American Brittany Lincicome became the first winner of 2017 on the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) Tour, after she defeated fellow American Lexi Thompson yesterday, finishing with a birdie putt on the first hole of a sudden-death playoff at the Pure Silk-Bahamas LPGA Classic. The event wrapped up on Sunday at the One&Only Ocean Club's Tom Weiskopf-designed golf course on Paradise Island.
The win was Lincicome's seventh of her professional career, and her first victory on tour since the 2015 ANA Inspiration.
After three days of fair conditions on the greens, the golfers had to deal with several stalls in play yesterday due to a heavy downpour that soaked the ground and made an already difficult course that much tougher. Both Lincicome and Thompson were tied at 26-under par 266 after 72 holes, so the pair returned to the par five 18th for a playoff.
Lincicome birdied five of the first seven holes on the day. However, she stumbled with a bogey at 14, before turning in a respectable performance on the final four holes.
"On the last four or five holes in a tournament round, I just kind of clam up, and I'm not as aggressive and I don't make as many birdies," said Lincicome. "I knew that starting the day. I didn't know if weather was coming as well, so I knew I needed to make a lot of birdies early, and hopefully the last couple of holes I could hold on, which is kind of what happened today. It was pretty incredible. Just the leaderboard all week has been amazing, obviously a lot of Americans up at the top, obviously friends of mine, so to come down to the final stretch, it was an awesome day. I worked hard this offseason. It's awesome."
Thompson, who began the day tied for first with Stacy Lewis, birdied the first and par-4 fifth, but went birdie-bogey to close the front nine. She also bogeyed on 11 and 12 before shooting a birdie at the par-5 15th to lift her score to 26-under.
"This whole offseason, I swear I putted two and a half hours each day, it seemed like," Thompson said. "I was just doing non-stop putting drills just trying to get my confidence up, and it showed here. It's paying off. I'm going to keep working extremely hard and stay confident with it."
American Stacy Lewis finished third. She was one stroke behind her two countrywomen. The top five in the first LPGA tournament for the year were all from the United States.
"I mean, there's not much really I could have done better other than hit a better shot from the second shot, but other than that, I was telling Travis, we made 30-something birdies this week and playing some good golf, so I'm pretty happy with it."
Bahamian Georgette Rolle, who competed in the Pure Silk-Bahamas LPGA Classic for a fourth time, finished her final day of competition at four-over par, and missed the weekend cut.
There were 108 golfers who competed in the fifth annual classic at the One&Only Ocean Club on Paradise Island.
This year's classic offered a total purse of $1.4 million, plus a full allocation of points in the Race to the CME Globe season-long competition. The winner received $210,000 and 500 CME Globe points.
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