MIDLAND, Mich. – The playoff was the same. The opponents were the same. The outcome was the same. For the second consecutive year at the Dow Championship, Somi Lee stood over an eight-foot putt on the par-3 18th at Midland Country Club with everything on the line – and drained it.
Lee and Jin Hee Im successfully defended their title Sunday at the LPGA Tour’s only team event, beating Lexi Thompson and Megan Khang in a sudden-death playoff to finish at 20-under-par 260 and claim the Dow Championship for the second straight year. It is the first back-to-back title in the event’s seven-year history, and the fact that it came against identical opponents, at an identical score, in an identical playoff format, borders on the surreal.
“I can’t believe it,” Lee said after her winning putt fell. Im, who had described them last year as “the best team ever,” had no reason to reconsider.
The South Koreans had entered the final round at Midland Country Club trailing after three rounds, with Hye-Jin Choi and Hyo Joo Kim holding a one-stroke advantage at 10-under through 54 holes. But Sunday’s four-ball format – best ball, the more forgiving of the two alternating styles – opened the tournament wide. Lee and Im shot a bogey-free 62, highlighted by eight birdies, to surge into contention.
Thompson and Khang, who entered the day three shots back, were even more aggressive. The American duo posted a 10-under 60 earlier in the afternoon, becoming the first to reach 20-under, and for a moment it looked as though Thompson would finally end a winless drought stretching back to the ShopRite LPGA Classic in 2019. She has been playing a limited schedule since stepping back from full-time competition, and the Dow was only her eighth event of the year. Khang’s putting had been the engine all week; together, they were formidable.
Lee and Im birdied the 17th to pull level, then narrowly missed their own birdie chance on the 18th that would have ended it in regulation. The playoff, contested under foursomes – alternate shot – went to the same par-3 18th where the title had been decided twelve months earlier.
Thompson found the green again, putting her team within striking distance. Im’s tee shot finished closer but left the decisive putt – around eight feet – to Lee. Khang, who needed to hole her birdie attempt to extend the playoff, pushed it wide. Lee made hers. The Dow Championship belonged to South Korea once more.
The result was particularly pointed for Thompson, who is 0-for-7 in LPGA Tour playoffs across her career. Her last victory came seven years ago, and a partnership with Khang – one of the steadiest ball-strikers on tour – had briefly looked like the pairing that would end the drought. “Megan played some amazing golf this week,” Thompson said after the loss. “It’s just great to be alongside her.”
Tied for third at 18-under were Miranda Wang and Lindy Duncan, who closed with a 59 in the four-ball format, and the European team of Pauline Roussin-Bouchard of France and Belgium’s Manon De Roey, who shot a 64. Albane Valenzuela and Sarah Schmelzel, who had led after 54 holes, could not hold on in the final round. Nelly Korda, the world number one who arrived in Michigan as the most decorated player in the field after winning both the Chevron Championship and the U.S. Women’s Open this season, struggled alongside Germany’s Olivia Cowan and could not factor into the final-day mix.
For Lee and Im, the victory deepens a story that had seemed complete last June. Both are in their third year on the LPGA Tour and now own two titles apiece in America, added to the combined eleven wins they accumulated before leaving the KLPGA. They did not just defend. They repeated a playoff, against the same opponents, in the same format, in the same location – and kept the trophy that no team had ever held twice before. The next question at Midland Country Club, whenever it is asked, will be whether they can do it again.
The Dow Championship – which carries a $3.3 million purse and distributes 410 CME Globe points to the winning team – remains the only official team event on the LPGA Tour, a format the circuit introduced in 2019 at the same Midland Country Club where it now hosts its most decorated back-to-back champions. The event’s structure – alternating rounds of foursomes and four-ball across four days – demands not just individual quality but synchrony, and Lee and Im appear to have cracked a code their peers have not.
Juli Inkster, the 65-year-old World Golf Hall of Famer, made the cut alongside partner Angel Yin and finished the week in the top 20, a performance that will renew conversation about where exactly age ends and excellence begins on tour. She had come within one stroke of becoming the oldest player to make an LPGA cut at the Standard Portland Classic last summer; at Midland, she went further. It was one of the quieter footnotes of a tournament that ended as loudly as any in its brief history.
The question now is what Lee and Im do with the momentum. The LPGA’s major championship season continues through the summer, and both players – who came to the American tour without the marquee profile of a Korda or a Charley Hull – have used this event two years running to remind the circuit what they are capable of. The Dow, it seems, has found its defining storyline. It just did not expect that storyline to repeat itself quite so precisely.
