Four Australian women are in the slot to play the season-ending LPGA Tour championship in Florida next month.
Perth's Minjee Lee (ranked 11th on the season-long points race), Victorian Su Oh (46) and Queenslanders Karrie Webb (52) and Sarah Jane Smith (56) are all comfortably inside the top 72 who will contest the championship from November 17-20 at Tiburon Golf Club in Naples, Florida.
There are four tournaments remaining on the tour in the lead-up to the season finale, beginning with the Blue Bay Classic in China this week where Lee, Oh and Smith are all competing. The veteran Webb is on a break.
The CME Globe Tour Championship offers up a $US 2 million purse but also a $US1 million bonus pool for the winner of the season-long points race, won last year by New Zealand's Lydia Ko. With a points reset after the qualifying period, the top nine on the list will all have a chance of winning the bonus, a fact that will interest Lee.
Hence, the grinding part of the season has begun. The likes of 20-year-old Lee, for instance, has already played 24 tournaments in a season during which she has won $US849,000 in prizemoney including her second tour victory.
Oh, also 20, has had a wonderful first full season on the world's top tour earning $US348,000 and climbing to world No. 61, while Smith has had one of her best-ever years, earning $US 255,000.
The tour moves to Malaysia and Japan over the next few weeks before swinging to Mexico and back to the United States for the finale.
AUSTRALIANS IN THE STANDINGS
11 Minjee Lee
46 Su Oh
52 Karrie Webb
56 Sarah Jane Smith
105 Katherine Kirk
137 Sarah Kemp
OVERALL TOP FIVE
1 Lydia Ko
2 Ariya Jutanugarn
3 Brooke Henderson
4 Sei Young Kim
5 Ha Na Jang