Wire-to-wire: Hyo Joo Kim brings home the ultimate win at 2026 LPGA Fortinet Founders Cup

“Wire-to-wire” – the phrase denotes the ultimate victory, in which a competitor takes the lead from the starting gun and never relinquishes it, leading the field from start to finish. A wire-to-wire win is what Korea’s Hyo Joo Kim was chasing in Sunday’s final round of the LPGA’s Fortinet Founders Cup tournament – and it’s what she ultimately got, but not without a fight.

Korea’s Hyo Joo Kim went wire-to-wire to win the 2026 LPGA Fortinet Founders Cup tournament at Sharon Heights G&CC in Menlo Park, California (photo credit: LPGA, Getty)

Kim served notice on the 144-player field on Day 1 when she opened with a 9-under 63 on the par-72 Sharon Heights course. Only a handful of players were within five or even six shots of her first-round tally, and though she fell off of her pace slightly on Friday with a two-under 70, her third-round 66 kept her firmly in control of the lead going into the final round.

It wasn’t as if she went unchallenged, though. Current World No. 2 Nelly Korda stepped up her game in even 2-stroke increments over the first three days of the event, carding rounds of 70-68-66–204 on her way to solo second at the end of the third round, five strokes back of Kim’s 17-under 199.

It is in the normal order of things in a golf tournament for players to move up and fall back through the opening rounds, with everyone working to put themselves into position to either be defending a lead, or challenging for a lead, on Sunday. At this level, rounds in the mid- to high-60s are common, and to be in contention for the win on Sunday certainly three rounds of par or better is almost a iron-clad requirement.

Of the top 13 players coming into the final round today, none had carded a round lower than par, and the majority of their rounds were in the range from 68 to 70.

Kim’s first-round 63 was boosted by a remarkable 22 putts, the lowest total of the round and the tournament overall through three rounds – an impressive feat anywhere, but especially on the remarkably subtle (if not downright devious…) greens at Sharon Heights.

Several players had been making moves before Kim and Korda stepped onto the first tee box, but all of those moves were background noise to the main attraction: World # 2 Nelly Korda chasing down H.J. Kim and her five-stroke lead.

Korda slipped a bit with a bogey on the par-4 second hole, but followed it up with birdies on five of the next seven holes, making the turn in 32 and closing to within a stroke of Kim, who could manage no better than an even-par 36 with offsetting pairs of bogeys (holes 2 and 8) and birdies (holes 6 and 7.)

After the turn, Korda tied it up with a birdie on the 10th hole to Kim’s par, but the Korean got the lead back with a birdie at 11 after Korda made a clutch par putt after wedging it close from the front-right greenside bunker.

It was a seesaw battle over the remainder of the back nine, but Korda seemed to have lost the edge that had allowed her to make up a five-stroke deficit earlier in the round. The most crucial moments were her missed birdie putt on 16 after Kim left her par putt well short and pulled a shortie for par, and then a weak birdie-putt effort on 17 which fell well short, followed by a spectacularly poor par putt that slid by on the right.

At the final hole both players took on the right-side fairway bunker on the scenic uphill par-five, and both fell short, in the sand. Korda had better position, further back and away from the lip, so was able to advance her second shot farther, and had a wedge into the final green, while Kim, at 194 yards out, pulled a 4-hybrid for her approach.

Kim found sand again with her third shot, this time in a left-side greenside bunker – her first greenside bunker of the tournament – and then fired a nicely played wedge shot, relatively low and running, to about six feet past the hole.

Korda, in the meantime, even with a wedge in her hands from less than 100 yards, flew her approach well past the hole and didn’t get the roll-back that she was hoping for. When she failed to make the 30-odd foot birdie putt she effectively handed the win to Kim, who had two putts to win – and took them.

It was a valiant effort by World #2 Nelly Korda, and an edge-of-the-seat back nine for her fans – an exciting finish for this event’s first outing at a new venue. Word around the clubhouse is that the Founders Cup will be back at Sharon Heights G&CC for at least the next two years, which will be a treat for Bay Area golf fans who are already missing the now-defunct PGA Tour event at Silverado Country Club & Resort that we have enjoyed for the past several years.

Also on the schedule for the Bay Area is the Hanwha World Crown team event, which will pit eight teams from individual nations against each other in fourball, foursome, and singles matches. It was last held in the area in 2023 at TPC Harding Park; it will return in 2027 to be played at nearby Lake Merced Golf Club, the erstwhile home of the Swinging Skirts and then Mediheal LPGA events, 2014-2017/2018-2021.

First round at a new venue for the LPGA Founders Cup

The first competitive round on a new course is a unique experience, even for seasoned professional golfers, and today, on the first day of competition at the 2026 LPGA Founders Cup at Sharon Heights Golf & Country Club in Menlo Park, the ladies of the LPGA got their first taste of this classic Jack Fleming layout for real.

