With the New Year's first "all-line event", the Gabridge Championship, taking place this week, the 2022 LPGA season kicked off in full swing.
This year's LPGA is particularly worthy of the attention of Chinese fans - in the "Priority List" announced at the beginning of the season, the names of 8 Chinese mainland girls appeared, setting a record high! Feng Shanshan, Lin Xiyu, Liu Yu, Liu Ruixin, He Muni, Yin Ruoning, Zhang Weiwei, Yan Jing - 8 five-star red flags fly high in the women's PGA Tour, symbolizing the highest level, making people full of expectations for the Chinese golf golden flowers in the Year of the Tiger!
Lin Xiyu, Liu Yu, Liu Ruixin and He Muni played in this week's LPGA
But these 8 girls, the number of participants in the new season, the level of participation, but there are obvious differences. For example, in this week's Gabritch Championship, only 4 Chinese mainland Jinhua were shortlisted - among them, there were neither the names of two LPGA newcomers Yin Ruoning and Zhang Weiwei, nor the figure of Feng Shanshan, Yan Jing and other "veterans" who had been fighting in the United States for many years. What's going on here?
Here, we have to first explain the so-called "player participation in the order", what is it?
However, in mainstream professional golf tournaments with scale, due to the large number of members, the scale of each tournament is limited, so it is necessary to rely on a clear list of participants to decide who can be ranked in the lineup and participate in the competition.
The "player entry order" is the LPGA's entry order list. An LPGA Tour with a promotion line, the player lineup is usually 120-144 people. Taking the 144-man tournament as an example, in addition to the 2 players in the Monday qualifying round, 2 sponsor wild card players, and the remaining 140 players, they must be determined according to the order of "player participation".
In layman's terms, it means that each player receives a number plate, according to 1, 2, 3... The order of the "numbering" is carried out.
If a player's entry order is 150, she must expect that the 10 players in front of her will not register before she can enter the lineup.
Conversely, if a player enters the top 80 in order, she can not only qualify for almost all LPGA ordinary events, but also small lineup events without promotion lines and invitational tournaments (such as the 81-man Shanghai Buick LPGA Championship).
In the 2022 edition of "Player Participation In Order", there are as many as 547 players in total, and the LPGA has divided everyone into 19 categories according to their achievements and qualifications. Among them, the top "Category 1" is the top 80 players in last season's CME Standings (LPGA's FedEx Cup Rankings). As mentioned above, these 80 masters, in addition to the LPGA Championship tournament, which was limited to 29 champions last week, and special events such as the five Grand Slams, which are independently qualified, the remaining tour schedules throughout the year can be freely arranged at will. In other words, they are the so-called LPGA "full card" players!
Three Chinese full-card players: Lin Xiyu, Feng Shanshan and Liu Yu
With some players enjoying injury protection policies and several "mom-level players" on maternity leave, the 2022 version of Category 1 actually has 83 people. Among them, there are 3 famous players we Chinese mainland - Feng Shanshan (rank 43), Lin Xiyu (55), and Liu Yu (58). Since it is a full card level, the vast majority of LPGA competitions this year, China Sanjiao can be elected to participate.
However, as she hinted at last year, after the National Games in September, Feng Shanshan has begun a new life plan, in addition to the possible resumption of the Shanghai Buick Championship in the motherland, it is not easy for us to see the figure of "China's first sister" in this year's LPGA field. This means that Lin Xiyu and Liu Yu will carry the PGA Tour of the five-star red flag and become the "boss of the family" in China at the level of the full card.
Liu Ruixin beat back the LPGA as a second-level graduate
After the 3 full-card golden flowers, the Chinese mainland player who participated in the next number card was Liu Ruixin, who was classified as "Category 9". Due to the 2021 Epson Tour (LPGA Level II, formerly known as the Semetrah Tour) year-end prize list is 5th, Shenzhen girl was shortlisted in category 9 of the "Top Ten Prize List of the Second Division", with a participation of 104, which is expected to rank 2/3 of the year, equivalent to a "quasi-full card". At this week's Gabritch Championship, she successfully qualified, but unfortunately failed to qualify by two strokes.
