Fátima Fernández Cano has done it again. The Galician golfer has secured her card for the LPGA Tour through the Epson Tour. The queen of promotions. It is the third time in five years that the player born in Santiago de Compostela has moved up to the top division. Mrs. persistent. Perseverance. The goal now is for the third time to be the charm. It’s very rewarding to earn a place in the LPGA after a year of hard work in the trenches, but Fátima hopes this was the last promotion. Now it’s time to stay among the best for as many years as possible. Next challenge: keep the card.
Fátima teed off this Sunday at the Epson Tour Championship at Indian Wells, the grand finale of the tour, with a chance of victory. She started four shots off the lead. She couldn’t win, but she did achieve a great final round that allowed her to secure another top 10 finish of the season and gain a position in the Race for the Card, the Epson Tour ranking. She finished third. This means that in 2025 she will be able to enter all regular LPGA Tour tournaments. A huge success. Three promotions in five years, all of the highest category. In 2020 and 2021, she moved up as the second-best in the ranking, and this year she did it in third place. Only Lauren Stephenson and Yahui Zhang were ahead of her.
Fernández Cano concludes the season with a superb trajectory. She has played only 14 tournaments, the fewest among the top five finishers. She made twelve cuts and achieved five top 10 finishes, four of which were top 5, all between July and September. A summer to remember that included a victory, her third career win on this tour, at the Guardian Championship.
As it stands, Fátima will join Carlota Ciganda in 2025. We now have two Spanish players secured in the top division of women’s golf, pending Azahara Muñoz and Ana Peláez still being able to retain their respective cards this year, both are in the fight and need good results at the end of the year. Good news may also come from the LPGA Tour school.
The fifteen players who have secured the LPGA Tour card are:
Lauren Stephenson
Yahui Zhang
Fátima Fernández Cano
Jessica Porvasnik
Brooke Matthews
Ingrid Lindblad
Jenny Bae
Fiona Xu
Madison Young
Cassie Porter
Ana Belac
Pornanong Phatlum
Daniela Iacobelli
Miranda Wang
Heather Lin
The big winners of the Epson Tour final are Heather Lin, who won the tournament to just make it into the 15th spot, and Miranda Wang, who climbed to 14th from far behind. Colombian Valery Plata and American Kim Kaufman were left out at the last moment. The performance of Swedish Lindblad, former world amateur number one, is particularly noteworthy. She achieved promotion to the LPGA Tour in sixth place in the ranking, playing only nine tournaments.
Remember that the top 10 in the Race for the Card earn category 9 of the LPGA Tour, meaning they will enter all tournaments, while those ranked 11th to 15th will have a very limited category and will need to achieve good results in the early tournaments to move up positions in the various re-rankings held throughout the year.
On the other hand, Teresa Toscano, the other Spanish player present in the Epson Tour final, could not improve her ranking on the tour. Her goal was to finish among the top 35 to skip the second stage of the LPGA Tour School and go directly to the final. It was not to be. The player from Huelva will have to play the second stage next week in Florida.
