It sounds oxymoronic. The player with the lowest scoring average on the LPGA Tour this season is ineligible for the Vare Trophy, the award for the lowest scoring average. Sounds strange, right?

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But what was once an oddity has turned into a recent commonality, because for the third time in five years, the lowest scoring average on tour won’t win the Vare and its coveted LPGA Hall of Fame point. Before 2020, the anomaly had not happened since Annika Sorenstam in 2004.

Last year’s Vare winner, Jeeno Thitikul, is pacing the tour this season with a 69.54 average, with Nelly Korda on her tail in second at 69.66. However, both missed the minimum rounds requirement to be eligible for the award, leaving Hae Ran Ryu at 69.98 and Ayaka Furue at 70.05 in a close battle heading into this week’s season-ending CME Group Tour Championship.

In late 2021, after back-to-back seasons of the lowest scoring average not meeting the Vare’s rounds requirements, the tour put into place two sets of near-legalize regulations for players to be qualified: They must compete in the lesser of 60 rounds or 60 percent of the tour’s total official rounds with an individual score, and the lesser of 70 total or 70 percent of official rounds if they played in the Olympics.

Nelly Korda ranks second this season in scoring average.

Julio Aguilar

Using Korda and Thitikul as examples of the complicated math, the Thai has played 54 rounds this season with an individual score. She also had four rounds in her Dow Championship victory, a team event lacking an individual score, as well as four rounds in the Olympics. Heading into the Tour Championship, she is six and eight rounds shy of the two respective requirements. Korda has played 53 rounds with an individual score and 60 rounds total, having also competed in the Olympics and stroke-play portion of the LPGA Match Play, which she won in Las Vegas.

Both 2024 scoring leaders partly missed the round requirement due to dealing with injuries this season that kept them away from the tour for extended periods. Thitikul didn’t make a start until the Chevron Championship in April due to a hand injury she suffered in the offseason. Korda took the opening Asia swing off to train, then missed almost two months due to a neck injury before returning to win last week’s Annika.

Before the current two-tiered requirements for the Vare, the previous rules were even more demanding, with a requirenent of 70 rounds or 70 percent of official rounds with an individual score. The Vare was more stringent, and still is, compared to the PGA Tour’s Byron Nelson Award for low scoring average, which requires 50 rounds.

Danielle Kang won during the COVID-19-shortened 2020 season thanks to competing in just over 70 percent of the rounds, even though she had just the fourth-best scoring average on tour. The following year, the top two scoring averages of Nelly Korda (68.77) and Jin Young Ko (68.87) were ineligible due to missing the rounds requirement, with the South Korean just three rounds shy. Lydia Ko won despite having the third-best scoring average at 69.33.

During Korda and sister Jessica’s joint pre-tournament press conference ahead of the 2021 Pelican Championship, aware that Nelly would miss out on the Vare’s rounds requirement, voiced frustration with the rule and pushed for it to be changed.

“There is a board of players and people higher up than us that are going to need to come up maybe with a different plan,” Jessica said.

The complaint came to nearly immediate effect. LPGA commissioner Mollie Marcoux Samaan, in her first year-end press conference during the Tour Championship the week after the Korda’s pushback, told the media the tour planned to step back and reassess the rules that offseason.

“I don’t think we thought 2020 would be an anomaly, so we were surprised this year,” Marcoux Samaan said. “But it’s not the first time that’s happened. I think over the years there have been top players who have not been eligible for the trophy. So we’re going to step back and look. Now that the players, the purses are bigger, the players can play fewer events and still make a really good living.”

Their now-updated requirements would have had Jin Young win the award in 2021, thanks to her four rounds in the Tokyo Games pushing her over the 70-round doorstep.

What could have been a battle between former World No. 1s, with Korda vying for a potential 10th LPGA Hall of Fame point from just this season, turns into the third- and fourth-best scoring averages battling it out at Tiburon Golf Club. Furue, this season’s Evian Championship winner, must average 68.5 or better over the final four rounds of the season to make up her .07 average difference to 2023 Rookie of the Year Ryu’s current scoring mark.

This article was originally published on golfdigest.com