Jin Young Ko and Amanda Doherty Share Friday Lead as Cincinnati LPGA Crowd Gets a Surprise Contender

The leaderboard at the Kroger Queen City Championship presented by P&G was supposed to belong to the stars.

Instead, Friday at Maketewah Country Club turned into a collision between one of the greatest players of her generation and one of the biggest underdog stories on the LPGA Tour.

Jin Young Ko and Amanda Doherty entered the weekend tied at seven-under after matching 36-hole totals of 133, but the paths they took to get there could not look more different. One owns 15 LPGA victories, two major championships, and nearly $15 million in career earnings. The other came into Cincinnati ranked No. 420 in the Rolex Rankings with just one made cut this season.

And yet there they were Friday evening, sharing the same spot atop one of the LPGA’s most crowded leaderboards of the year.

At a tournament already adjusting to a new identity after moving from its September date to May and debuting at historic Maketewah Country Club, Friday’s second round delivered exactly the kind of unpredictability that makes professional golf impossible to script.

Ko looked every bit like the former world No. 1 again.

Doherty looked like someone refusing to let the moment get too big.

And behind them, the leaderboard kept getting louder.

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Jin Young Ko finally looks comfortable again

For most of the 2026 season, Ko has looked oddly mortal.

The consistency that once made her the most feared player in women’s golf had disappeared. She entered the week without a finish better than T27 this season despite making five cuts in six starts.

Friday felt different.

Ko fired a bogey-free round, one of only three players in the field to accomplish that feat during the second round. It marked just her second bogey-free round of the season and the 69th of her LPGA career.

More importantly, it looked like vintage Jin Young Ko golf. Calm tempo. Elite iron control. Zero panic.

“I just trying to not afraid to make bogey and I just want to be brave to play on the course,” Ko said after the round. “I just want to make sure like clearly before I'm hitting the shot.”

That clarity has been missing for stretches over the last year.

Not Friday.

Ko’s 133 represented her best 36-hole score of the season by six shots.  And history says that matters. She has won three times after leading following the opening round and has already proven she can close tournaments wire-to-wire.

When Ko starts seeing putts fall and keeps the card clean, the entire tournament changes. Every contender on the board knows exactly what version of Jin Young Ko they’re dealing with now.

The dangerous one.

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Amanda Doherty is becoming the story of the tournament

If Ko’s presence atop the leaderboard feels familiar, Doherty’s feels almost surreal.

The former Florida State standout had never made the cut in three previous appearances at this event. She entered the week with just two career LPGA top-10 finishes and only $27,000 in earnings this season.  

Now she’s leading an LPGA tournament heading into the weekend.

And she’s doing it by overpowering the golf course.

Doherty averaged a staggering 325.5 yards off the tee during Friday’s round, leading the field in driving distance.  On a course where thick rough and firm greens have punished players who miss fairways, her aggressive approach somehow continues to work.

“I'm definitely pretty comfortable in my swing right now,” Doherty said Friday. “There is a few fairways out there that I think are kind of hard to hit so you got to roll with the punches a little bit.”

That confidence has shown up in every part of her game.

This is only the third time in her career she has held the lead after any LPGA round and just the second time she has entered a weekend inside the top five.  But none of that mattered Friday. She looked composed, patient, and completely unfazed by the names surrounding her on the leaderboard.

For a player ranked outside the top 400 in the world, that matters almost as much as the score itself.

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Lottie Woad and Lydia Ko are lurking

The leaderboard got even more interesting once the afternoon wave started charging.

Lottie Woad posted the round of the tournament with a blistering 64, tying the lowest 18-hole score of her season and setting a new career best on the LPGA Tour.

Suddenly, the 21-year-old English star sat just one shot off the lead at six-under.

And yes, gummies became part of the story.

After birdies, Woad’s caddie rewarded her with gummy candy during the round, which quickly became one of the more entertaining anecdotes of the day.

“If you make a birdie, you get a gummy,” Woad said with a laugh. “I got a few of those today.”

That kind of relaxed confidence usually belongs to players who feel untouchable.

Woad certainly looked that way Friday.

Then there was Lydia Ko, quietly doing Lydia Ko things again.

The defending tournament record holder opened with back-to-back rounds in the 60s for the first time since earlier this season despite hitting only nine fairways across two rounds.

Nine.

That’s the fewest fairways Ko has ever hit through 36 holes in her LPGA career, yet she still sat fourth at five-under.

That’s what elite short games and elite putting look like.

“I just holed a couple more putts coming in,” Ko said after Friday’s round.

Simple explanation. Terrifying implication for everyone else.

Because if Lydia Ko starts driving it even marginally better over the weekend, she becomes one of the most dangerous players in the field immediately.

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Maketewah is proving it can bite back

The move to Maketewah Country Club has changed the feel of this tournament completely.

The Donald Ross design brought tighter visuals, punishing rough, and far more emphasis on positioning than previous tournament venues.

Players talked all week about how difficult it has been to control approach shots out of the rough, especially with firm greens baking under warm Cincinnati conditions.

Jennifer Kupcho summed it up perfectly Friday.

“The rough out here is pretty thick,” Kupcho said. “It’s hard to control the balls coming into the green.”

That challenge has kept scores from getting completely out of control despite ideal scoring weather.

Still, 77 players made the cut at two-under or better, creating a packed leaderboard heading into the weekend.

One hot round could change everything.

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Friday’s wildest moment belonged to Jodi Ewart Shadoff

Not every memorable Friday moment came from the top of the leaderboard.

Jodi Ewart Shadoff delivered one of the loudest roars of the day when she aced the par-3 12th hole with a 7-iron from 163 yards.

It marked the seventh hole-in-one of her LPGA career, tying her for the second-most aces on Tour since 1980.

The shot also continued the LPGA’s season-long partnership with CME Group and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, pushing the donation total to $160,000 for the season.

For a few moments Friday, even the leaderboard took a backseat.

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The weekend now feels wide open

That’s the beauty of this tournament right now.

A former world No. 1 is trying to rediscover dominance.

A longshot is chasing the biggest moment of her career.

A rising star just fired a career-low round.

And one of the best closers in golf is lurking despite barely hitting fairways.

That combination is exactly what the LPGA hopes for when it brings a marquee event into a sports city like Cincinnati.

By late Friday afternoon, the galleries around Maketewah had started swelling. Fans crowded ropes around the closing holes. Kids chased autographs. Roars echoed across the course every time a leaderboard shifted.

And the biggest takeaway entering the weekend might be this:

The Kroger Queen City Championship suddenly feels less like a routine Tour stop and more like a tournament about to produce a defining moment for somebody.

The only question now is whose moment it’s going to be.

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