Malaysia’s top lady golfer Kelly Tan has booked her second Olympic appearance at the Tokyo Games after placing 42nd in the final women’s Olympic golf ranking released by the International Golf Federation (IGF) today.
The top 60 available players will tee off in the women’s golf event at Kasumigaseki Country Club in Kawagoe on August 4-7, led by new World No 1 Nelly Korda of the United States who won last week’s KPMG Women’s PGA Championship for her first Major title.
In the 2016 Rio Olympics, Kelly finished 51st ahead of compatriot Michelle Koh in 58th spot. She will be joined in Tokyo by Malaysian men’s No 1 Gavin Green, who placed 56th in the final men’s Olympic golf ranking released last week. Gavin also made his Olympic debut in Rio where he finished 47th.
The Olympic field is restricted to 60 players for each of the men’s and women’s competitions, with the IGF utilising the official world golf rankings to create the Olympic Golf Rankings as a method of determining eligibility. The top 15 world-ranked players will be eligible with a limit of four players from a given country. Beyond the top 15, players will be eligible based on the world rankings with a maximum of two eligible players from each country that does not already have two or more players among the top-15.
The women’s rankings were solidified after Sunday’s completion of the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, where Korda’s win catapulted her to No. 1 in the world. Both the United States and South Korea lead the way with four qualified players, while none of the other 34 countries represented has more than two.
Korda is joined in Team USA by Danielle Kang (No. 5), Lexi Thompson (No. 9) and older sister Jessica Korda (No. 13). The Korean quartet meanwhile is made up of Jin Young Ko (No 2), Inbee Park (No 3), Sei Young Kim (No. 4) and Hyo-Joo Kim (No. 6). 2016 silver medalist Lydia Ko of New Zealand (No. 10) and bronze medalist Shanshan Feng of China (No. 16) also qualified.
The next step is for the IGF to send confirmation of the qualified athletes to the national Olympic committees (NOCs). The NOCs will then confirm use of allocated quota places to the IGF by July 1 and the IGF, in turn, will reallocate all unused quota places before the Tokyo 2020 entries deadline on July 5.
