Lauren Coughlin wins Aramco Championship for third LPGA victory
· Yahoo Sports
Lauren Coughlin was having a rough go of it in 2026. She started the year with a tie for 27th but then finished near the bottom of the field with a T-62 in the Fortinet Founders Cup and a T-65 at the Ford Championship.
But after playing for a third week in a row, Coughlin came up triple 7s in Las Vegas, winning the 2026 Aramco Championship at Shadow Creek. The victory, her third on the LPGA, was good for $600,000, which accounts for neraly 97 percent of her earnings this season.
Visit xsportfeed.quest for more information.
Even more, Coughlin broke through after finishing runner-up at Shadow Creek a year ago. The LPGA event in 2025 was the match play, but still, finding the winner's circle in 2026 was special.
"It left a sour taste in my mouth," she said. "Second is a good consolation, but winning is really fun, so I am just extremely happy to have gotten it done today."
Getting it done might be an understatment. Coughlin finished at 7 under, five shots clear of the field that included world No. 1 Jeeno Thitikul and world No. 2 Nelly Korda. Thitikul tied for 17th, while Korda tied for second, her third straight second-place finish after winning the season opener.
"Sports are funny. If you actually really think about it you lose more than you win, so you have to always pick yourself back up and dust yourself off and continue to grind and practice and work hard," Korda said. "The only thing that I can control is that at the end of the day, and that's what I'm going to continue doing."
As for Coughlin, she actually built a lead of six shots through eight holes but even then, she was wanting to know what Korda was up to.
"I didn't know where I was until I got to 9 green because that was the first time there was any type of scoreboard out there. I only knew what Nelly was doing," Coughlin said. "I only knew where I was in comparison to her, but I had no idea what everybody else was."
Coughlin started the final round up one, birdied the first and never had less than two-shot lead the rest of the day. She led the field with 18 birdes over four days. She was also the best all week in greens in regulation (52 of 72). She now has at least one win in each of the last three seasons. She also teamed with Andrew Novak to win in the team event at the Grant Thornton Invitational.
"Winning is hard and I didn't get it done earlier in the year last year when I had a couple chances and that really bothered me," she said. "I was like, what if I don't ever get to do it again? What if that's the best golf I every played in 2024? Those thoughts were hard not to think last year. So Grant Thornton, people keep not giving me credit for Grant Thornton. I'm a PGA Tour winner, you know?," she joked.
After the start to the year she went through, this win really means a lot.
"It's extremely validating. Going toe to toe with Nelly, No. 2 ranked player in the world in the same group, final group on a Sunday, is extremely cool and hopefully give me a lot of confidence going into the rest of the year," she said.
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Lauren Coughlin wins Aramco Championship 2026 at Shadow Creek