After playing her fourth 18-plus hole match of the week on Sunday afternoon at Shadow Creek Golf Course, it was ultimately Madelene Sagström who came out on top in Las Vegas, winning 1-up over Lauren Coughlin to capture her second career victory on the LPGA Tour.
Sagström only had to play 16 holes in her morning semifinals match against Angel Yin, defeating the American 4 and 2 after taking the lead on the second hole and never looking back. Coughlin had a bit of a tougher road to the finals, playing her sixth straight match of 18 holes or more against Ariya Jutanugarn on Sunday morning and ultimately beating the Thai major champion 1 up after winning her first hole of the match on the par-3 17th at Shadow Creek.
The Championship Match saw Sagström take an early 1-up lead on the second hole of the round, an advantage she extended to two after winning the par-5 4th hole. The Swede then won holes five and six to move four ahead with 12 holes to play in Sin City, but Coughlin immediately started chipping away at that deficit and fought her way back to 1 up after winning seven, eight and nine.
The Virginia native tied the match on 11 and flipped it on 12 to sit one ahead of Sagström with six holes remaining. Sagström won the par-3 13th hole, however, to once again square the match with just five holes to go. The pair tied holes 14 and 15, and then Sagstrom took a 1-up lead after winning the par-5 16th hole.
And with two holes to play, Coughlin couldn’t mount a late charge, so when the finalists matched scores on 17 and 18, it was ultimately Sagström who found herself in the winner’s circle, victorious for a second time on the LPGA Tour.
“I worked so hard. All of us work so hard,” Sagström said on the final green. “I really struggled quite a lot, especially with my driver end of last year, and I worked so hard with Callaway and my coach, Hans. I feel so comfortable standing over the ball at the moment, and most of the time, it comes out nice. It’s such a nice feeling.
“I played pretty well last week and didn’t make the cut, but it’s hard because everyone works hard because it’s tough out here. It’s a fantastic feeling, and it’s knowing that all the hard work really did pay off.”
The T-Mobile Match Play presented by MGM Rewards is Sagström’s first Tour title since she became a Rolex First-Time Winner at the Gainbridge LPGA at Boca Rio back in 2020, and it was a hard-earned victory, considering the Swede is the first player in the history of this event to amass a 7-0-0 record.
Throughout the week in Sin City, the 32-year-old, who is the oldest winner on the LPGA Tour since Amy Yang won the 2024 KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, beat the likes of Yin in the semifinals, Celine Boutier in the quarterfinals, Carlota Ciganda in the round of 16 and Minjee Lee, Jasmine Suwannapura and Patty Tavatanakit in round-robin group play. Several of those names have excellent records both in this event and in the Solheim Cup, a team match-play competition held biennially between the United States and Europe, and Sagstrom, who has a 5-6-1 Solheim record, can now count herself among those considered to be strong in this format, a fact she more than proved this week in the Nevada desert.
Coughlin was disappointed to fall just short of earning her third career LPGA Tour title on Sunday afternoon, particularly considering how hard she grinded throughout the entirety of the T-Mobile Match Play, playing a whopping seven matches of at least 18 holes over the past five days. But she is looking on the bright side as much as she can in this moment and will carry a lot of confidence forward from this performance even though she didn’t feel like she had her strongest stuff, as it reinforced Coughlin’s self-identity as a fighter.
“That I can play 72 holes in two days, which I didn’t know I could do that,” said Coughlin about what her takeaways would be from the week. “But, again, I think it’s just who I am as a player is a grinder, and I fought all the way to the end. I feel like I saw parts of my game be really solid in every single match and parts not great. I don’t feel like I played my best golf this week, and I still almost won.
“I think that’s a lot of positives I can take away. Still some stuff to work on, but I think it’s a really positive direction going into the meat of the season.”
Having lost in the semifinal matches, Jutanugarn and Yin will each be awarded a T3 finish as the consolation match has been eliminated from the format at the T-Mobile Match Play presented by MGM Rewards. Sagstrom earns $300,000 and 500 Race to the CME Globe points as part of her victory.
