HOUSTON, Texas — Ruoning Yin took the words Moving Day to heart on Saturday at The Chevron Championship, firing a 6-under 66 to vault into a share of third with one round remaining in the year’s first major championship.

Yin, who collected her first major title at the 2023 KPMG Women’s PGA Championship at Baltusrol Golf Club’s Lower Course, had a close call at this tournament last season, finishing in a tie for second after falling in a five-way playoff to eventual champion Mao Saigo on the first extra hole at The Club at Carlton Woods.

And now, she has an opportunity to chase Nelly Korda down in pursuit of her sixth career LPGA Tour title and second major championship victory on Sunday in Houston, Texas.

The People’s Republic of China native made her first two birdies of the third round on the par-3 second and par-5 third holes to climb to 6-under. Yin landed another blow with a birdie on the par-4 sixth hole, parring out to turn in 33 at 7-under total.

The 23-year-old then waited three holes before picking up her fourth round-three birdie on the par-4 13th hole to get to 8-under. She added a fifth birdie to that tally on the par-5 14th hole, needing one more birdie coming down the stretch at Memorial Park to get to double-digits under par and within a sniff of Korda, who has largely run away with The Chevron Championship, having posted a 54-hole total of 16-under par to lead by five at the conclusion of Saturday play.

And after smacking a driver down the 18th fairway, Yin stuck an 8-iron from 140 yards to approximately five feet and cleaned up the resulting birdie try to post a 66, her lowest score ever in a major championship and lowest since she fired a 67 in the final round of the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship that saw her become the second Chinese major winner in LPGA history back in 2023.

“I think today I just don't really make mistakes, and I've been hitting well and putting well. Everything is going to the right direction,” said Yin. “This course is long, like really long for me because I'm not a long hitter. A lot of shots, all the par 3s, I got to use like 6-iron, 5-iron, even 4-iron to hit a shot. You just need to play smart and don't try to go for the pin every hole, and maybe middle of the green, and two-putt and move on. You can make birdie when you have chance.”

Yin opened her week in the Lone Star State with a quiet 1-under 71, improving on Friday with a bogey-free 3-under 69 and then bettering that effort by three in the third round. Yin’s caddie David Jones said he thought an improvement in her wedge game, particularly on shots into the par 5s was much of the reason for her flawless 66 on Saturday, But he also gave a lot of credence to her ability to see the lines clearly on the undulating greens that are a lot of what makes Memorial Park challenging for the game’s top players, an assessment with which Ruoning agreed.

“I would say mostly putting because I've been working on my putting a lot since last year after CME,” said Yin when asked what helped her go low on day three. “I changed to a broomstick, and I changed back at Shadow, and I just tried to figure it out what's the best way for me to putt. I think it's working really well right now.

After she was questioned about switching to a broomstick, Yin continued, “For me, I think just a different style to putt, right? I just wanted to see if this can work, and if not, I can always change back. So, I give it a little bit of time to let it happen, but it just not my style, so I change back. That was easy. Working on my aiming mostly.”

This is Yin’s eighth start of the 2026 LPGA Tour season, and despite missing the cut last week at the JM Eagle LA Championship presented by Plastpro, it’s been a pretty steady year thus far for the Rolex Women’s World Golf Rankings No. 11.

She has carded four top-25 finishes, the best of which is a tie for seventh that Yin recorded at the Aramco Championship at Shadow Creek in Las Vegas, and she made the first hole-in-one of her LPGA Tour career in her home country in the second round of the Blue Bay LPGA back in March on the tail end of the spring Asian swing.

But Yin is yearning for what’s become a long-awaited sixth career title, as she hasn’t won on the LPGA Tour since the 2024 Maybank Championship. And while it’s going to take a monumental day-four effort and some help from Korda if she wants to be the one hoisting the Dinah Shore Trophy in Houston, the 23-year-old is taking a pretty cavalier attitude into a major championship Sunday.

“I'm just trying to have another day like today,” said Yin. “There is nothing we can control other than the effort and the attitude. So, I think if I can do those two things well, the result I don't really care.”

Ruoning Yin Races Into Top Five With One Round Remaining at The Chevron Championship

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