A major breakthrough for Kim and other belated takeaways from the KPMG Women's PGA Championship at Aronimink

   The LPGA Tour had a major championship in Delaware County last month and none of this area’s rabid golf fans were allowed on the property.

   It’s been that kind of year with the coronavirus pandemic turning our lives upside down. But give the LPGA and the PGA of America, which became a partner in the event once known as the LPGA Championship five years ago, for putting on a good show in the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, even if the Donald Ross gem that is Aronimink Golf Club was little more than a spectacular studio in which the game’s most talented women golfers performed.

   The event turned into the coming-out party, at least as a major champion, for 27-year-old South Korean Sei Young Kim, who fired a brilliant final round of 7-under 63 to cruise to a five-shot victory over fellow South Korean Inbee Park, a three-time KPMG Women’s PGA Championship winner.

   Kim’s emergence as a major champion was starting to look inevitable. While her victory in the year-end CME Group Tour Championship a year ago – Kim rolled in a 25-footer for birdie on the final hole to beat Charley Hull by a shot – wasn’t a major, the $1.5 million she earned for the win was certainly major money.

   Late in my 20-year tenure at the Delaware County Daily Times, I got a chance to cover the AT&T National, which had a two-year run at Aronimink while its usual home, Congressional Country Club, held the 2011 U.S. Open.

   Justin Rose captured the AT&T National in 2010, something of a preview of bigger things to come as the Englishman would return to Delaware County three years later and claim the 2013 U.S. Open crown at Merion Golf Club’s iconic East Course. Nick Watney battled K.J. Choi down the stretch in 2011 with Watney earning a two-shot victory.

   The takeaway from those two events was that the people at Aronimink proved that they were eminently capable of staging a big golf tournament.

   I was back at Aronimink a couple of years later with all the grandstands and television towers out of the way to watch Merion’s Michael McDermott win the second of his three BMW Philadelphia Amateur crowns with a 5 and 4 victory over Alexander Hicks in the final. I gained an even greater appreciation for the golf course that week.

   When the AT&T National was held at Aronimink, the people at the club made no secret about their desire to bring a major championship to Newtown Square. Aronimink staged the 1962 PGA Championship won by Gary Player.

   After a star turn as the host of the BMW Championship, the PGA Tour playoffs’ penultimate event, two years ago, Aronimink got its major as it will host the 2026 PGA Championship, one of several major sporting events that will be coming to the Philadelphia area in the year when the United States celebrates its 250^th birthday.

   Part of the deal was that Aronimink would have to stage this year’s KPMG Women’s PGA Championship and those of us who enjoyed the LPGA Championship when it had an 11-year run at DuPont Country Club just over the Pennsylvania border in Delaware were looking forward to seeing the best players in women’s golf perform.

   It was in 1998 at DuPont when a relatively unknown South Korean, Se Ri Pak, claimed her first major championship. it set the stage for the remarkable domination of women’s golf by South Korean players. The 1-2 finish by Kim and Park at Aronimink is all the proof you need that South Korea’s run of success in the women’s game is ongoing. The South Korean women who have come after her never fail to heap praise on Pak as being the one who gave them the belief that they could compete at the game’s highest levels.

   The entire field struggled in the opening round at Aronimink last month as a swirling wind made club selection a guessing game. But Kim took control on the strength of a scintillating 29 on the front nine during Friday’s second round and she never looked back.

   It reminded me of the 2019 Pennsylvania Amateur Championship at Aronimink when Chris Tanabe, who’s a senior at Bucknell now, blitzed the front nine with a 7-under 28 -- including a hole-out for eagle that he never saw on the uphill, par-4 first hole -- that enabled him to take a lead he never surrendered on his way to the title.

   Kim ‘s front-nine 29 enabled her to fire a 5-under 65 and gave her the lead at the halfway point. Kim still held the lead following a 3-under 67 in the third round. And when Park, owner of seven major championship victories, made a run at her, Kim just poured it on down the stretch, her brilliant 63 giving her a 14-under 266 total and the $645,000 top prize.

   Early in 2020, the plan was for me to write a story on the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship defending champion Hannah Green for Joe Burkhardt’s Tri-State Golfer magazine. I was looking forward to that assignment because I had watched the then 19-year-old Australian just four years earlier playing in the quarterfinals of the U.S. Women’s Amateur at Rolling Green Golf Club, a hidden Delco gem designed by William Flynn not far from Aronimink.

   That interview became a casualty of the pandemic as the PGA of America looked for a new date for the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, which was originally scheduled to tee off in June.

   I’ve mentioned in some previous posts that the five-foot par putt that Green calmly sank to win the 2019 KPMG Women’s PGA Championship at Hazeltine National Golf Club in Chaska, Minn. might very well have had its roots in the four-footer she missed on the 18^th green at Rolling Green in 2016 that cost her a chance to close out France’s Mathilda Cappeliez, who went on to win the match on the 19^th hole.

   I’m sure I missed a couple of names, but by my count, Green is one of nine alums of the Women’s Amateur at Rolling Green who made the cut and played the weekend in the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship three years later.

