Yani Tseng’s 10-shot victory at the first major of the year, the Wegmans LPGA Championship, two weeks ago cemented her status as the world’s elite female golfer and drew comparisons with Tiger Woods in his prime, but it is this week’s US Women’s Open in Colorado Springs, which begins tomorrow, that Tseng has been targeting since the beginning of the year.
A win there and the 22-year-old would become the youngest player — man or woman — to win a career Grand Slam and further fuel talk of a “Woodsian” level of dominance of the women’s game, talk Tseng is eager to downplay.
“I feel like there’s a long way to go,” Tseng recently told the Orlando Sentinel. “After 10 years, maybe we can have the discussion ... All the great players that come on the tour now — if you have a couple of bad weeks, people are going to catch you.”
Yet her victory in the Wegmans LPGA Championship, making her the youngest golfer in history to collect four major titles, only highlighted a growing body of evidence that she has eclipsed her closest rivals.
Tseng has been ranked world No. 1 in women’s golf since winning the ANZ RACV Ladies Masters in Australia in February and in the latest world rankings her weighted points average of 14.52 was far ahead of Cristie Kerr’s 11.23 and Suzann Petersen’s 10.90.
Anything in double figures is considered exceptional.
At the same time, Tseng’s 69.31 scoring average in 10 LPGA events leads runner-up I.K. Kim of South Korea by nearly a full stroke and the 5.09 birdies she has averaged per round far surpass the number averaged by the next two players on the list — Kerr with 4.19 and Australia’s Karrie Webb with 3.79.
However, if any tournament has driven Tseng to despair it has been the US Women’s Open.
In her previous three appearances at the event she finished 42nd in 2008, missed the cut in 2009 and was 10th last year, a finish that looked better than it really was because of a final round 68.
Part of that may be Tseng’s lack of accuracy off the tee, which is usually more severely penalized by testing US Open course layouts. Tseng is ranked 83rd on the LPGA Tour in driving accuracy this year and that may be the part of her game that will be most watched this week.
However, considering her recent form, it seems almost impossible to believe she will not be in contention at Colorado Springs over the weekend.
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