Malaysia’s Kelly Tan is looking forward to teaming up with her good friend Matilda Castren again in this week’s Dow Great Lakes Bay Invitational.
The US$2.7 million team event, one of the most popular on the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) Tour, starts on Wednesday at Midland Country Club in Michigan.
In last year’s tournament, Tan and her Finnish partner powered their way to runner-up honours on 21-under-par following rounds of 69, 61, 67 and 62. They finished five shots behind the American pairing of Jennifer Kupcho and Lizette Salas.
The Dow Great Lakes Bay Invitational has a unique format where the first and third rounds are alternate shot, while the second and final rounds are best-ball.
“I’m really looking forward to teaming up with Matilda again in the Dow Great Lakes Bay Invitational. Prepping this week, the course brings back a lot of good memories from last year, which is nice! It will be a fun week for sure,” said Tan.
The two players became friends in 2018 when they were competing on the Epson Tour, the LPGA Tour’s secondary circuit. The friendship grew and Castren served as maid-of-honour during Tan’s wedding to Canadian businessman Dustin Lattery last December.
Currently in 165th place on the LPGA Tour’s season-long Race to the CME Globe standings, Tan has her work cut out for the remainder of the season if she hopes to maintain her tour status.
In last week’s Dana Open, Tan finished T59 on even-par after rounds of 66, 71, 73 and 74. While this was only the second time she had made the cut from 10 starts in a disappointing year so far, the Malaysian is confident that her game is intact.
“I know my game is there, as the 66 on Thursday has proven. I’ve just been working on myself on the course, so that I do not get frustrated easily and focus on staying patient.
“Doing that and staying in my own bubble, I’m allowing myself to play more freely. I gave myself so many good looks at birdies in the first round and I was able to convert them. I just didn’t have the weekend that I was looking for,” said Tan, who finished 67th in last year’s Race to the CME Globe rankings.
Over the course of her 10-year professional career, Tan has set numerous benchmarks for Malaysian golf including best performance in a Major with her 13th place finish at the 2020 KPMG Women’s PGA Championship. In 2020, she finished a career-high 37th on the LPGA Tour’s season-long Race to the CME Globe standings.
In April this year, Tan was appointed as the ASEAN ambassador for Maybank, Malaysia’s largest financial services and banking group. She will be part of the field when the LPGA Tour returns to Malaysia this October 26-29 with the US$3 million Maybank Championship at Kuala Lumpur Golf & Country Club.