   Heading that group was Japan’s Nasa Hataoka, who had a pretty nice Sunday stroll herself, firing a sparkling 6-under 64 in the final round to finish in a tie for third at 7-under 273, two shots behind Park.

   I got a chance to watch a lot of Hataoka’s 2 and 1 victory over former South Carolina standout Katelyn Dambaugh in the round of 16 at Rollling Green and came away very impressed with the 17-year-old who was planning to turn pro later that year.

   Hataoka nearly became the first major professional champion to emerge from the Rolling Green U.S. Women’s Amateur when she elbowed her way into a playoff in the 2018 KPMG Women’s PGA Championship at Kemper Lakes Golf Club with two South Korean major champions, Sung Hyun Park and So Yeon Ryu. Sung Hyun Park went on to win that title.

   Three members of an Alabama team that was the runnerup to Arizona in the 2018 NCAA Championship at Karsten Creek Golf Club in Stillwater, Okla., all of whom were also in the field at Rolling Green in 2016, teed it up at Aronimink.

   Lauren Stephenson earned herself a top-10 finish at Aronimink as a final-round 68 enabled her to end up in a tie for ninth place with an even-par 280 total. Her former Crimson Tide teammate, Cheyenne Knight, struggled a little in the final round with a 78 as she finished among the group tied for 69^th place at 13-over 293.

   The third member of that Alabama trio, Kristen Gillman, who won a U.S. Women’s Amateur two years before Rolling Green and a second one two years after Rolling Green, missed the cut at Aronimink, opening with a decent 74 in Thursday’s winds before struggling to a 76 in the second round for a 150 total. The cut fell at 6-over 146.

   I briefly caught a little of the second-round coverage from Aronimink when Green was in the midst of a clutch 4-under 66 that enabled her to make the cut after she had opened her title defense with a 79. A final round of 3-under 67 left Green in the group tied for 23^rd place at 4-over 284.

   Yealimi Noh was just 15 when she fell to Hataoka, 2-up, in an opening-round match at Rolling Green. A rising star on the LPGA Tour, Noh closed with a 73 to finish in the group tied for 33^rd place at 6-over 286 in the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship.

    One of the more interesting second-round matches at Rolling Green was between France’s Celine Boutier, a member of Duke’s 2014 NCAA Championship team, and Mexico’s Maria Fassi, who went on to win the NCAA individual crown as a senior at Arkansas in the spring of 2019, with Boutier pulling out a 2 and 1 win.

   Both played the weekend at Aronimink, Boutier finishing in the group tied for 37^th place at 7-over 287 with three straight 71s after an opening-round 74 and Fassi also closing with a 71 to land in the group tied for 54^th place at 10-over 290.

   Boutier was joined at 287 by another Rolling Green alum, former Southern California standout Robynn Ree, who saved her best for last, a final round of 1-under 69.

   Former UCLA star Patty Tavatanakit of Thailand finished alone in 74^th place at 299 at Aronimink. A rookie on the LPGA Tour, Tavatanakit was still a junior standout when she reached the round of 16 at Rolling Green before falling to Cappeliez on the 18^th hole.

   Another LPGA rookie, former Stanford standout Andrea Lee, missed the cut at Aronimink with a pair of 78s. Lee was one of the stars at Rolling Green, falling in the quarterfinals on the 18^th hole to eventual champion Eun Jeong Seong.

   One of the big pluses about the PGA of America’s involvement in the KPMG Women’s  PGA Championship has been the inclusion of some club pros in the field, in much the same way that the PGA Championship field carves out 20 spots for the top finishers in the PGA Professional Championship.

   Joanna Coe, an assistant director of instruction at Baltimore Country Club, failed to make the cut at Aronimink, carding rounds of 79 and 80. But Coe, a Mays Landing, N.J. native, returned to Aronimink the Saturday of tournament week to pick up a pretty nice piece of hardware.

   Coe, who captured an NCAA Division II individual crown as a collegiate standout at Rollins, was the inaugural recipient of the Omega Women’s PGA Professional Player of the Year award, which was presented to her by the Suzy Whaley, the PGA of America’s first female president.

   I looped for Coe in a one-day Pro-Partner at Stonewall’s Old Course a couple of years ago. She showed me a ton of game in firing a 3-over 73 the first time she laid eyes on the golf course. The PGA of America has really stepped up its game in the area of hiring and developing female club professionals in recent years and in Coe the organization has a perfect example of what a woman club pro brings to the table.

   Ellen Ceresko, a three-time PIAA qualifier at North Pocono who went on to be a collegiate standout at Penn State, was also in the field at Aronimink, registering rounds of 82 and 79 for a 161 total. From what I can gather, Ceresko is based in Naples, Fla. these days.

   Ceresko teamed with two of the best scholastic players in Delaware County history, Aurora Kan, the 2010 PIAA champion as  a senior at Chichester, and Brynn Walker, who won the PIAA Class AAA crown in 2014 and 2015 while at Radnor, on a Pennsylvania entry that finished third in the 2015 USGA Women’s State Team Championship at Dalhousie Golf Club in Cape Girardeau, Mo.