GLADSTONE, New Jersey – Yoo Sun-young won the Sybase Match Play Championship for her first LPGA Tour victory, beating Angela Stanford, 3 and 1, Sunday at Hamilton Farm.
“My goal was to get past the first two days,” Yoo said. “I did a lot better.”
Yoo, the 23-year-old South Korean player in her fifth LPGA Tour season, is the LPGA Tour’s eighth straight foreign winner and 25th in the last 26 events.
Michelle Wie – in the Lorena Ochoa Invitational in November – is the lone US champion since Cristie Kerr won the Michelob Ultra Open a little over a year ago.
Yoo won the 13th and 14th holes with pars and took a 2-up lead with a 15-foot putt for her first birdie of the match on the par-3 16th.
The match ended on the par-4 17th when Stanford missed her birdie putt and conceded Yoo’s birdie. Losing semifinalists and fellow South Koreans Jiyai Shin and Amy Yang then rushed onto the green and showered the winner with water.