It’s been just under two months since the 2021 women’s golf season ended, with not a hole-in-one, triple bogey or bunker in sight since mid-November – but that’s all about to change as the 2022 season kicks off tomorrow.
The likes of Georgia Hall, Mel Reid, the Korda sisters and Lydia Ko will be descending on Florida to play in the first competition of the season, the Tournament of Champions, which has a prize fund of $1.2 million.
The LPGA calendar boats a massive 34 events throughout the year, including the five major competitions with the first one of the season being the Chevron Championship, hosted in California at the end of March.
Although there is a whole host of quality on the LPGA Tour, the stand-out favourite this year is world No 1 Nelly Korda.
Korda, who was recently named one of the top 10 highest-paid female athletes according to Forbes, had a successful year both on and off the tour last year as she won gold at the Tokyo Olympics and became the first American to win four times in an LPGA season, as well as winning the Women’s PGA Championship major.
Not only will she be looking to build on her success, but her sister Jessica Korda will also want to aim for the heights her sibling has got to.
J. Korda has won on the tour six times, just one behind Nelly, but she has never won a major.
Jessica, who is five years older than Nelly, sits at No 22 in the rankings so she’s got a lot of catching up to do but she could pull it out of the bag in 2022.
British star Georgia Hall MBE is also in contention to win events on the tour this year, even though the last time she won a major was back in 2018 when she claimed victory at the British Open.
But hopefully, Covid won’t disrupt this season’s schedule as much as it has done in previous years which means Hall will be able to keep up her consistency and win some trophies – and her trip to Dubai at the end of December no doubt helped her get some much-needed rest before the start of the new season.
The LPGA 2022 season gets underway from January 20 with the Tournament of Champions in Orlando, Florida.
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Words by Lucy Roberts for Female First, who you can follow on Twitter, @Lucy_Roberts_72.