The 2025 Buick LPGA Shanghai got off to a rocky start after pictures of heat-torched greens surfaced on Wednesday. But the week will end Sunday with two of the Tour’s premier players — Minjee Lee and World No. 1 Jeeno Thitikul — looking to go low in the final round at Qizhong Garden Golf Club to prevent history from transpiring.
Entering the week, the LPGA had seen 26 different champions across 25 events so far this season. Twenty-six unique winners in a season is a record mark set in 1995 before being matched in 2018, 2022 and this year. That mark is an impressive show of parity for the LPGA, but also leaves it without a clear Player of the Year candidate or dominant star to draw eyeballs. Nelly Korda, who won seven times in 2024, has yet to enter the winner’s circle in 2025.
That brings us to this week in Shanghai, where Japan’s Minami Katsu enters Sunday’s final round with a two-shot lead over Thitikul and Lee.
Katsu blitzed Qizhong Garden Golf Club, firing an 11-under-par 61 to vault into the lead. Katsu, who is still looking for her first LPGA win, backed up that 61 with a 68 on Saturday, but watched as Thitikul and Lee appeared in her rearview mirror. Thitikul fired a third-round 66 while Lee carded a 65 to get within two of Katsu with 18 holes to play.
“Obviously they’re two of the great players,” Katsu said of Thitikul and Lee, who she will be paired with Sunday. “Really looking forward to playing with them. I’m sure there is a lot of things I can learn from them. At the same time try to keep my game — focus on my game and really looking to play with them tomorrow.”
Katsu holes two-shot lead at Buick LPGA Shanghai
Thitikul and Lee have both already triumphed this season.
The World No. 1 won the Mizuho Americas Open in May and has recently been knocking on the door of win No. 2 in 2025. Thitikul carded back-to-back runner-up finishes in her last two starts at the FM Championship and the Kroger Queen City Championship. Last month, Thitikul four-putted on the 72nd hole of the Kroger Queen City Championship to hand the trophy to Charley Hull. Those near-misses haven’t scarred Thitikul, only sharpened her belief in herself.
“If you told me I can get second in every tournament this year for the whole season, 30-something, I’ll take it,” Thitikul said about her close calls. “What I’m learning is the five wins that I have on the LPGA is the past as well, so I don’t carry on my shoulder. I don’t carry it in my head.”
After a bogey-free 66 on Saturday, Thitikul is once again in a position to become the first multi-time winner on the LPGA this season.
“Every time that I play in contention on Sunday, it’s really excitement and then nervous for sure,” Thitkul said “Like 18 holes, 18 opportunities for everyone. Not just for me. So, I’m trying my best.
“I don’t think I’m doing anything special,” Thitikul said later. “I think it’s just golf, where it’s some of the day you play really good and some of the day you’re not that fancy. I think yesterday I had not a really good iron shots, so I think today I have better iron shots, which is giving me more opportunities than yesterday.”
The third part of Sunday’s equation is Lee, who won her third career major this year at the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship at Fields Ranch East in Frisco, Texas. The Australian started the third round five strokes off the pace and in a tie for eighth. She opened with a sloppy bogey on the par-5 first but then got blistering hot during a 10-hole stretch that saw her make eight birdies, including five in a row from No. 7-11.
In June at Fields Ranch East, Lee survived sweltering temperatures to pull away from Thitikul on the weekend to win her third major.
Sunday in Shanghai will be a similar story, with Katsu’s two-shot lead serving as an added wrinkle.
It will be Lee and Thitikul in blistering temperatures expected to be in the mid-90s. It will be two of the LPGA’s best trying to end a historic run of parity. And there will be Minami Katsu, looking to become the 27th unique winner on the LPGA this season and enter the winner’s circle for the first time in her career.
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