Vanessa Zhang of Vancouver, BC (2024)
#16 Lauren Kim of Surrey, BC (2023)
#22 Michelle Liu of Vancouver, BC (2024)
#24 Luna Lu of Burnaby, BC (2025)

I have seen all 4 golfers hit the golf ball at some time, including seeing 3 above at this week's USWO qualifier at VGC.

Michelle in 2019 won the Cdn Women's Am as a 12 year old and also played the CWO at Magna GC.

[sjmcampbell]

#1 Amateur Rose Zhang has announced that she is turning professional and will play as a sponsors invite at the Mizuho Americas Open.

She has also being given exemptions into the US Womens Open and the AIG Womens Open.

She has won 12 of her 20 NCAA starts and 8 out of 10 this year and has been World #1 since September of 2020.

https://www.golfchannel.com/news/too-good-rose-zhang-turns-pro-capping-goat-amateur-career

https://theathletic.com/4555255/2023/05/26/rose-zhang-womens-golf-pro/

https://www.axios.com/2023/05/26/rose-zhang-womens-golf-history-ncaa-champion

https://www.espn.com/golf/story/_/id/37733928/stanford-women-golf-star-rose-zhang-turns-professional

Nelly Korda will not be playing due to back pain.

https://www.lpga.com/news/2023/nelly-korda-will-not-play-mizuho-americas-open

[sjmcampbell]

Tee times have been announced. Here is the list of when the Canadian will be starting. TV for Thursday and Friday are 11am to 2pm.

Thursday times/Friday times (* starts on 10th) https://www.ajga.org/tournaments/202...open/tee-times

AJGA
9:05am/2:16pm* -- Yana Wilson, Katie Li, Jaclyn Laha
9:05am*/2:16pm -- Leigh Chien, Macy Pate, Jasmine Koo
9:16am/2:05pm* -- Michelle Liu, Siuue Wu, Ashleen Kaur
9:16am*/2:05pm -- Luna Lu, Anna Song, Sara Im
2:05pm/9:16am* -- Lauren Kim, Angela Zhang, Thanana Kotchasanmanee
2:05pm*/9:16am -- Vanessa Borovilos, Anna Davis, Kiara Romero
2:16pm/9:05am* -- Vanessa Zhang, Elizabeth Rudisill, Gracie McGovern
2:16pm*/9:05am Gianna Clement, Rianne Malixi, Alice Ziyi Zhao

LPGA
7:37am/ Maddie Szeryk, Elizabeth Szokol, Sung Hyun Park
8:43am*/ Maude-Aimee Leblanc, Esther Henseleit, Annie Park
1:21pm*/ Brooke Henderson, Attaya Thitikul, Charley Hull

It is interesting that they paired Vanessa Borovilos with Anna Davis and Kiara Romero. Anna and Kiara were partners in the recent US Women's Four Ball and were defeated in the round of 16 by Vanessa and her partner Cara Heisterkamp, six holes to five.

From Adam Stanley (@adam_stanley): https://twitter.com/adam_stanley/sta...08964733599744

Special week @LPGA, with the Mizuho Americas Open concurrently hosting an @AJGAGolf event. Five Canadians in that. Can confirm that one up-and-coming Canadian youngster, Vanessa Borovilos (won @DriveChipPutt in 2018), played a practice round with Brooke Henderson on Monday.

[4wedges]

I like the tournament concept, having the juniors play along, so to speak, with the pros. Good for the LPGA for coming up with the event.

[sjmcampbell]

The AJGA players get paired up with two LPGA players each today, according to scores. Unfortunately, not all the AJGA players finished their rounds yesterday, and will be finishing up their last couple of holes starting at 8:15am. This means that most of the AJGA players don't know who they will be paired with yet.

Michelle Liu is currently in T2.

The first AJGA-LPGA pairings start at 10:17am, with the final group off at 2:30pm.

TV starts at 5pm today.

Yana Wilson is leading the AJGA so will likely be in the final group with Minjee Lee and Cheyenne Knight. But there are a bunch of AJGA players tied for second: Michelle Liu, Gianne Clemente and Sara Im. They are looking at pairings with Lydia Ko/Jin Young Ko or Brooke Henderson/Rose Zhang or Atthaya Thitikul/Aditi Ashok. Some of them are going to be featured groups on TV too.

LPGA Pairings: https://www.lpga.com/tournaments/miz...-open/pairings
LPGA Leaderboard: https://www.lpga.com/tournaments/miz...en/leaderboard
AJGA Leaderboard: https://www.lpga.com/tournaments/miz...n/ajga-juniors

[4wedges]

It's great to see Brooke on the leaderboard halfway through. Hopefully she can keep it up over the weekend.
Have to believe the kids, while obviously focusing on their event, will be nervous, being paired with a pro, as part of an actual LPGA tournament.

[Bellyhungry]

Rose Zhang just become a legend in winning her pro debut.

[unskinnybop99]

Rose Zhang just become a legend in winning her pro debut.

Glad I saw this. As a big fan of sports, this is a rare occurrence in any individual sport.

[4wedges]

Glad I saw this. As a big fan of sports, this is a rare occurrence in any individual sport.

It is an incredible feat. Hopefully this is just the start of something great.

[sjmcampbell]

Rose Zhang just become a legend in winning her pro debut.

I just looked her up on the Rolex Rankings: https://www.rolexrankings.com/players/8786

In 13 LPGA events since 2018, Rose has been in the top 20 once (T11 at the 2020 ANA Inspiration). So it is not like a win was a sure thing for her.

Although it does appear from her amateur stats ( https://www.wagr.com/playerprofile/rose-zhang-24000 ) that her game has really gone over the top in the past year (10 wins over 12 events since last fall) and she hadn't played any LPGA events since last year.

She accepted immediate LPGA membership so will now be eligible for the Solheim Cup, although apparently the next couple of weeks are going to be busy with exams and moving out of her dorm and all the normal things a new LPGA players has to deal with.

[Lionworld]

While Rose’s win is impressive, I would think the LPGA, and the players must be a little embarrassed. The LPGA is always touting its tour telling the public how talented the players are, and a college student wins the first tournament she plays in.

[Ignatius Reilly]

While Rose’s win is impressive, I would think the LPGA, and the players must be a little embarrassed. The LPGA is always touting its tour telling the public how talented the players are, and a college student wins the first tournament she plays in.

Either that or she's REALLY good!

She's 20 years old.

I remember a 20 year old kid winning The Masters by 12 strokes in his first year as a pro. That's a Major!

Didn't mean the PGAT was weak or should be embarrassed. (Did it?)

Anyways, good for Rose. The question is will she be able to keep it up, or will she be another Lexi?

[Bellyhungry]

One thing that stood out for me was that many junior golfers ran onto the green to congratulate/celebrate with Rose. They see her as 'one of their own.'

That was really special. A magical moment that can not be scripted.