Tour Cards On The Line At The LPGA Feeder League’s Championship

It has been a year since Epson took over the reigns as the title sponsor of the LPGA’s developmental tour, a role formerly held by Symetra. The final leaderboard of the season will print on Sunday when the Epson Tour Championship, played at LPGA International’s Jones course in Daytona Beach, Florida wraps up.

Over the past decade, the proving ground for the women’s top tour has seen its schedule swell from 15 events and $1.6 million in prize money to a 21-tournament tape with $4.41 million up for grabs. Epson played a part in the push to up the ante on purse size by raising the minimum tournament payout bar to the $200,000 threshold this season while simultaneously reducing player entry fees by 10%.

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“Our partnership with the LPGA presents a unique opportunity for Epson to empower future women leaders and entrepreneurs around the world,” Yasunori Ogawa, Global President of Epson, said.

“Epson is proud to support all the talented women golfers who competed on the Epson Tour in 2022. We would like to wish all the golfers good luck this week in the final tournament of the season – The Epson Tour Championship – as they race for the card and a chance to join the LPGA,” he added.

Women who finish the season in the top 10 on the Ascensus Race for the Card standings will graduate to the LPGA Tour. No. 1 Xiaowen Yin, who has banked $117,443 in earnings, has already clinched her ticket to the top circuit but she’ll still need to finish strong to also sew up the Epson Player of the Year honors, awarded to the circuit’s top annual earner. The door to the LPGA Tour has also swung wide open for No. 2 Lucy Li and No. 3 Linnea Strom, but the future of many other 2023 membership hopefuls hangs in the balance.

18-year-old Alexa Pano, a two-time Dustin Johnson World Junior Championship winner, currently sits precariously at No. 10 and will need to bring her A-game to gain status. The former junior golf phenomenon bypassed college to turn pro and has proven she can contend at this level. Pano has earned a pair of runner-up finishes in her rookie campaign on the Epson Tour as well as a third place showing at the Circling Raven Championship back in August, but in her last three events she’s been been flagging with only one top-30 finish.

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As for the women who do miss graduation, they can take some solace. The number of spaces to compete at the top of golf’s pay scale may be about to expand by exactly 48 positions. There has been increasing speculation of late that a Ladies LIV Series could be in the offing. LIV commissioner Greg Norman teased to the Aussie press that creating a women’s league is a tantalizing prospect of which he has given serious consideration.

“That’s always been in the forefront of my mind to be honest with you because I have been a staunch proponent of them,” Norman told the Australian dailies, the Herald and The Age.

“I’ve played with a lot of LPGA players over the years and I think their value has risen recently, there’s no question about it. If there’s an opportunity for us to have an open conversation and dialogue with women, I’m very much at the forefront of that,” he added.

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