2026 Maybank Championship preview: LPGA heads to Malaysia

The LPGA continues their fall Asian swing with a limited field event in its fourth year in Malaysia. We've got a preview of the Maybank Championship. I'm Ryan Balogun with Golf News Net here to look at this week's LPGA event. The Maybank Championship played at Kuala Lumpur Golf and Country Club, formerly known as TPC Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. This is a $3 million tournament, $450,000 goes to the winner. Standard 15% goes to the winner on the LPGA. They're playing a 78-player event this week. all of the events in this portion of the schedule this fall Asian swing they are all no-cut events so first event was 81 players in China then 84 players in Korea now we have 78 here in this three million dollar tournament Miyo Yamashita is the defending champion she's had a really really great year this year the champions in this tournament have been fantastic in their three years including Ronnie Yen who's already won in this portion of the schedule and Celine Boutier major champion herself this is a pretty solid field you get about half the world top 50 competing in this tournament you're trying to obviously get race to CME Globe points a lot of the top players like Hannah Green or the champion defending champion Miyo Yamashita or Charlie Hall they're already good to go to qualify for the season-ending CME Group Tour Championship but for the players who might not be in as good a standing they're trying to qualify by getting into the top 60 in the point standings this is a great opportunity to do it because this is a no-cut event you're going to get a chance at free points and you get a chance to have four rounds guaranteed and see what you can do in those four rounds and potentially move dramatically up the standings in your favor. You really just have to qualify for the CME Group Tour Championship to have a chance to win the biggest single event purse in women's golf, which is $4 million to the winner of that season concluding tournament. So you've just got to get in and then you've got to figure out a way to win. Outside of that, players who may qualify for this or may be struggling this year, they want to get in the top 100 in the point standings those players retain their playing privileges in 2027 so there's still a lot on the line even if you're in this field and you haven't had a great year already and if you're one of those players who's in the top 25 in the world or so who's had a really great year financially well it's an opportunity to add upon it and still do very well in this back stretch of the year there'll be one more event that carries the LPGA through this portion of the schedule and then they get into Florida for a back-to-back couple of weeks to end the year with the Anika presented by Pelican and then you're gonna have the season ending CME Group Tour Championship