Mao Saigo, the 23-year-old from Japan, won the Louise Suggs Rookie of the Year Award over Korean Jin Hee Im at the CME Group Tour Championship.
Entering the final event of the year, the Rookie of the Year Award was one of the honors still up for grabs. The two players who mathematically could win it were Saigo and Im.
Im took herself out of contention early. Needing a top-five finish to at least have a chance at the award, she shot 70-75 over the first few rounds, taking her toward the bottom of the leaderboard. Saigo certainly wasn’t lighting the course up, starting 70-73-71, but the pressure was squarely on Im to post a good result.
Saigo did come back with her strongest round of the week Sunday, shooting a bogey-free 66 to get into the top 25.
Saigo is the first Rookie of the Year to not win an LPGA Tour event since Moriya Jutanugarn in 2013. She did it mostly through consistent play, making 24 cuts with seven top-10 finishes. Saigo had two top-10s in majors, at the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship and the AIG Women’s Open.
She now joins an elite group of players who have won since 2010, including Lydia Ko, In Gee Chun, Jin Young Ko, Atthaya Thitikul and Haeran Ryu. She continues the incredible year of Japanese women’s golf, and is the first player from the country to win Rookie of the Year since Hiromi Kobayashi in 1990.
