The Blue Bay LPGA gets underway on Thursday in the People’s Republic of China at the Jian Lake Blue Bay Golf Course on Hainan Island. Five hundred points in the Race to the CME Globe will go to the champion, as will a $375,000 winner’s check, a couple of first-place prizes that would be nice for any athlete in the field to pocket early in the 2025 season. Three past champions are set to tee it up, including Gaby Lopez, Minjee Lee and Bailey Tardy, the last of whom became a Rolex First-Time Winner at this tournament in 2024, and they will have budding superstars Jeeno Thitikul and Ruoning Yin, as well as several major champions like Celine Boutier, Ayaka Furue and A Lim Kim competing alongside them.

Take a look at just a few of the featured groups this week at the Blue Bay LPGA using analytics provided by KPMG Performance Insights:

Thursday, 8:32 a.m.* – Ayaka Furue/Rio Takeda/A Lim Kim

Ayaka Furue has played every event so far during the 2025 season, and after collecting three straight top-25 finishes, the Japan native recorded her first top-three result of the year last week at the HSBC Women’s World Championship, finishing in a tie for second alongside Jeeno Thitikul in Singapore. The T2 was the 2024 Amundi Evian Championship winner’s first top-three performance since she tied for third last August at the ISPS HANDA Women’s Scottish Open at Dundonald Links and should serve as a great momentum booster for Furue as she sets her sights on the Blue Bay LPGA. This week marks Furue’s second time competing in this event, and in her tournament debut last season, she finished solo third after posting a four-day total of 14-under that included a 7-under 65 in the final round. According to data provided by KPMG Performance Insights, Furue ranked first in birdies or better (24), second in fairways hit (89.3 percent), fourth in strokes gained putting per round (1.64) and sixth in proximity to the hole (20 feet 7 inches) en route to that top three showing in 2024, a statistical performance she will need to recreate or better this year if she wants a shot at capturing her third career LPGA Tour title in China, something that’s definitely not out of the realm of possibility for the major champion at the Blue Bay LPGA.

Rio Takeda is one of 21 LPGA Tour rookies competing on Tour this season and is making her fifth consecutive start this week at the Blue Bay LPGA. The Japanese Tour winner has made her presence known early, already picking up two top-10 results after finishing solo eighth at the Hilton Grand Vacations Tournament of Champions and tying for ninth at the Honda LPGA Thailand. She also has one additional top-25 finish on her resume, a tie for 21st that came last week at the HSBC Women’s World Championship. Takeda earned LPGA Tour membership for this year after she won the 2024 TOTO Japan Classic and deferred the immediate status she would have received as part of her non-member victory to the 2025 season. That choice has proven to be a good one considering how solid of a start the rookie has gotten off to thus far, an early-year performance that has also translated to her statistics. According to KPMG Performance Insights, through the HBSC Women’s World Championship, Takeda is tied for fifth in strokes gained tee to green (+2.34) alongside Founders Cup winner Yealimi Noh and ranks ninth in strokes gained approach (+1.30). She is also tied for first with Ayaka Furue in sub-par rounds (12), tied for second in rounds in the 60s (8) and currently ranks seventh in greens in regulation, finding the putting surface with her approach shots 81.25 percent of the time. Takeda is leading the Louise Suggs Rolex Rookie of the Year race at the moment with 143 points, 44 points ahead of her fellow Japanese rookie Miyu Yamashita.

A Lim Kim has experienced a resurgence over the last several months on the LPGA Tour. She first joined the Tour after winning the 2020 U.S. Women’s Open as a non-member and accepting LPGA Tour membership for the 2021 season, remaining winless until she captured the LOTTE Championship presented by Hoakalei title last November. She then kicked off her 2025 season by teeing it up in the Hilton Grand Vacations Tournament of Champions, an event in which she had not appeared since 2022, winning at Lake Nona Golf and Country Club in wire-to-wire fashion to collect her second LPGA Tour title in a span of just 85 days. Kim has kept things rolling as the LPGA Tour traveled to Asia, coming solo sixth at the Honda LPGA Thailand and backing that up with a T7 showing at the HSBC Women’s World Championship in Singapore, the first time the Republic of Korea native has ever began a season with three straight top-10 results. Examining data provided by KPMG Performance Insights, Kim is currently ranked inside the top 25 of several strokes gained categories, including strokes gained around the green (2, +0.81), strokes gained off the tee (7, +0.82), strokes gained approach (21, +0.63) and strokes gained putting (23, +0.40). Much of her success in recent months can be attributed to that last statistic, as Kim lost strokes on the greens during both the 2023 and 2024 seasons and is now gaining 0.40 shots on the field with her flat stick, something at which she hopes to continue improving as she works to add more tallies to her win column in 2025.