And He Muni, a Chengdu girl with "net red-level appearance", ranked "Category 11" in the new season LPGA, and the specific participation order was 130. Category 11 is specifically 81-100 in the LPGA standings last season – this is equivalent to the life and death line of the LPGA "card", because if you rank 101st, you will fall far away from "Category 15", in front of up to 45 LPGA-qualified school graduates! Fortunately, He Muni was just stuck in the 99th place in the CME standings last season, and the thrilling "guarantee card" was successful, holding on to category 11.
Wow the world of golf
With the big seeded players forcing out of every race, He Muni's 130th pick means that she is expected to qualify for 15-20 or so LPGA matches. This is also why, although this week's Gabritch Championship only has a 120-man lineup, He Muni is still on the list. The golf beauty also lived up to expectations, and after two rounds, T49 successfully advanced to the top of 2022!
According to the regulations, the 45 graduates of LPGA-qualified schools who finally stood out after eight rounds of cruel tests in the final stage were ranked in "Category 14". Among them, there are the names of two women's central tour champions Yin Ruoning and Zhang Weiwei, who are familiar to us.
Yin Ruoning almost entered the third class of the qualification school
Yin Ruoning was tied for 4th place in the qualification examination, so he won the 135th place. Relatively speaking, it is the "priority" among graduates, and it is also expected to qualify for 15-20 games. For example, this week's Gabritch Championship, Yin Ruoning can be ranked in the lineup, but because she herself has returned to China after the qualification examination and has just ended the long quarantine, the 19-year-old Kunming girl did not plan to participate in the LPGA event at the beginning of the season. It is expected that in early March, Yin Ruoning will leave for the United States to start his rookie season.
Zhang Weiwei is tied for 35th place in the qualification examination, and the ranking is only 173rd, and the specific number of games can be ranked depends on the faces of the players in front. However, the Hainan beauty has also returned to China and cannot participate in any ranking of LPGA, and it is expected that the journey to the United States will start again after the holiday.
Zhang Weiwei also has both appearance and strength
However, for Yin Ruoning and Zhang Weiwei, there is an opportunity to "change their fate" and improve their participation during the season - every year the LPGA has two "Reshuffle", in mid-May and the end of August, when players in categories 14-20 will enter "category 13" and re-rank as long as they earn season points – these players will obviously be ranked higher than the category 14 of the qualified school graduates, and will correspondingly get more "rewards" for the right to participate.
That is to say, if Zhang Weiwei seizes the opportunity of a limited number of games, plays a good score in the LPGA, and gets more points than Yin Ruoning, she can completely surpass the latter after the "qualification rearrangement" to get a higher ranking.
The "qualification rearrangement" also applies to Liu Ruixin and He Muni, if they can reach the top 80 of the CME standings during the season, they can be promoted to "Category 8" after the first or second "qualification rearrangement", and the participation in the top 100 or so in the ranking card, so as to enjoy the rights of full-card golfers!
Yan Jing regretted that she could not protect the card
Yan Jing, who has been competing in the LPGA since 2015, unfortunately failed to secure her card because she only ranked 112th in the CME standings last season; the school that transferred to the qualification was only tied for 53rd place, missing the top 45 threshold. The new season's entry order can only be classified as "Category 15" (101-125 in the standings last season), specifically 187th. That means she'll have a hard time qualifying for the vast majority of LPGA competitions in 2022. However, as a player who enjoys the full card of the Epson Tour, Yan Jing is still expected to pass the second division and keep the possibility of playing back to the LPGA.
The above is a detailed explanation of the participation of 8 Chinese mainland players in the new season of LPGA. In fact, not only Chinese mainland Jinhua, Chinese Taipei players in the 2022 "player participation in the ranking" list actually occupied as many as 9 people, also set a record high! Xu Weiling, Li Min, Zeng Yani, Gong Yiping, Qian Peiyun, Hou Yufu, Hou Yusang, Peng Jie, Cheng Sijia - the performance of these 9 treasure island girls is also worthy of the expectations of Chinese people around the world.
As for LPGA's previous Hong Kong "only seedling" Tiffany Chan, the card failed due to last season's CME standings ranking only 131st. Coupled with the regrettable half-way stop of the qualification school examination, the qualification ranking in the new season is only the 374th place in category 18, which has basically failed to qualify for the LPGA in 2022.
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