Kuala Lumpur Golf & Country Club. Photo: 龍崎 Jeffrey, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0). Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:KLGCC_-_panoramio.jpg
Miyu Yamashita, of Japan, closed out the 2026 LPGA Maybank Championship with a final-round 68, successfully defending her title by two strokes over Yan Liu, of China, at Kuala Lumpur Golf and Country Club.
Yamashita finished at 22-under 266 (65-66-67-68) to win the tournament outright on the West Course, a par-72 layout measuring 6,536 yards (5,977m), in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The tournament carried a $3 million purse. It's her second straight Maybank Championship title, and her fifth career LPGA title, following her win at the CPKC Women's Open in August.
How the week unfolded. Pauline Roussin-Bouchard set the pace with an opening 64, one shot ahead of Yamashita's 65. Yamashita took the lead for good in round two, firing a 66 for 13-under 131, two strokes clear of Julia Lopez Ramirez and Roussin-Bouchard. A third-round 67 stretched that cushion to 18-under 198, still two ahead of the field. Yan Liu shot the round of the day on Saturday, a 63 that included an eagle on the 18th, to climb to 16-under 200 and tie for second. Sunday, both players carded 68, and the two-stroke gap held all the way to the final hole: Yamashita at 266, Yan Liu at 268.
A different kind of defense. Winning this title wasn't straightforward a year ago. Yamashita needed a playoff to claim the 2025 Maybank Championship, finishing at 18-under 270 and then beating Hannah Green and Hye-Jin Choi with a birdie on the first extra hole. Hye-Jin Choi tied for ninth at 13-under 275, in an 11-way tie that included Charley Hull, and Green tied for 27th at 9-under 279. This year, Yamashita needed no extra golf. She led three of the four rounds and won in regulation, two shots clear of the field.
Yan Liu's runner-up finish is now the best of her LPGA career, surpassing a tie for third at the 2023 ShopRite LPGA Classic. Her next-best results before this week were both ties for fourth, at the 2025 Maybank Championship and the 2026 Chevron Championship.
Pauline Roussin-Bouchard led the field after the opening round with an 8-under 64, but the Frenchwoman's pace didn't carry through the weekend. She finished tied for third at 19-under 269, alongside Thai amateur Marisa Tojai, the low amateur and the only amateur on the final leaderboard. Robyn Choi, of Australia, Achiraya Sriwong, of Thailand, A Lim Kim, of South Korea, and Weiwei Zhang, of China, rounded out the top eight, each a shot apart at 271, 272, 273, and 274.
What's next. The Maybank Championship was the third of four stops on the LPGA's Asia swing. The swing closes with the TOTO Japan Classic, Nov 5 to 8 at the Taiheiyo Club Minori Course in Ibaraki, Japan, where Nasa Hataoka defends her title.
Sources: LPGA.com's official leaderboard, ESPN's AP recap, The Star.
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