Lilia Vu wins LPGA consolation match for 3rd top-10 finish

Lilia Vu and Andrea Lee fell short of their first LPGA titles, but they did notch their best finishes ever at Shadow Creek.

Vu beat Lee 4 and 2 in the consolation match, giving the 24-year-old Californian her third top-10 finish on the LPGA Tour this season. For Lee, it is her second top-five finish in her past three starts.

Both said they were proud of their efforts during the week, but exhaustion was the overwhelming feeling.

“I think that I’m in a good place right now with my mental game and my golf game, and I’m just going to take the same energy over to the U.S. Open,” said Vu, whose only loss all week came Sunday morning in the semifinals to Ayaka Furue.

“It was a very solid week for me,” said Lee, a 23-year-old Stanford graduate. “I feel like my game is trending in the right direction. I’m just going to take all the good shots with me into next week.”

Captain’s duties

Stacy Lewis is wearing two hats this season, playing a full schedule on the LPGA Tour and starting the process in her duties as U.S. Solheim Cup captain for the 2023 team. That is adding a little bit more to an already busy schedule.

Lewis began this season with two top-10 finishes in the first full-field events in Florida. Since being named Solheim captain, her performance on the course hasn’t yielded anything close.

“It’s been busy. We’re kind of really getting into the thick of things now, working on clothes and bags and all kinds of stuff,” she said last week. “It’s a bit busy right now, but it’s been fun. We are trying to plan dinners and get the girls thinking about things. We’ve got a trip planned over to Spain in August to go check a few things out. We’re right in the middle of it.”

Lewis even did a little scouting of potential players this past week, with young Americans Emma Talley, Jennifer Kupcho and Lauren Stephenson in her pod. She then stayed around on the weekend and watched some of the other potential players like Vu, Lee and Allisen Corpuz play in the round of 16.

“The girls have really been responsive to it,” Lewis said of her early efforts at leading the team. “I’m looking forward to the next few months.”

12-for-12

Eun-Hee Ji’s win continued a streak on the LPGA Tour in 2022, making her the 12th different winner of the 12 events played.

Then again, anybody who made it to the knockout rounds would have continued the streak. No tournament winners from 2022 were among the final 16 players.

Greg Robertson covers golf for the Review-Journal. He can be reached at grobertson@reviewjournal.com.