Staff WriterThe Kroger Queen City Championship has reached the weekend with Jin Young Ko and Amanda Doherty sharing the lead at seven-under, which is golf’s way of saying the calm professional and the long-driving outsider have both arrived at the same dinner party wearing very different jackets.
After 36 holes, this leaderboard has a little bit of everything: pedigree, power, youthful swagger, old-fashioned scrambling, and a hole-in-one from Jodi Ewart Shadoff for good measure. Seventy-seven players made the cut at two-over or better, but the tournament has already narrowed its spotlight to a handful of names with very different stories to tell.
Ko and Doherty sit on 133, one clear of Lottie Woad, whose second-round 64 was the lowest score of the week so far. Lydia Ko is alone in fourth at 135, despite finding fairways with all the regularity of a man looking for reading glasses in a fridge.
Jin Young Ko Finds A Familiar Gear
For Jin Young Ko, this was the sort of day that felt less like a scorecard and more like a status update. Bogey-free. Controlled. Patient. Dangerous.
Her second round was her second bogey-free round of the season and the 69th of her career, a number that says plenty about the machinery involved. Ko’s 133 is her best 36-hole score of the year, improving on the 139 she posted at the 2026 Honda LPGA Thailand.
It is also the 11th time she has led or co-led after two rounds on the LPGA Tour. That matters because Ko does not tend to wander into these positions by accident. She has 15 LPGA Tour wins, two major championships, 63 career top-10 finishes, and $14.8 million in official career earnings.
For all that, this has not been a vintage season by her standards. She came into the Kroger Queen City Championship having made five cuts in six starts but without a finish higher than T27. Her last victory came at the 2023 Fortinet Founders Cup, and for a player of Ko’s calibre, that is a fairly long wait between roars.
Still, there was a clarity to her Friday that suggested something was clicking.
Jin Young Ko said: “I just trying to not afraid to make bogey and I just want to be brave to play on the course. Yeah, overall I just want to make sure like clearly before I’m hitting the shot. I think it helps a little.”
That is not overcomplication. That is elite golf stripped down to its bones: see it, trust it, swing it, and try not to scare yourself into a double bogey.
Amanda Doherty Brings The Power
Alongside Ko sits Amanda Doherty, ranked No. 420 in the Rolex Rankings but playing this week like someone who has decided rankings are merely paperwork.
Doherty’s 133 is a career-best 36-hole score, bettering the 134 she had previously recorded twice. More importantly, it leaves her holding or sharing the lead heading into the weekend for only the second time in her LPGA Tour career, the last coming at the 2022 ISPS Handa World Invitational.
This is also the first time she has made the cut at the Kroger Queen City Championship in four starts, having missed the weekend in 2022, 2023 and 2025. That is the kind of turnaround that can make a player walk a little taller, provided they do not trip over the attention.
Her route to the top has been built on power. Doherty led the field in driving distance during the second round with an average of 325.5 yards, which is not so much driving the ball as sending it a formal notice.
The resume is not yet Ko’s, of course. Doherty has two career LPGA Tour top-10 finishes and $613,900 in official career earnings. In 2026, she had made one cut in two LPGA starts before this week, finishing T20 at the Riviera Maya Open at Mayakoba and missing the cut at the Ford Championship.
But golf does not care much for background checks once the ball is in the air. Doherty has earned this position the hard way.
On her comfort level with the swing, Amanda Doherty said: “Yeah, I’m definitely pretty comfortable in my swing right now. There is a few fairways out there that I think are kind of hard to hit so you got to take the — roll with the punches a little bit and know you’ll be in the rough a few time, and try to capitalize when you do, when you’re in the fairway.
It is a practical answer, and a revealing one. She knows the course will not hand out clean lies like sweets at a school fête. The trick is accepting the rough when it arrives and punishing the fairway when it appears.
Lottie Woad Makes Her Move
Lottie Woad sits third at six-under after firing a 64, the low round of the Kroger Queen City Championship so far.
That 64 ties her lowest 18-hole score of the season, matches the number she shot in the final round at the Honda LPGA Thailand, and also stands as her career-best 18-hole score. Her 134 total is her lowest 36-hole score of the season and the second-lowest of her career, behind the 132 she posted at the ISPS HANDA Women’s Scottish Open.
