Team USA will match South Korea for the first time by sending four players to the 2021 Olympics, with Jessica Korda taking the fourth and final spot, joining newly-minted No. 1 Nelly Korda, Lexi Thompson and Danielle Kang.
Inbee Park, the 2016 gold medal winner, will return for South Korea along with Jin Young Ko, Sei Young Kim and Hyo-Joo Kim.
The stars will be out in force in Aug. 4-7 for the Summer Games at Kasumigaseki Country Club.
“I’ve achieved a lot in golf,” said Park, “won a lot of majors, won a lot of tournaments, but winning the gold medal was something really different. I wish a lot of the players think the same and treat Olympics the same. I think it’s definitely something that you should experience.”
Some players, like Shanshan Feng and Hannah Green, won’t play again until the Olympics, heading back to their native countries, China and Australia, respectively, to quarantine and prepare.
“It’s interesting to see how the men and women have changed their schedule for it,” said Green who, like Feng, will miss the LPGA’s next major. “It’s a tournament that I am prioritizing.”
Feng, the 2016 bronze-medal winner in Rio, might even retire after the Games.
While Germany’s Sophia Popov is fulfilling an Olympic dream that her mother and brother, both high-level swimmers, never realized, the Korda sisters follow in the footsteps of their mother, Regina, who competed in the 1988 Summer Games in Seoul in tennis.
“It’s a great experience, great feeling,” said Regina. “It’s just special.”
The Rolex Rankings were used to determine the field of 60. The top 15 players in the world were eligible, with a maximum of four from each country. After that, a maximum of two players were eligible from each nation.
South Korea’s So Yeon Ryu was the highest-ranked player, at No. 16, who was ineligible to compete.