Following the inaugural Kroger Queen City Championship last week in Cincinnati, Ohio, (won by Ally Ewing) the LPGA moves west to Oregon for the tour’s longest-running non-major event at the AmazingCre Portland Classic, where players will compete for a $1,500,000 prize purse. After a one-year stint at Oregon Golf Club, the tournament returns to Columbia Edgewater Country Club, which will host the event for the 35th time.

News broke Tuesday that defending champion and world No. 1 Jin Young Ko withdrew from the tournament, citing a nagging wrist injury. However, 2020 champion Georgia Hall, who won the tournament the last time it was staged at Columbia Edgewater CC, will tee it up in Portland along with world No. 2 Nelly Korda, who’ll make her tournament debut as the top-ranked player in the field.

Coverage of the 2022 AmazingCre Portland Classic from Columbia Edgewater Country Club in Portland, Oregon, can be found on Golf Channel, with streaming options available any time on any mobile device and online through NBCSports.com and the NBC Sports app.

Along with Hall and Korda, the field features two-time Portland winner Brooke Henderson (2015, 2016), who also won this year’s Amundi Evian Championship, along with past champions Hannah Green (2019) and Marina Alex (2018). Other notable names in the field at Columbia Edgewater CC include more than a dozen LPGA major winners, featuring:

Jin Young Ko, who was ranked No. 2 in the Rolex Rankings and playing in her first event in six weeks, dominated the field at the rain-shortened 2021 Cambia Portland Classic. After play was cancelled Saturday due to weather, Ko finished Sunday with a bogey-free 69 to beat Jeongeun Lee5 and Su Oh by four strokes and earn her ninth LPGA Tour victory.

Columbia Edgewater CC, which opened in 1925 and was designed by A.V. Macan, will play as par 72 with an official yardage of 6,478 yards.

This year marks the 35th time Columbia Edgewater has hosted the LPGA Tour. But it also has hosted the men’s Oregon State Amateur nine times between 1928 and 2020 as well as the men’s Oregon Open four times. The first two editions of the Portland Classic, which was initially staged at Portland Golf Club in 1972 and 1973, were won by Kathy Whitworth before the tournament moved to Columbia Edgewater in 1974, where JoAnne Carner captured the title.

Sei Young Kim set the course record in 2019 with an 11-under 61 in the second round.

OL Reign head coach Laura Harvey can’t imagine a better advertisement for the NWSL than this weekend’s slate of games. The top eight teams are currently separated by seven points and they’re all playing each other.

“You couldn’t write a better script than that,” said Harvey. “I mean, the Premier League would die for that. They would put it on Sky Sports and it would be on every channel.”

Each NWSL team has 3-4 remaining regular season games and there is a lot at stake. Six teams will qualify for the 2022 NWSL Playoffs, with the top two teams receiving a bye to the semifinal round. Of the 12 teams in the league, 10 are still in the running for a playoff berth.

Then add in the fact that the No. 3 San Diego Wave have sold all 32,000 tickets for Saturday’s match against No. 7 Angel City FC at Snapdragon Stadium. That game is expected to shatter the NWSL single game attendance record of 25,218, set by the Portland Thorns in 2019.

Also on Saturday, the No. 5 Chicago Red Stars will host the No. 4 Houston Dash, while the No. 6 OL Reign travel to the No. 8 North Carolina Courage. With so many teams in the running, clinching scenarios and probabilities are in constant flux.

“At this point, every game is crucial, every point is crucial and so we just have this mindset that we’re going to win out these last few games,” said OL Reign forward Bethany Balcer.

Then on Sunday, the top two teams in the league — the Kansas City Current and Portland Thorns — will meet at Children’s Mercy Park in Kansas City.

Harvey, the winningest NWSL head coach in history, hasn’t ever been a part of such a close end-of-season race.

“I think the reason there’s a dramatic difference this year is because there’s no runaway leader. I think that is a different dynamic…” she said. “There is so much parity across the league.”

“It is the most cliche answer, but it’s true in this league: on any given day, any given team can win,” echoed Portland Thorns head coach Rhian Wilkinson. “Watching the table is not a helpful thing to do. We just take care of ourselves and our business and that’s all we can control. Everything else is just the NWSL: It’s going to play out as it plays out.”

See below for the full NWSL weekend schedule for Sept. 17-18, as well as the current league table.

Standings as of Friday, September 16, 2022: 

Follow Alex Azzi on Twitter @AlexAzziNBC

The 2022 WNBA Finals featuring the Las Vegas Aces vs. the Connecticut Sun are in full swing. The Las Vegas Aces lead the series 2-1 and could clinch the WNBA title as soon as Sunday afternoon.

See below for On Her Turf’s guide to the 2022 WNBA Playoffs, which includes a complete TV schedule, details on how to watch, results from previous rounds, and info on the new playoff format. This guide will continue to be updated throughout the 2022 WNBA Playoffs so bookmark this page and check back for updates.

Note: Games marked with an asterisk (*) are if necessary

A new format is in use for the 2022 WNBA Playoffs.

In a change from the previous playoff format, all eight teams will participate in a best-of-three first round. The bracket will be seeded with the No. 1 team playing against the No. 8 team, and so on. The higher ranked team will host the first two games in the series. The lower ranked team will host the third game in the series (if necessary).

The four winners of the best-of-three series will move on to a best-of-five semifinal round. Teams will not be reseeded following the first round. As in years past, the higher ranked team will host games 1, 2, and 5 (if necessary), while the lower ranked team will host games 3 and 4 (if necessary).

The two winning teams from the semifinal round will play in a best-of-five WNBA Finals series, which will use the same host format as the semifinal round.

Follow Alex Azzi on Twitter @AlexAzziNBC