Youngest Winners of the Women's PGA Championship
And it was in the second year of being named "Women's PGA Championship" that an 18-year-old golfer won the tournament, setting the current record for youngest champion. (See also: Oldest winners of the Women's PGA Championship.) These are the youngest winners of the Women's PGA Championship:
1. Brooke Henderson, 2016, 18 years, 9 months, 2 days
Henderson won her first LPGA title in 2015 by eight strokes. The 2016 Women's PGA Championship was her second LPGA victory, but for this one she had to win a playoff against No. 1-ranked Lydia Ko. And Henderson did that with a birdie on the first sudden-death playoff hole.Henderson was just the second Canadian golfer to win an LPGA major championship, and the first in nearly 50 years. The Canadian golfer who first won a women's major appears below.
Henderson's first win in 2015 was in the Cambia Portland Classic, for which she had Monday qualified. At age 17, she was the LPGA's third-youngest winner and only its second to win after Monday qualifying.
2. Yani Tseng, 2008, 19 years, 4 months, 16 days
Yani Tseng, a 19-year-old tour rookie in 2008, also had to earn her victory in a playoff. Battling down the stretch with Annika Sorenstam, Lorena Ochoa and Maria Hjorth, Tseng carded a final-round 68.That tied her with Hjorth, with Sorenstam and Ochoa finishing one stroke behind. Tseng and Hjorth matched scores for the first three holes of the playoff. Then Tseng won it with a birdie on the fourth extra hole. It was her first career LPGA victory. She eventually won five majors.
3. Sandra Post, 1968, 20 years, 19 days
The first Canadian winner on the LPGA Tour was Sandra Post. And when, just a couple weeks past her 20th birthday, she won the 1968 LPGA Championship, she became the tour's youngest-ever major champion. That was a record Post held for nearly 40 years, until Morgan Pressel finally lowered the record by winning the 2007 Kraft Nabisco Championship at 18.Post's victory is very impressive considering she was going up against LPGA legend Kathy Whitworth. The two first matched 73s in the final round to finish tied. In the 18-hole playoff, Post scored 68 to Whitworth's 75.
4. Se Ri Pak, 1998, 20 years, 7 months, 19 days
Se Ri Pak's win at the 1998 U.S. Women's Open — where she won a 20-hole playoff to become, at the time, the youngest U.S. Women's Open winner — is the more-famous win of her rookie year on the LPGA Tour.But Pak's first LPGA win actually happened seven weeks earlier, in the LPGA Championship. Pak led wire-to-wire, winning by three strokes over runners-up Donna Andrews and Lisa Hackney. It was the first of five career women's major wins, and the first of 25 career wins in LPGA tournaments, for Pak. She remains the youngest golfer to win two LPGA majors in the same year.
Photo credit: Peter Kirkpatrick, photographer, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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