US Women’s Open – 1st Round Marquee Groups

The US Women’s Open 1st round pairings are providing a bit of something for everybody. I’ve picked five marquee groups to watch – players who will set the pace for the Championship and give us a feel for how the best in the field are going to manage the challenges of the CordeValle track.

There’s not a drop of rain in the forecast, the daytime highs will be in the mid 80s and the humidity will hover right at 50% for all four rounds of the Championship.  In other words, it’s going to be perfect golf weather at CordeValle!

Fox Sports 1 will broadcast the 1st and 2nd rounds from 3-8pm ET. And if you can manage to sneak in some morning time on line, USGA.org is going to live stream both rounds as well: Thursday, July 7 and Friday, July 8, from 11am – 1pm ET.

I’m listing tee times for my five marquee groups as PDT(local time)/ET.

8:11/11:11 ET, off #10: So Yeon Ryu, Na Yeon Choi, Se Ri Pak

Se Ri Pak will start her farewell Championship with an honor guard of two other US Open champions – So Yeon Ryu (2011 at the Broadmoor) and Na Yeon Choi (2012 at Blackwolf Run).

It’s been 18 years since Se Ri Pak set off a firestorm of golf enthusiasm among young Korean girls with her 1998 US Women’s Open victory. Pak will begin her final US Women’s Open – she’s been granted a special exemption to play this year – in the company of two of the most successful of the “Korean Juggernaut” who followed her to the game.

Look for some good, solid golf from this group. They’re all skilled and savvy competitors. They’ll make few mistakes. They’ll play golf with no drama – well there was that unfortunate incident at the 2014 Evian when So Yeon Ryu damaged her putter. That anomaly aside, this group will show us what to expect from the demanding CordeValle track.

Could Pak inspire Ryu or Choi to another US Women’s Open championship? Although two younger Koreans, Sei Young Kim and Ha Na Jang, are more likely to take control of the leaderboard, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that Ryu or Choi could deliver the winning game at CordeValle!

8:28/11:28 ET, off #1: Ariya Jutanugarn, Minjee Lee, Jenny Shin

These three young 2016 champions all have winning games in their bags and are having solid seasons. While it’s tempting to expect that Ariya Jutanugarn will overpower Minjee Lee and Jenny Shin, that kind of thinking could be a mistake. Jutanugarn may have an advantage off the tee but Lee and Shin both have very competitive games. I’m looking for something close to match play from this group.

Neither Lee nor Shin can match Jutanugarn for length, but they’ll be more likely to stay out of trouble – and at CordeValle the trouble is likely to be big T.R.O.U.B.L.E.! Jutanugarn is more likely than Lee and Shin to give us a feel for just how big that trouble can get as we follow this group of young players who are hungry for a major championship victory.

More US Women’s Open Coverage

• Amateurs in the US Women’s Open Field
• The “Big Four” in the US Women’s Open Field
• The Challenge of CordeValle – What to Look for From the Top Players

8:39/11:39 ET, off #1: In Gee Chun, Stacy Lewis, Hannah O’Sullivan

This group is packed with storylines and potential drama. It’s going to be great fun to follow them.

How will Hannah O’Sullivan’s – my pick to take low amateur honors this year – top-flight amateur game hold up when she’s paired with two of golf’s best pros?  Defending US Women’s Open champion In Gee Chun and Stacy Lewis are certain to deliver 1st rounds worth watching.

Lewis is a seasoned competitor who’s coming to the 1st tee at CordeValle with 11 Tour victories on her resume, two of them major championships. Although she’s been in a two-year winless drought, I don’t think that’s going to continue much longer. Averaging 28.5 putts per round, Lewis has just delivered a final round tour de force performance at the Portland Classic. That number puts her ahead of all the competition coming into CordeValle. Her game is trending in the right direction at exactly the right moment.

O’Sullivan is certainly more experienced than most amateurs who play the Open, and she has her career path laid out, so this will be something of an audition for her.

The amateur aside, will Stacy Lewis dig deep and deliver the game I know she still has in her bag? Can In Gee Chun, who’s still on the hunt for a 2016 win, move from defending champion to two-time winner? Let’s see where things stand with this group when they sign their cards Thursday afternoon.

1:47pm (4:47 ET), off #1: Shanshan Feng, Brittany Lincicome, Ha Na Jang

Shanshan Feng and Brittany Lincicome are both major champions and Ha Na Jang is a rising star of the Tour. This group bears watching because all three players are sleepers coming in to CordeValle.

Feng and Lincicome both know how to manage the pressure of major championships and Jang, who is ranked higher than her playing partners, will be learning as she plays with these two very fine competitors. Let’s see what kinds of 1st round scores they card.

2:03pm (5:03 ET), off #10: Lexi Thompson, Brooke Henderson, and Lydia Ko

This is the group we’ve been waiting to watch! We’re all expecting these three young guns to set the golf course on fire! It’s golf, so the unthinkable double bogey is lurking out there somewhere, waiting to derail an otherwise breathtaking round. But for two reasons that kind of disaster is less likely with this group than with some of the others. First, they all have exceptional control over their clubs and as a result they tend to minimize their shot-making disasters; and second, they all have remarkable recovery shots in their bags. For fans, the fun could come from watching how they get out of trouble rather than how they got into it in the first place.

Most of the money this week is on Lydia Ko, and with good reason. The world No. 1 has made 13 Tour starts this year, finished inside the top 10 nine times, and won three of those events, including the year’s first major, the ANA Inspiration.

After what passes for a slump for Lydia Ko – she finished outside the top 10 a couple of times – her game is again trending in the right direction. The same can be said for Brooke Henderson, who will also be coming to CordeValle with a 2016 major championship – the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship – and a fresh win on her resume.

Lexi has been delivering a steady, consistently high-level game and I’m thinking that this pairing will work in a positive way for her. She’ll have Henderson to beat in tee to green play and then Ko to match once they’re on the putting surface.

As we get closer to tee time I’ll take a look at some of the sleepers in the US Women’s Open field this year – players who aren’t heavily favored to win but who have the potential to take command of the CordeValle leaderboard.

Cover Image via Flickr