Lilia Vu, right after winning the 2023 Women's Open major, became the first Vietnamese-American representative to hold the top spot in the history of the world professional golf rankings, considering both men and women.
On August 13, Vu, 25, won the 2023 Women's Open with a final score of -14, six strokes ahead of the runner-up. On the same day she won the second prestigious trophy of her career, she climbed to the top of the Rolex Rankings for professional women's golf, pushing her compatriot Nelly Korda to second place. This is the first time the Rolex Rankings have recorded two Americans as first and second place since its inception in 2006.
Lilia Vu lifts the Women's Open 2023 major championship trophy at Walton Health, Surrey, England on August 13. Photo: AP
"Being recognized as the best golfer in the world makes me crazy happy, especially when you compare it to the hard work I've been doing over the past few months," Vu told ESPN on August 14. She entered the 2023 LPGA Tour season in February, played five tournaments in the past two months, and finished in the top 15, including winning her first trophy on the top-ranked American women's golf course at the Honda LPGA Thailand.
Vu's second major came at the prestigious Chevron Championship in April. Winning that major propelled her to fourth in the Rolex Rankings. But then she went into a "rough patch" of seven tournaments and four cuts, with her best result being a 17th-place finish at a hole-in-one tournament in May. That run of results pushed Vu to sixth in the Rolex Rankings, before she shot to the top with her win at the Women's Open.
In the world professional golf rankings, the men's ranking (OWGR) was born in 1986, the women's ranking (Rolex Rankings) since 2006.
Both of these rankings, since their inception, have recorded a total of 45 Vietnamese-origin players, with notable faces, in addition to Vu who has just reached the top, including Brianna Do, an American citizen on the Rolex Rankings, Tran Le Duy Nhat and Truong Chi Quan, both Vietnamese citizens on the OWGR. However, in terms of their career-high positions, Do only reached rank 249 in 2018, Duy Nhat reached rank 644, and Chi Quan reached 1708.
Currently, Do is ranked 545th while Duy Nhat and Chi Quan are both outside the top 2000. Do was born in 1990 and entered the LPGA Tour eight years before Vu, but every season he struggles to keep his place.
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