More than 1/4 of the winners on the LPGA Tour in 2025 have been rookies, the most recent being Miranda Wang from China, who played her college golf at Duke. Wang won the FM Championship in Boston by one stroke at -20.
Wang has shown promise in 2025 despite having less hype than the Japanese stars, Lottie Woad and Ingrid Lindblad. She finished top five at the Dow Championship alongside fellow Blue Devil Lindy Duncan and has posted three additional top-20 finishes. This week was something special though.
Wang’s putting was terrific all week, but it wasn’t flawless down the stretch. She had short misses on holes 12 and 16, plus she had a poor bunker shot on hole 15. A fantastic, easy birdie on 17 though put her into position to win, which she took advantage of with a safe par finish on the par 5 18.
The putting for Wang was really the story, with it being the dominant portion of her game, especially on Saturday. She had 30 putts Sunday but had just 107 for the week, a frankly absurd number. If that putting can stay strong, she should be a force the rest of the season.
World No. 1 Jeeno Thitikul was the closest finisher, just one stroke back. Thitikul was -5 on the front nine, and looked poised to get a comeback victory, but a sloppy bogey on 17 and a par on the final hole ended her chances.
Wang joins Rio Takeda, Ingrid Lindblad, Chisato Iwai, Akie Iwai, Lottie Woad and Miyu Yamashita as rookie winners on Tour. She also continues the streak of unique winners every week of the season.
The LPGA Tour is off next week before it returns to Cincinnati the second weekend of September.
