Minjee Lee wins the KPMG Women's PGA Championship for her 3rd major title

FRISCO, Texas (AP) — Minjee Lee went into the final round of the KPMG Women's PGA Championship with a four-stroke lead, and took a glance at every leaderboard she saw on the course. Even after some early bogeys, she stayed on top all day on way to her third major title.

“I knew exactly where I was in terms of like the scores,” Lee said. “But I just want to be clear. Like I definitely was nervous starting the day. I wasn't really sure if it was the heat that was making my heart beat more. ... I looked calm, but not as calm as everybody thinks."

Lee closed with a 2-over 74 while maintaining at least a two-stroke lead throughout the final round. Her 4-under 284 total was three strokes ahead of Auston Kim and Chanettee Wannasaen, the only other players to finish under par at wind-swept Fields Ranch East at PGA Frisco.

Lee, the 29-year-old Australian who is a Texas resident, living in nearby Irving, got her 11th career win. She joined Karrie Webb (seven) and Jan Stephenson (three) as the only women from Australia to win three majors.

While Lee had three bogeys in a four-hole stretch midway through the front nine, playing partner Jeeno Thitikul, the world’s No. 2-ranked player, bogeyed both par 5s that are among the first three holes. Still in search of her first major, Thitikul hit her first shot Sunday into the right rough on way to a 75 to finish at 1 over 289, tied for fourth with Chisato Iwai (71).

Lee, ranked 24th, took home $1.8 million of the record $12 million purse, which was up from $10.4 million a year ago and matched the U.S. Women’s Open for the most prize money. She also got $1.8 million for her four-stroke win in the 2022 U.S. Women’s Open.

Kim and Wannasaen both shot 68, the best rounds of the day and matching the best of the tournament after only two 68s combined the first three rounds. Kim was bogey-free, but had only pars after three consecutive birdies to wrap up her front nine.

“I’m really happy how I handled myself, my emotions, all the adversity,” Kim said. “There is obviously a lot on the line today, but I was chasing. I think that definitely helps. Took a lot of pressure off in the moment.”

While still windy like it had been all week at 15-20 mph, there weren’t the constant gusts of 30 mph or more that had made the playing conditions so difficult Saturday.

Thitikul had the solo lead after the first and second rounds. But the 22-year-old from Thailand fell behind shooting a 76 on Saturday, when Lee had the only bogey-free round for any player until then.

Lee is the 16th player to win in 16 LPGA tournaments this year. But top-ranked Nelly Korda, who won seven times last year, isn't one of those winners after a closing 76 to tie for 19th at 6-over 294.

In what was probably the key moment, Lee maintained a two-stroke lead with a clutch 8-foot par at the 170-yard 13th hole to stay at 3 under. That came about the same time Wannasaen rolled in a 14-foot eagle putt at the 235-yard par-4 15th hole to get to 1 under, though the 21-year-old from Thailand then missed the green and bogeyed the 455-yard 16th.

There was a subtle fist pump from Lee when she then made a 9-foot birdie at No. 14, the only par 5 on the back nine, and followed with another birdie at No. 15. She was the only player this week with two rounds in the 60s, with 69s on Thursday and Saturday.

“I just tried to be really simple out there. It was just so tough with the wind,” Lee said. “Some of the drives that I hit were really terrible out there, but I was able to get up and down, make bogey, not have a score that was too large to come back from. I think I managed myself really well out there today. I knew the 14th and 15th holes would be birdie opportunities, so just tried to stay patient and just try to make pars until those holes.”

Lee’s first bogey was at the par-5 third after her third shot went into a deep greenside bunker, then she had back-to-back bogeys on the 441-yard fifth and 434-yard sixth hole. She didn’t have a birdie until the ninth to make the turn at 4 under — at the time three ahead of Thitikul and Kim.

Kim started the final round nine strokes back, which was two more than the record comeback for a women’s major. Several players have done that, including Lee when she won the 2021 Evian Championship in France by coming from seven back for her first major title.

The 24-year-old Kim opened her round with a 5-foot birdie putt on the 528-yard par 5 first. She got within two strokes of Lee after the three birdies to wrap up her front nine. Her tee shot at the 157-yard eight hole stopped a foot from the cup.

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Minjee Lee celebrates after winning the Women's PGA Championship golf tournament, Sunday, June 22, 2025, in Frisco, Texas. (AP Photo/LM Otero)

Minjee Lee holds the trophy after winning the Women's PGA Championship golf tournament Sunday, June 22, 2025, in Frisco, Texas. (AP Photo/LM Otero)

Minjee Lee kisses the trophy after winning the Women's PGA Championship golf tournament Sunday, June 22, 2025, in Frisco, Texas. (AP Photo/LM Otero)

Minjee Lee holds the winner's trophy after winning the Women's PGA Championship golf tournament Sunday, June 22, 2025, in Frisco, Texas. (AP Photo/LM Otero)

Minjee Lee poses with the trophy after winning the Women's PGA Championship golf tournament Sunday, June 22, 2025, in Frisco, Texas. (AP Photo/LM Otero)

Minjee Lee hits onto the second green during the final round of the Women's PGA Championship golf tournament Sunday, June 22, 2025, in Frisco, Texas. (AP Photo/LM Otero)

Minjee Lee waves her ball after sinking a putt on the first green during the final round of the Women's PGA Championship golf tournament Sunday, June 22, 2025, in Frisco, Texas. (AP Photo/LM Otero)

Minjee Lee, right, and her caddie Michael Paterson strategize for a putt on the first green during the final round of the Women's PGA Championship golf tournament Sunday, June 22, 2025, in Frisco, Texas. (AP Photo/LM Otero)

Minjee Lee waves after sinking a putt on the second green during the final round of the Women's PGA Championship golf tournament Sunday, June 22, 2025, in Frisco, Texas. (AP Photo/LM Otero)

Minjee Lee hits a tee shot on the first hole during the final round of the Women's PGA Championship golf tournament Sunday, June 22, 2025, in Frisco, Texas. (AP Photo/LM Otero)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Becky Pepper-Jackson finished third in the discus throw in West Virginia last year though she was in just her first year of high school. Now a 15-year-old sophomore, Pepper-Jackson is aware that her upcoming season could be her last.

