NAPLES, Fla. – World No. 1 Inbee Park has won six tournaments this season, including three consecutive major championships, notched 10 top-10 finishes and has led the money list for most of the season.
In most any other year, she would have wrapped up the Player of the Year award in July. Yet Park only secured the Rolex Player of the Year honors last week with a tie for fourth place in the LPGA tour's penultimate tournament of the season, the Lorena Ochoa Invitational.
That it took Park so long to earn enough points to become the first player from South Korea to win LPGA player of the year honors surprised many in the golf world. Unfathomable earlier in the year that there would even be a race to the finish, Park struggled to maintain her edge.
Thanks to Suzann Pettersen and Stacy Lewis.
In forming the Big 3 in women's golf in 2013, Park, Pettersen and Lewis, the Nos. 1-2-3 in the world, respectively, may have laid to rest the days of a single player dominating the LPGA tour, the way Annika Sorenstam, Karrie Webb, Lorena Ochoa and Yani Tseng did over the last 20 years.
Between them, Park, Pettersen and Lewis have won 13 of the 27 events this year and accumulated 43 top-10s heading into this week's season-ending CME Titleholders at Tiburon Golf Club. The three combined to win all five majors. They are the top three on the money list and in the race for the Vare Trophy, given to the tour's lowest scorer.
But Park dominated the first half of the season. She won the first three major championships, a feat equaled only by Babe Zaharias in 1950. And she won six of the first 13 events.
"I played better than last year and I've achieved what I wanted to achieve," Park said Sunday in Mexico at the end of the Lorena Ochoa Invitational. "From now on, at least the race for the next Rolex Player of the Year is over. It is a good thing. There is just nothing to complain about this season. It's hard to believe that I actually had to play for the Rolex Player of the Year award until the second to last tournament after having six wins, including three majors. That just tells you how competitive it is out there. So it wasn't easy, nothing was given to me free."
After Park won the U.S. Women's Open, Pettersen and Lewis started making things difficult. Since missing the cut in the U.S. Women's Open, Pettersen has three wins, (including a major at the Evian championship, and finished in the top 10 in each of her last nine events. During that time, Lewis won a major, the Ricoh Women's British Open, and had eight of her tour-leading 18 top-10s in nine starts.
"With Inbee winning three majors early in the year, nobody thought it was even going to be a question of who was going to be Player of the Year," Pettersen said Tuesday. "From that aspect I thought it was quite neat to get into a position where I actually had a chance, even though it was very, very slim, at least had a chance with a miracle to become the Player of the Year. But winning three majors, you should be the Player of the Year."
So will the three remain the Big 3 in 2014? Pettersen's not buying into that kind of talk. The tour's depth continues to expand and now includes two teenagers – Lexi Thompson, 18, who has won two of the last four tournaments and moved to No. 10 in the world, and Lydia Ko, 16, who makes her professional debut this week as the No. 5 player in the world.
"I think the LPGA has a lot of great rivalries," Pettersen said. "I guess the three of us is one good one, but I think also the depth on this tour is now deeper than it's ever been. It takes a lot more to win week in and week out.
"If you look at majors won, it kind of represents the three of us, so from that aspect you can kind of call us the Big 3. But I think it's great to see new young girls coming out doing really well. Great to see Lexi win twice, great to have Lydia joining the tour. They're all great athletes; they bring the youth and the childish mentality out on this tour, especially for the older ones like me."
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