In other words, this was not a polite shuffle up the leaderboard. It was a proper stride, all elbows and intent.
There was also a charmingly simple incentive system involved.
Lottie Woad said: “Yeah, we’ve done it on a few. It depends if he’s had them or not. It’s like if you make a birdie, you get a gummy. I got a few of those today, so it was nice.”
Golfers have won majors with sports psychologists, launch monitors, nutritionists and Zen-like breathing routines. Woad, at least for one afternoon, appeared to be operating on birdies and gummies. Frankly, it worked beautifully.
Lydia Ko Scrambles Into Contention
Lydia Ko is fourth at five-under after opening with back-to-back rounds in the 60s for the first time since the Honda LPGA Classic earlier this season.
Her 135 is her lowest 36-hole score since the Ford Championship, where she reached 131. That part is impressive enough. The extraordinary bit is how she has done it.
Ko has hit just nine fairways through two rounds: five of 14 in round one and four of 14 in round two. That ranks tied 127th in the field, and it is the fewest fairways she has hit in her career through 36 holes.
Normally, that sort of statistic places a player somewhere between “packing quietly” and “consulting the swing coach in a car park.” Ko, instead, is inside the top five.
The last player to hit nine or fewer fairways and still sit inside the top five after 36 holes was Charley Hull in 2023. That is not a game plan most coaches would laminate, but it does speak volumes about Ko’s short game, nerve and ability to turn trouble into something oddly respectable.
Jodi Ewart Shadoff Adds An Ace
Jodi Ewart Shadoff delivered one of the round’s cleanest moments with a hole-in-one at the 12th, using a 7-iron from 163 yards.
It was the seventh ace of her LPGA Tour career, tying her for the second-most hole-in-ones on the LPGA Tour since 1980, alongside Vicki Fergon. Only Meg Mallon, with eight, has more.
It was also the eighth hole-in-one of the 2026 LPGA Tour season. Through CME Group’s programme, each ace triggers a $20,000 donation to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, with a minimum guaranteed donation of $500,000. The 2026 total now stands at $160,000.
There are worse ways to make a memory than flushing a 7-iron, watching it disappear, and helping a serious cause in the same breath.
The Records Still In Sight
The Kroger Queen City Championship scoring records remain sturdy, but not unreachable if conditions allow someone to go properly low over the weekend.
The 18-hole record is 63, shared by Chanette Wannasaen, Lydia Ko, Nasa Hataoka and Jeongeun Lee6 across different editions and venues. The 36-hole record is 130, set by Peiyun Chien in 2023. Charley Hull owns the 54-hole mark at 200, while Lydia Ko’s 265 from 2024 remains the 72-hole tournament record.
Ko and Doherty are three shots off the 36-hole tournament record, but the more immediate issue is not history. It is survival. Weekend golf has a habit of turning tidy scorecards into archaeological digs.
Why The Weekend Is Set Up Perfectly
This Kroger Queen City Championship now has the sort of leaderboard tournament organisers dream about. Jin Young Ko brings proven class and the heavy arithmetic of a major champion. Amanda Doherty brings power, freshness and the chance to change the tone of her season in one Cincinnati weekend. Lottie Woad brings momentum. Lydia Ko brings menace, even from places where menace really has no business living.
There have also been withdrawals: Danielle Kang during her first round, Haeji Kang prior to her second round due to injury, and Peiyun Chen before her second round. That has left the remaining contenders to fight through a cut line that settled at two-over.
For Ko, this is a chance to remind everyone that form may flicker, but class tends to hang around. For Doherty, it is a chance to walk into Sunday with more than a good story. For Woad, it is an opportunity to keep converting fearless golf into serious leaderboard pressure.
The Kroger Queen City Championship has not crowned anyone yet. But after two rounds, it has given us a proper weekend: two leaders, one shot separating the top three, Lydia Ko lurking despite a driver behaving like a shopping trolley, and enough pressure ahead to make even the calmest hands feel slightly made of soup.