West Virginia has banned transgender girls like Pepper-Jackson from competing in girls and women's sports, and is among the more than two dozen states with similar laws. Though the West Virginia law has been blocked by lower courts, the outcome could be different at the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which has allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced in the past year.

The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in two cases over whether the sports bans violate the Constitution or the landmark federal law known as Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education. The second case comes from Idaho, where college student Lindsay Hecox challenged that state's law.

Decisions are expected by early summer.

President Donald Trump's Republican administration has targeted transgender Americans from the first day of his second term, including ousting transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.

Pepper-Jackson has become the face of the nationwide battle over the participation of transgender girls in athletics that has played out at both the state and federal levels as Republicans have leveraged the issue as a fight for athletic fairness for women and girls.

“I think it’s something that needs to be done,” Pepper-Jackson said in an interview with The Associated Press that was conducted over Zoom. “It’s something I’m here to do because ... this is important to me. I know it’s important to other people. So, like, I’m here for it.”

She sat alongside her mother, Heather Jackson, on a sofa in their home just outside Bridgeport, a rural West Virginia community about 40 miles southwest of Morgantown, to talk about a legal fight that began when she was a middle schooler who finished near the back of the pack in cross-country races.

Pepper-Jackson has grown into a competitive discus and shot put thrower. In addition to the bronze medal in the discus, she finished eighth among shot putters.

She attributes her success to hard work, practicing at school and in her backyard, and lifting weights. Pepper-Jackson has been taking puberty-blocking medication and has publicly identified as a girl since she was in the third grade, though the Supreme Court's decision in June upholding state bans on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors has forced her to go out of state for care.

Her very improvement as an athlete has been cited as a reason she should not be allowed to compete against girls.

“There are immutable physical and biological characteristic differences between men and women that make men bigger, stronger, and faster than women. And if we allow biological males to play sports against biological females, those differences will erode the ability and the places for women in these sports which we have fought so hard for over the last 50 years,” West Virginia's attorney general, JB McCuskey, said in an AP interview. McCuskey said he is not aware of any other transgender athlete in the state who has competed or is trying to compete in girls or women’s sports.

Despite the small numbers of transgender athletes, the issue has taken on outsize importance. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women from women's sports after Trump signed an executive order aimed at barring their participation.

The public generally is supportive of the limits. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to only compete on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender they identify with, while about 2 in 10 were “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed and about one-quarter did not have an opinion.

About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3%, identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.

Those allied with the administration on the issue paint it in broader terms than just sports, pointing to state laws, Trump administration policies and court rulings against transgender people.

"I think there are cultural, political, legal headwinds all supporting this notion that it’s just a lie that a man can be a woman," said John Bursch, a lawyer with the conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom that has led the legal campaign against transgender people. “And if we want a society that respects women and girls, then we need to come to terms with that truth. And the sooner that we do that, the better it will be for women everywhere, whether that be in high school sports teams, high school locker rooms and showers, abused women’s shelters, women’s prisons.”

But Heather Jackson offered different terms to describe the effort to keep her daughter off West Virginia's playing fields.

“Hatred. It’s nothing but hatred,” she said. "This community is the community du jour. We have a long history of isolating marginalized parts of the community.”

Pepper-Jackson has seen some of the uglier side of the debate on display, including when a competitor wore a T-shirt at the championship meet that said, “Men Don't Belong in Women's Sports.”

“I wish these people would educate themselves. Just so they would know that I’m just there to have a good time. That’s it. But it just, it hurts sometimes, like, it gets to me sometimes, but I try to brush it off,” she said.

One schoolmate, identified as A.C. in court papers, said Pepper-Jackson has herself used graphic language in sexually bullying her teammates.

Asked whether she said any of what is alleged, Pepper-Jackson said, “I did not. And the school ruled that there was no evidence to prove that it was true.”

The legal fight will turn on whether the Constitution's equal protection clause or the Title IX anti-discrimination law protects transgender people.

The court ruled in 2020 that workplace discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination, but refused to extend the logic of that decision to the case over health care for transgender minors.

The court has been deluged by dueling legal briefs from Republican- and Democratic-led states, members of Congress, athletes, doctors, scientists and scholars.

The outcome also could influence separate legal efforts seeking to bar transgender athletes in states that have continued to allow them to compete.

If Pepper-Jackson is forced to stop competing, she said she will still be able to lift weights and continue playing trumpet in the school concert and jazz bands.

“It will hurt a lot, and I know it will, but that’s what I’ll have to do,” she said.

Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Becky Pepper-Jackson poses for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

The Supreme Court stands is Washington, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

FILE - Protestors hold signs during a rally at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on March 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Chris Jackson, file)