Thursday, 8:43 a.m.* – Gaby Lopez/Bailey Tardy/Minjee Lee

Three past champions of the Blue Bay LPGA comprise group 18 at this year’s edition of the tournament, a trio that includes Gaby Lopez, Bailey Tardy and Minjee Lee. Lopez won the 2018 playing of the event by one shot over Ariya Jutanugarn to collect the first of her three career victories on the LPGA Tour. The Mexico native has won twice more since then, taking home the Hilton Grand Vacations Tournament of Champions title in 2020 and then winning the Dana Open in Sylvania, Ohio in 2022. This week marks Lopez’s fifth start in the Blue Bay LPGA, and along with her victory, she has earned three other top-25 finishes – tying for 18th in 2016, finishing solo 24th in 2017 and then tying for 12th in 2024. This is the 31-year-old’s fourth start of the season, and in her three previous events, she has made steady improvements, tying for 62nd in her first tournament of the year at the Founders Cup presented by U.S. Virgin Islands, tying for 33rd at the Honda LPGA Thailand and then earning her first top-five result of the year at the HSBC Women’s World Championship in Singapore with a T4 performance. Her tie for fourth last week at Sentosa Golf Club was the first time that Lopez had finished inside the top five on the LPGA Tour since she tied for third at The Amundi Evian Championship in 2023. Statistically, Lopez has yet to make too much of an impact so far in 2025, but she is currently tied for eighth in strokes gained driving (+0.81), according to KPMG Performance Insights.

Epson Tour alum Bailey Tardy broke through at the Blue Bay LPGA last year, earning her first career LPGA Tour title in the People’s Republic of China after defeating Sarah Schmelzel by four strokes at the Jian Lake Blue Bay Course. According to KPMG Performance Insights, it was her approach play and putting that lifted her to victory, as Tardy hit her last 11 greens in regulation, knocking eight of those approach shots to within 15 feet and making 99 feet of putts to go 7-under on those holes en route to a final-round 65. The win was one of three top 10s that Tardy collected in her second year as a Tour member, as she also picked up a pair of top-10 results in back-to-back starts at the Maybank Championship and The ANNIKA driven by Gainbridge at Pelican last fall, and the Georgia native is hoping to have another successful year in 2025, her third full season with the organization. She has gotten off to a bit of a quiet start in pursuit of that goal, however, making three cuts in her first four tournaments and only managing to record one top-25 finish thus far, a tie for 25th that came in Tardy’s tournament debut at the season-opening Hilton Grand Vacations Tournament of Champions. But the 28-year-old is hoping to kick things into high gear in her title defense this week in China, just her second appearance in this tournament.

Unlike her groupmates, the Blue Bay LPGA was Minjee Lee’s third career victory on the LPGA Tour, a win that she posted in 2016 after beating Jessica Korda by just one stroke at the Jian Lake Blue Bay Golf Course. The Australian has gone on to win seven more times since that triumph in the People’s Republic of China and has captured two major victories in that span, but she remains in search of her 11th career LPGA Tour title, as Lee hasn’t earned a victory on Tour since the 2023 BMW Ladies Championship. This week’s Blue Bay LPGA is the 28-year-old’s fourth start of the 2025 season, and after carding a 10-under 62 to finish in a tie for fourth in her first event of the year at the Hilton Grand Vacations Tournament of Champions, Lee has recorded a tie for 28th at the Founders Cup and tied for 11th at the HSBC Women’s World Championship in Singapore. She is teeing it up the Blue Bay LPGA for the fifth time this week and has never finished worse than T25 in this tournament, posting that result in 2017, tying for 14th in 2015 and tying for fourth in 2024. Statistically, there isn’t much to report from Lee at this juncture in the year, but she has made some serious improvement with her putting, as she is currently ranked third in strokes gained putting, a metric in which Lee was ranked 157th at the end of last season. Much of her newfound success on the greens can be attributed to a switch to a long putter that Lee made over the offseason, a change that has already paid dividends early in 2025.

