Yin Erases Four-Shot Deficit to Win Buick LPGA Shanghai, Denying Choi's Bid for First Title

Ruoning Yin closed with a final round that erased a four-stroke deficit to win the Buick LPGA Shanghai on Sunday, beating South Korea's Hye-Jin Choi by one stroke to deny her a maiden LPGA Tour title. Yin finished at 11-under 277 at Sheshan Golf Club, which hosted the tournament for the first time after it relocated from its previous Shanghai venue.

The victory, confirmed in the LPGA's own account of the final round, was Yin's seventh career LPGA Tour title and her second at this event, following a six-shot runaway win in 2024. For Choi, it extended a far less welcome streak: a fourth runner-up finish on tour without ever closing one out.

A four-shot swing over 54 holes

Choi set the pace from the opening round, firing a bogey-free 8-under 64 to take the outright lead, four strokes clear of Yin, who shot a 4-under 68 to sit in a tie for third. Choi extended her advantage through the second round despite a rougher day of 2-over 74, reaching 6-under 138 through 36 holes and still holding a two-stroke cushion over the field, according to the tournament's official leaderboard.

Yin's rally over the weekend flipped that margin entirely. By Sunday's close, she had posted a total of 11-under, one shot clear of Choi's 10-under finish. China's A. Yang took third at 8-under, and Japan's Rio Takeda finished fourth at 7-under. Yin's winner's share came to $480,000 from the event's $3.2 million purse — a record for the tournament, up from $2.2 million in 2025, and part of a broader increase in prize money on the women's Asian swing this fall.

The win came in the opening week of what tour previews described as the final stretch of six tournaments left on the 2026 LPGA Tour calendar, adding weight to a result that will factor into the season-ending points and money races.

Yin's second Shanghai title, a major champion back in form

Yin, 24, reached No. 1 in the Women's World Golf Rankings in September 2023 — becoming only the second Chinese golfer to hold that spot — and won her sole major title that year at the Women's PGA Championship at Baltusrol. She entered the week ranked fifth in the world, and the Shanghai win was her second LPGA Tour victory of 2026, after ending a title drought at the FM Championship outside Boston in August.

Although she was born in Kunming, in China's Yunnan province, her father's family hails from Shanghai, giving the event an added personal dimension beyond its standing as a marquee stop on the LPGA's Asian swing. The tournament is co-sanctioned by the LPGA Tour and the China LPGA Tour, meaning Yin's win counts toward both tours' records.

She was grouped for the first two rounds with Thailand's Jeeno Thitikul, the world No. 2 and the tour's reigning Lotte Championship winner earlier this month, in a pairing that underscored the strength of the field the tournament's new, record purse was designed to attract. The LPGA's own announcement of the move to Sheshan, made in May, framed the bigger purse and new venue explicitly as a step toward "leading women's golf in Asia," a sign of how central the China market has become to the tour's international calendar.

Her final-round comeback followed a difficult moment on Thursday that nearly derailed her week before it started. Speaking to reporters after the opening round, Yin described a costly three-putt at the ninth hole that put her in a tie for third from the start.

"I ended up the ninth hole by taking three putts, so I was a bit angry with myself," Yin said, according to a report from China's CGTN, citing Xinhua News Agency. She credited a confidence-building putt later in the round for steadying her week: "I made that putt with a lot of conviction, and it gave me a great deal of confidence. Because I made the putt on the 17th, I was able to make the one on the 18th."

Another near-miss for Choi

For Choi, 25, the result was a familiar and painful one. She remains without a win in her fifth season on the LPGA Tour despite a resume that includes 33 top-10 finishes and, by one count, the most career earnings on tour among players who have yet to win — more than $7.2 million. A runner-up finish as a 17-year-old amateur at the 2017 U.S. Women's Open, where she lost by two strokes to eventual champion Sung Hyun Park after a late double bogey, was an early sign of the kind of close calls that have defined her career; she has gone on to win 12 times on the Korean LPGA Tour since turning professional later that year, but the top-level breakthrough on the LPGA Tour itself has continued to elude her.

"I really want to win my first LPGA title, and I'll give it everything I've got," Choi said after taking the first-round lead on Thursday. "But for now, I just want to focus on my own game and play each round well."

She did exactly that for most of three rounds, only to watch Yin close the gap over the weekend and overtake her on the back nine Sunday. It was Choi's fourth runner-up finish on the LPGA Tour without a victory, a pattern that has made her one of the tour's most-discussed players still searching for a first title.

What's next

The Buick LPGA Shanghai's move to Sheshan Golf Club also returned big-time professional golf to a course that had not hosted a marquee event since the men's WGC-HSBC Champions was last played there in 2019, giving organizers a selling point as they look to grow the tournament's profile on the LPGA's expanding Asian swing.

For Yin, the win keeps her in the thick of the season's final events and reinforces her case for a return trip up the world rankings before the LPGA Tour's season-ending events. For Choi, the tour moves on to the next stops of the Asian swing, where she will try again to convert a familiar position — in contention, playing well, searching for the finish that has so far stayed just out of reach.