After returning to Shanghai for the first time in four years. The LPGA continues its golf events in Asia with the BMW Ladies Championship at Seowon Hills at Seowon Valley Country Club in Gyeonggi-do, Republic of Korea.
BMW Ladies ChampionshipPicks
BMW Ladies Championship: Take the no. 1 ranked golfer in the world, Lilia Vu (+1400)
The tournament debuted in 2019, replacing the LPGA KEB Hana Bank Championship as the Korean stop on the Tour’s schedule. The four-day, 72-hole event is contested by a reduced field of 78 players and runs from October 19th through October 22nd with no cut and a $2.2 million dollar purse.
Lydia Ko is the defending champion of the tournament, picking up her second of three victories during the 2022 calendar year. Ko’s total score of 267 was good enough to finish four shots clear of Andrea Lee. The victory was Ko’s 10th of her career on the LPGA.
We preview this year’s tournament below and detail our BMW Ladies Championship prediction.
Seowon Hills at Seowon Valley Country Club
This will be the first year that Seowon Hills at Seowon Valley Country Club will host the BMW Ladies Championship. The course is located in the northern part of Gyeonggi-do, approximately an hour outside of the capital, Seoul. Seowon Hills opened as a nine-hole course in 2004, with an additional nine holes added to the property in 2012.
For the BMW Ladies Championship, the West and South courses have undergone renovations under the watch of golf course architect David Dale. The layout includes 86 new bunkers with three-dimensional shape, which is a new style for a Korean course.
The course is a par-72 that measures approximately 6,647 yards.
Time for the second tournament of the fall Asia swing!
It’s BMW Ladies Championship week in Korea! 🇰🇷 pic.twitter.com/0t8jyefEOP
— LPGA (@LPGA) October 16, 2023
BMW Ladies Championship Field
Before making any BMW Ladies Championship prediction, it is important to take a quick look at the field. The field is set for this week’s tournament. With 39 of the top 50 in the Rolex Women’s World Golf Rankings among the top contenders in action. Ko returns to Korea to defend her title and comes into the week ranked 5th in the Race to CME Globe standings.
Joining Ko are seven other golfers ranked inside the top 10 of the Race to CME Globe standings, highlighted by the no. 1 ranked player Lilia Vu. Vu is coming off a second-place finish at last week’s Buick LPGA Shanghai tournament.
Celine Boutier enters the week as the no. 2 ranked golfer in the standings and joins Vu as the only two players to win three times this season.
Boutier wasn’t in action last week but comes to Korea with six consecutive finishes of T22 or better and includes back-to-back victories at The Amundi Evian Championship and Women’s Scottish Open.
Other notables in the field are Jiyai Shin, So Yeon Ryu, Ruoning Yin, Allisen Corpuz, and Ayaka Furue.
The BMW Ladies Championship winners:
🏆 2019: Ha Na Jang
🏆 2021: Jin Young Ko
🏆 2022: Lydia Ko pic.twitter.com/54M1VNUf0V— LPGA (@LPGA) October 16, 2023
BMW Ladies Championship Prediction
There is always difficulty in predicting the winner of a golf tournament on a new course with no past golf stats to analyze. The best bet when finding BMW Ladies Championship picks is to focus on the players who come to Korea in the best form based on their recent play.
Looking at the pre-tournament odds, Atthaya Thitikul (+900) currently sits as the golfer with the best BMW Ladies Championship odds. Thitikul is 13th in the standings and has a T2 and T7 finish in two of her last three appearances.
However, our attention this week is on the no. 1 ranked golfer in the world, Lilia Vu (+1400). We feel that Vu is a valuable play this week, and our BMW Ladies Championship prediction to win the tournament.
She has shown this year, with a pair of major championship wins. That she can step up and battle against the world’s best women’s golfers at unfamiliar courses.
- BMW Ladies Championship: Take the no. 1 ranked golfer in the world, Lilia Vu (+1400)
