Kim Hyo-joo takes individual title at Aramco Team Series

Kim Hyo-joo won the Aramco Team Series individual title at the New Korea Country Club in Goyang, Gyeonggi on Sunday with a 10-under-par, 206, after a wire-to-wire run, becoming the first golfer to claim an Aramco Series individual title in Korea

Kim Hyo-joo hits a shot during the Aramco Team Series at the New Korea Country Club in Goyang, Gyeonggi on Sunday. [ARAMCO TEAM SERIES]

Kim Hyo-joo won the Aramco Team Series individual title at the New Korea Country Club in Goyang, Gyeonggi on Sunday with a 10-under-par, 206, after a wire-to-wire run, becoming the first golfer to claim an Aramco Series individual title in Korea.

Team Kang — consisting of captain Danielle Kang, Lily May Humphreys, Tian Xiaolin and Lee Kyu-ho — earlier won the delayed team event with a final score of 23-under-par, 265. The event was halted on Saturday due to rain and ended on Sunday morning.

The team event followed the “two-from-four” format, where the two best scores on each hole are combined and used as the team’s score. The team with the fewest strokes wins the team event.

The three-day Aramco Series is a Ladies European Tour (LET) tournament that consists of two events: A two-day 36-hole stroke play team event in which each team competes for the team title and a three-day 54-hole stroke play individual event in which only pro golfers participate.

The two events are one and the same, with the 108 pro golfers playing alongside 36 amateur golfers in the team event, and the pro golfers' individual scores simultaneously being counted for the individual pro event.

Sunday’s final of the individual event included the top 60 and ties from the previous two days of golf.

While Kang won the team event, she failed to make the cut for the individual event after tying for 67th with a nine-over-par, 153, in the first two days.

Kim, meanwhile, started the individual event as a frontrunner on the back of a six-under-par, 138.

The 28-year-old displayed another impressive performance in the final round, carding a four-under-par, 68, with five birdies for a final score of 10-under-par, 206, to secure her first LET title in her first LET tournament.

She also became the first Korean golfer to claim the individual title in the series, which runs in multiple countries every year. The previous best finish by a Korean golfer was a runner-up finish by fellow LPGA golfer Ko Jin-young at the 2023 Hong Kong tournament.

Sunday’s victory is Kim’s first title since winning the Volunteers of America Classic on the LPGA Tour in October 2023. She has six LPGA wins to her name, including one major win at the Evian Championship in 2014.

Fellow LPGA golfer Charley Hull of England competed fiercely with Kim throughout the last round, narrowing the margin of strokes to one on the 11th hole.

Charley Hull hits a shot during the Aramco Team Series at the New Korea Country Club in Goyang, Gyeonggi on Sunday. [ARAMCO TEAM SERIES]

But Kim stretched the margin to two strokes with a birdie on the 14th hole and further extended it with two more birdies on the 16th and 17th holes, before carding a bogey on the last hole to seal a win.

For Hull, Sunday’s finish marked her fourth runner-up finish at the Aramco Series. Following a victory in the individual event of the series in New York in 2021, she managed three runner-up finishes in November 2021, July 2023 and March this year.

Hull last won a title in October 2022 at the Volunteers of America Classic on the LPGA Tour, where she has competed predominantly since 2015.

In this year’s team event, Hull managed a joint third-place finish alongside teammates Yang Hyo-jin, Felicity Johnson and Michele Thomson. Hull finished the team event as a runner-up in July 2023 and March this year.

Three more Aramco Series tournaments are scheduled this year, with the series heading to England in July, a yet-to-be-confirmed location in Asia in October and Saudi Arabia in November.

BY PAIK JI-HWAN [paik.jihwan@joongang.co.kr]