Miyu Yamashita’s course-record 63 wins the Korea Championship by three

Miyu Yamashita made an eagle on the 17th at New Korea Country Club and signed for a 9-under 63, a course record. She had birdied the third, the fifth, the eighth, and the tenth, then three more in a stretch of four holes, before that eagle. She won the Aramco Korea Championship by three shots, at 22-under 266. She had never played the tournament.

On Saturday she bogeyed the second. She told the Ladies European Tour she had struggled with her putting, that the greens were a little difficult to read, and that Sunday would be about shots inside 100 yards. She was also planning to eat Korean food. Sunday was bogey-free. “I’m so happy. Today my shot, my putting, everything was feeling so good,” she said. “I had trust in my game. I like this course.” She added: “It’s my first time playing this tournament and I’m so happy to win, and I also didn’t think I could win so many times, so I’m happy about that.”

Sara Kouskova shot the same 63 and finished three back, at 19 under. The Czech player, a two-time winner on this tour, birdied the 17th and the 18th and set the clubhouse lead. Yamashita had started the day at 13 under. A 6-under 66 would have tied Kouskova’s 19 under. She shot 63. Kouskova said she couldn’t catch her even with that round, “because I thought if I have a really low one today, it could be good.” On Saturday, with five-time major champion Yani Tseng a shot off the lead, Kouskova had said she keeps a picture of Tseng on the wall of her room at home.

Tseng spent Saturday in contention, which she said she had missed. Ranked 232nd in the world, she shot a bogey-free 66 to sit one behind. She was nervous on the last three holes, and she had not been in that position since last year. She said she loves the fans there, because they cheer no matter the result. Sunday she shot 68 and finished tied for third with Hong Kong’s Ginnie Ding at 16 under, six shots behind. Ding’s 66 was bogey-free, her best result on this tour. She said she had come in with an open mind after the Asian Games, and that the putts dropped.

Yamashita came in as the world No. 5. She won the 2025 AIG Women’s Open at Royal Porthcawl for her first major, then the Maybank Championship in Malaysia. This June she beat England’s Lottie Woad in a playoff at the Meijer LPGA Classic, after Woad’s short putt to win in regulation lipped out. In August, at Royal Mayfair in Edmonton, she shot 23-under 257 — tying the lowest 72-hole total in LPGA history, Sei Young Kim’s 257 from 2018 — and won the CPKC Women’s Open by nine. That was her fourth LPGA title, in a fourth country, and the fastest any Japanese player has reached four. She is in her second season on that tour. Sunday is a Ladies European Tour title, her second on that schedule. The other is the Open.

She had led from the 36-hole mark. Overnight she was 13 under, one shot ahead of Tseng. A 65 had been the course record, and France’s Celine Herbin-Marshall matched it on Saturday. Sunday brought the record down to 63. Yamashita and Kouskova both shot that number. Only one of them left with the trophy. The tour takes a week off, then plays the Hero Women’s Indian Open at DLF Golf and Country Club, October 22–25.

She is 25, from Neyagawa in Osaka. Her father was just taking up the game, and he took her to a practice range when she was five. In November 2022, at 21 years and 103 days, she became the youngest money-list winner the Japan LPGA had ever had, 53 days inside the mark Momoko Ueda set in 2007. She led the list again in 2023. Both of those years came before she won a major.

Saturday night was for Korean food. On Sunday the putter she had struggled with felt good, and she closed with the eagle on 17.