While there are a host of great options for Rookie of the Year, this feels like a truly transcendent class, Rio Takeda from Japan has been too good and too consistent to ignore in 2025.
Takeda was a megastar on the JLPGA, winning eight times in 2024. Keep in mind that fellow Rookie of the Year candidates Miyu Yamashita, Chisato Iwai and Akie Iwai were also playing that tour last year.
The 22-year-old, who won as a non-member in 2024, has been as advertised in her first full year playing on the LPGA Tour. In 16 starts she has made 14 cuts, had six top-10 finishes and won the Blue Bay LPGA in China early this season.
Takeda tied for second at the U.S. Women’s Open, and if not for one disastrous lie that led to a double bogey early in her final round, she may have had a real chance of winning. She ran into similar issues at the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, where she worked her way into some bad positions that made her final finish look worse than most of the play on the course.
LPGA Tour color commentator Morgan Pressel recently said that she believed Takeda’s greatest, and maybe only weakness, is her tendency to get too aggressive. I couldn’t agree more with that assessment. The pure talent is unbelievable, potentially generational, and her ability to manage the course should grow.
The putter is inconsistent, sometimes it is magic, sometimes it takes her out of tournaments, but continuing to learn these courses will help with the future green reading. She does make sure to get out of holes with a two putt, she is No. 11 on Tour in two-putt percentage. Mixed with being second on the tour in greens in regulation, that combination will usually work.
Takeda leads the Tour in sub-par rounds with 38 already. She is No. 10 in strokes gained total and No. 3 in the CME Standings. She looks to be a future superstar on this Tour and at the moment, is the Rookie of the Year.