Korea’s Hyo Joo Kim leads after the first round of the
2026 LPGA Founders Cup with a 9-under 63 (Photo Credit LPGA/Getty)

Elevation changes are the name of the game on this 6,542-yard layout. Tucked into a hilly pocket of the Sharon Heights neighborhood in tony Menlo Park, CA, just up the road from the densest concentration of venture capital firms in the world, the course sits on 130 or so acres wrapped around two pockets of prime Bay Area residential property. If they gave names to the holes on this course the 407-yard par-4 first hole could easily be tagged “Black Diamond” for the 90-foot drop from tee to green; the 535-yard 10th hole has a maximum drop of 76 feet, with a long stretch of 25% slope mid-fairway, and similar profiles are found on the parallel sixth and 16th holes.

Bottom line: this course is a tough walk, and the caddies are really going to be earning their wages this week. On the plus side, the 18th hole, with a net rise of a little more than 60 feet over its 473-yard length, provides a sweeping end-of-round view as it rises back up to the upper level of the property, backdropped by the handsome Sharon Heights G&CC club house.

Weather – its always about the weather

As an outdoor game, golf is always affected by the weather. A month ago there was snow on the Bay Area hills as low as 1200 feet above sea level; now, in the final three days of the winter of 2025–2026 the San Francisco Bay Area, along with most of the western United States, is experiencing a record-setting heat wave. This week temps in the area hit the low to mid 90s, with 86ºF to 88ºF highs here at the course.

Early rounds today, with temperatures in the low 70s, saw seven players go out with scores of from five to three under par on both the front and back sides – but don’t think that this course is a pushover; scores as high as +7 were out there, too. As the day wore on the mercury rose, peaking at 88ºF around the time the TV coverage window opened at 3:00 PM.

Bay Area favorite has a rough day

Defending champion and Bay Area native Yealimi Noh, playing with current world #2 Nelly Korda and Japan’s Chisota Iwai, started her round at 12:48 p.m., teeing off at #1 just as the heat was tipping up into the low 80s. It was tolerable in the shade and when the occasional light breeze would waft by, but by the time the group got to the 9th green – a climb of 70+ feet with a long stretch of 10–12% grade – the temperature was 88ºF. The front nine here at Sharon Heights encompasses the greatest change in elevation on the course; the low point, in the 5th fairway about 100 yards short of the green, is 130 feet lower than the first tee.

Noh had her share of minor issues on the front nine, but was able to scramble her way out trouble – a tough lie in wood-chip landscaping short and right of the 5th green, and a deep lie in the rough left of the 7th fairway – to put together a clean-card front nine 36. She then opened her back nine with a birdie 4 on the 535-yard par-5 10th hole, a drop-away dogleg-right that turns hard about 230 yards from the tee, challenging players to hit a late-turning fade to catch the slope and run, bringing the possibility of a wedge or short-iron approach – and eagle – into play.

Unfortunately for Noh’s chances for a repeat victory, the birdie on #10 and a closing birdie on #18 bookended a string of three double-bogeys and a bogey on holes 12 through 15 and another bogey on 17, resulting in a final score of seven-over 79 which dropped her dozens of places down the leaderboard to a T140 finish for the first round. It will be a tough nut for the defending champion to crack to climb out of this hole and make it to the weekend.

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Among other players with connections to, or history in, the Bay Area, only Minjee Lee, who won the 2012 USGA Girls’ Junior Championship at Lake Merced Golf Club, and six years later battled Lydia Ko down the stretch in the Mediheal Championship on the same course (only to lose by a shot), made a strong showing, finishing the day today T8 with a 4-under 68.

Korea’s Hyo Joo Kim came out of the mix as the first-round leader, cementing her final-round 9-under 63 with a scorching birdie-eagle finish on holes 17 & 18. Dongeun Lee, also of Korea, tied down second place with a 7-under 65, and Polly Mack, a native of Berlin, Germany who played college golf at UNLV and Alabama, finished the day tied for third with Korea’s Jin Hee Im at 6-under.

In the final analysis, heat may have been a factor in the scoring today, as seven of the top 11 at the end of the day were players who started in the morning wave. Whether it was player fatigue from the heat or a change in conditions as the turf dried due to heat and low humidity there isn’t enough information to determine, but it will be worth watching the stats tomorrow, when the start times are switched, to see how this effect plays out.

The good news is that temperatures are forecast to be 10 to 12 degrees lower on the weekend for the players who survive these two first hot days to make the cut.

Tense times at the Solheim Cup after rules controversy

It just wouldn’t be a US–EU team competition, be it Ryder Cup or Solheim Cup, without a rules controversy. This stems in part from the heightened level of tension at these events—representing your country (or continent?) and all—and in part, I believe, from the participating players’ unfamiliarity with the rules of match play, which most of them rarely play.

The incident I am referring to occurred at the 13th hole of the Inverness Golf Club, during the afternoon four-ball match pitting Nelly Korda and Ally Ewing of the USA against Nanna Koerstz-Madsen and Madelene Sagström of the EU squad. Korda had an eagle putt to win the hole which curled up and stalled right at the edge of the hole. The American player sagged to her knees in disbelief, and before she even had time to get to her feet, Sagström rushed in and scooped up the ball, effectively conceding the tap-in birdie. Sounds straightforward, right? A no-brainer concession of a kick-in putt, right?

