Led by world No. 1, host S. Korea seeks 1st title at LPGA team competition

World No. 1 Park Sung-hyun will look to lift host South Korea to its first title at a fledgling LPGA match play competition this week.

Jack Nicklaus Golf Club Korea, lying just west of the nation's capital in Incheon, will host the third edition of the biennial UL International Crown for four days, starting Thursday. It will be the first International Crown to be played outside the United States.

The competition features eight nations, each represented by four players. South Korea earned the top seed based on the world ranking positions of its top four players in early July. The seven other nations in the field are the United States, Japan, England, Australia, Thailand, Sweden and Chinese Taipei.

The U.S. won the 2016 title over South Korea. Spain, the inaugural champion in 2014, didn't qualify for this year's event.

Park Sung-hyun, who has been at the top of the world rankings since Aug. 20, is joined by Ryu So-yeon (No. 4), Kim In-kyung (No. 10) and Chun In-gee (No. 27).

The original South Korean lineup included Park In-bee instead of Chun. Park, a Hall of Famer who was world No. 1 at the time of the selection, pulled out of the tournament because she wanted to give another player a chance to represent the country.

The spot was to be filled by the next highest-ranked player at the time. But the next two players in the rankings, Choi Hye-jin and Ko Jin-young, both declined to participate. That left Chun, who was No. 19 at the time, to take the vacant position.

Park Sung-hyun and Ryu will likely be the two lead horses. They shared the Player of the Year awards last year and have combined for four victories in 2018, three by Park.

Park earned her second career major title at the KPMG Women's PGA Championship in July. Ryu, who began the season as world No. 3, has stayed in the top six all year, bolstered by her sixth career victory in June.

Ryu also picked up her first Japanese tour victory on Sunday at the season's third major, the Japan Women's Open Golf Championship.

The other two players haven't exactly set the golf world on fire this year.

Kim doesn't have a win in 2018, after notching three victories in 2017. She does have four top-10s in 14 starts in 2018.

Chun has fallen 22 spots in the world rankings since starting the year at No. 5. In 17 tournaments, Chun has had three top-10 finishes, but none since early June. Chun broke 70 in only three of her past 16 rounds.

There have been some changes to the world rankings since Chun was named as Park In-bee's replacement. Aside from Choi and Ko, who turned down the opportunity, there are four South Korean players now ahead of Chun in the rankings.

On the current South Korean team, Ryu played in both of the first two International Crowns. Kim was there at the first competition, and Chun played in the second one. Park Sung-hyun will be making her debut.

The second-seed U.S. could offer the strongest challenge to South Korea's title bid. The four Americans are Lexi Thompson (No. 5), Jessica Korda (No. 11), Cristie Kerr (No. 18) and Michelle Wie (No. 21).

Korda and Wie have a win apiece in 2018, and Kerr, entering her third straight International Crown, is a wily veteran with 20 career LPGA wins, including two majors. She won three of her four matches in 2016 to help the U.S. to the title.

Thompson is a wild card. The massively talented 23-year-old took some time off from the game in the summer, announcing on Instagram that she hadn't been herself for quite a while and needed to "recharge my mental batteries."

Thompson was controversially hit with a four-shot penalty during the final round of the 2017 ANA Inspiration, after a TV viewer informed the officials that Thompson had improperly replaced her ball in the third round. Thompson, who played through tears, ended up losing to Ryu in a playoff.

Off the field last year, Thompson saw her mother take on a second battle with cancer and her grandmother passed away. Thompson is winless in 2018, and missed two cuts at the four events she's played since ending her monthlong hiatus.

For this week's competition, the eight teams have been divided into two groups. South Korea is in Pool A with England, Australia and Chinese Taipei. The Pool B countries are the U.S., Japan, Thailand and Sweden.

Over the first three days, each country will play two four-ball matches against each of the other three countries in the same group. Each match victory is worth one point, and a halve (a tie) is good for half a point.

The top two teams from each group and one wild card winner will qualify for the singles match on Sunday. Each nation will play one singles match against every other country. The team with the highest point total after four days of competition will be crowned the champion.

The four players on the winning team will each receive US$100,000.(Yonhap)