Thursday, 1:13 p.m. – Jeeno Thitikul/Ruoning Yin/Celine Boutier

Jeeno Thitikul collected her 10th straight worldwide top 10 last week at the HSBC Women’s World Championship in Singapore, what was her ninth consecutive top-10 finish on the LPGA Tour. The Thailand native tied for second in just her second start of the year at Sentosa Golf Club’s Tanjong Course, an impressive follow-up to her solo third showing in her home country the week before at the Honda LPGA Thailand. It was the ninth time that Thitikul has been in the top 10 on the LPGA Tour since the 2024 FM Championship, and according to KPMG Performance Insights, in that span, the 22-year-old has the best scoring average of anyone on Tour (67.71) and is gaining 3.26 shots total on her fellow competitors, ranking first in that metric. She is also ranked first in strokes gained putting in that same timeframe, picking up an impressive 1.90 strokes with her flat stick. Substantial improvements to her approach play are another big part of the recent success she is enjoying, as Thitikul is currently ranked third in strokes gained approach (+1.57) on Tour this year, compared to finishing the 2023 and 2024 seasons at 28th and 24th in that metric, respectively. While it isn’t an LPGA Tour title, Thitikul does already have one victory on her 2025 resume, winning the PIF Saudi Ladies International on the Ladies European Tour in mid-February, what was her fifth career win on that circuit and a triumph that has clearly boosted the young superstar’s confidence early in the year. This is her first time playing in the Blue Bay LPGA, but the four-time LPGA Tour winner does have past Tour experience competing in China, playing in the 2024 Buick LPGA Shanghai at Qizhong Garden Golf Club, where she tied for fifth in her tournament debut.

People’s Republic of China native Ruoning Yin won the last time the LPGA Tour competed in her home country, taking home the 2024 Buick LPGA Shanghai title this past October, what was the second of three total victories the 22-year-old earned in 2024. She picked up her third career Tour victory alongside Thitikul at the Dow Championship last June, and then after winning at home, Yin captured her fifth title just a couple of weeks later at the Maybank Championship in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It was an incredible year that saw her finish fifth in the Race to the CME Globe and seventh on the Official Money List, and now, Yin is doing her best to build on that performance in 2025. She is still getting up to speed after tying for 26th and tying for 21st in her first two starts of the year at the Honda LPGA Thailand and the HSBC Women’s World Championship in Singapore, respectively, but there is nothing like a supportive local crowd to kickstart an athlete’s competitive drive. This week’s Blue Bay LPGA is only Yin’s second appearance ever in the event, and she will be working hard to improve upon the solo 59th finish she carded last year in her third tournament of the 2025 season. Statistically, Yin is still getting her feet under her at this point in the year, but according to KPMG Performance Insights, since the conclusion of the AIG Women’s Open in 2024, the five-time winner has the best greens in regulation percentage of any player on the LPGA Tour, finding the putting surface 81.3 percent of the time with her approach shots.

Celine Boutier has flown a bit under the radar so far in 2025, but the Frenchwoman has had a pretty strong start to the year thus far. She opened the season with a T14 showing at the Hilton Grand Vacations Tournament of Champions and then tied for seventh the following week at the Founders Cup presented by U.S. Virgin Islands. Her momentum slowed a bit across the Tour’s first two events in Asia, as she tied for 28th at the Honda LPGA Thailand and then tied for 29th at the HSBC Women’s World Championship last week in Singapore, but Boutier will be working hard to get things rolling this week at the Blue Bay LPGA as the Tour’s calendar ramps up at the end of March. This is the 31-year-old’s third time teeing it up at the Jian Lake Blue Bay Golf Course, and Boutier has fared pretty well in this event in the past, finishing solo third in 2018 and then tying for 12th in 2024, performances she would like to better this week in the People’s Republic of China. Even though her strokes gained data isn’t super prolific this early in the season, Boutier is ranked first on Tour in birdies (68), is tied for third in sub-par rounds (11) and is tied for seventh in rounds in the 60s (7) through the HSBC Women’s World Championship, a solid statistical start to her ninth season as an LPGA Tour member.

*Off No. 10

All times local. For a full list of tee times, please click here.

Featured Groups: 2025 Blue Bay LPGA

Related Articles