Wrong…

In accordance with a pre-match agreement between the two captains and rules officials, the official following each match has the right—and the responsibility—to step in and make a ruling even if not called in by a player, and that is exactly what happened. The official with the match felt that the ball was overhanging the lip of the hole, and invoked Rule 13.3a, which states that “…if any part of a player’s ball overhangs the lip of the hole, the player is allowed a reasonable time to reach the hole and ten more seconds to wait and see whether the ball will fall into the hole.”

The two Euro players contended that the ball was not overhanging the hole, and was obviously in a position such that it would not have fallen. Sagström was adamant that she would “…never pick up a putt that had a chance to go in.”

The problem is that whether or not it seemed obvious that the ball would not drop, since it was overhanging—which was confirmed by video review—Korda was entitled to the chance to get to the ball and wait 10 seconds just in case it did drop. Sagström deprived her of that chance, and in accordance with one of the quirkier rules of match play, the putt was considered holed for eagle. The win on the hole gave Korda and Ewing the lead in the match, which they never relinquished, going on to win 1-up over Sagström and Koerstz-Madsen.

Reactions to the controversy on social media, which broke mostly—but not exclusively—along lines of U.S. / European Union allegiance, included accusations of cheating; outrage that the American duo called in the official; and declarations that, in the interest of “fair play” and sportsmanship the Americans should have given back the point by conceding the next hole.

Let’s go through those reactions one by one:

Cheating

Who cheated?

The Americans? No—all Nelly did was to play her ball, and watch it narrowly miss dropping in for an eagle. Neither she nor her playing partner, Ally Ewing, called in the official—indeed, both of them were equal parts mystified and upset at the ruling.

The officials? No—the official with the match invoked a rule which, though perhaps somewhat obscure, is perfectly valid, and two other officials agreed that the ball had indeed been overhanging the lip of the hole, confirming the first official’s call.

The Europeans? Well… on the face of it, all that can be said of Madelene Sagström’s actions is that she unknowingly broke a rule by being so quick to pick up the ball in conceding the putt. Though Sagström contends that she picked the ball up in the certainty that it wasn’t going to fall, the glass-half-full crowd might say that she rushed in and picked up the ball so quickly because she was afraid that it would fall in for an eagle—whether in ignorance of the rule, or in the hope that no one else would recall the rule and apply it. That line of thinking is a little too conspiratorial for my taste; I think that she acted innocently, if in ignorance.

Outrage

This one is quickly put to bed, and would never have even been brought up by anyone who paid attention to the broadcast of the events. The match official acted on her own, in full accord with the pre-match agreement between the two team captains and the rules officials. The complainants who claim that this ruling would mean that you have to wait for any ball, anywhere on the green, to drop are both ignorant of the text of the rule and ridiculous. Those who claim that the ball clearly wasn’t overhanging are guilty of, at best, wishful thinking, and at worst, willful ignorance. The officials reviewed it, they ruled that the ball was overhanging the lip of the hole, and that therefore Sagström had broken Rule 13.3b when she picked up the ball—the result of which, in match play, is that the ball is treated as holed with the previous stroke, with no penalty to her opponent.

Concession

This is the most ingenuous reaction of them all—the contention, widely ballyhooed about, that Nelly Korda and Ally Ewing should have conceded the 14th hole in protest, or something, of the ruling on the 13th green.

Folks, the Solheim Cup is a competition—not a tea party, not a friendly weekend match among friends, but a serious competition between professional athletes, people whose raison d’être is winning. That is not to say that winning cannot be accomplished in a gracious, civilized manner—it can, and indeed should be—but there is no basis, even within the bounds of sportsmanship and fair play, to give a point back to your opponent which they lost through precipitate action in ignorance of the rules.

Pressing this point in social media discussions in the immediate aftermath of the ruling resulted in my being accused of being unsportsmanlike and having no sense of fair play. I was also told that I will never have another putt conceded to me for the rest of my life.

My response to all that is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

I don’t know if conceding the next hole would have been against the rules, but I am pretty sure that it would have earned Nelly Korda and Ally Ewing a stern talking-to from Captain Pat Hurst, and possibly from some of the co-captains, and the rest of the team. The ruling was odd, and unexpected, and possibly outside of the experience of the players involved, but it was correct.

To sum up…

The point of the rules of golf, even the complex, obtuse, or seemingly unnecessary ones, is to remove uncertainty. Many of the people who weighed in on this situation in the online discussions that I was witness to were adamant that Nelly Korda’s ball would never, never, have fallen in to the hole, and they are probably right. In the absence of a sudden wind gust, an earthquake, or an explosion nearby à la the closing scenes of Caddyshack, that ball would not have fallen into the hole for eagle.

But you can’t be absolutely, 100%, certain that it would not have fallen—and that’s where Rule 13.3a comes in. Nelly was allowed to take a reasonable time to get to the hole, wait ten seconds, and tap the ball in for birdie if it hadn’t fallen. Whether out of ignorance or malice, Madelene Sagström took that possibility, remote as it might have been, away from Nelly—and paid the price.

And I’ll bet she keeps her hands in her pockets, and away from her competitors’ golf balls, from now on…