12 Australasians tackle golf’s final major of the year
Defending champion Lydia Ko – image LET
This week’s AIG Women’s Open Championship at Royal Porthcawl in Wales brings to a close the major championship season for professional golf in 2025, with twelve Australasians making the field.
In keeping with the desire of the R&A to take the event to the best course in Britain, Royal Porthcawl on the southern coast of Wales gets its chance to showcase its splendour as one of the finest links courses in the region, the event joining the Senior Open Championship in using this historic layout as one of their venues.
Australians Minjee Lee, Hannah Green, Grace Kim, Gabi Ruffels, Stephanie Kyriacou, Karis Davidson, Cassie Porter, Kirsten Rudgeley and Hira Naveed, will be joined by New Zealanders Lydia Ko, Amelia Garbey and Momoka Kobori, making a numerically strong contingent from our part of the world.
Australians have won the event on five occasions and New Zealand once, Corinne Dibnah, Karen Lunn and Karrie Webb (3) the successful Australians and the defending champion this year, New Zealand’s Lydia Ko who was successful at St Andrews twelve months ago.
Until her win last year, Ko had not been particularly successful in the event for one of her standing, recording just two top tens in her ten previous starts but she held off a strong challenge from world number one Nelly Korda, two time champion, Jiyai Shin, Lilia Vu and Ruoning Yin to win by two.
Minjee Lee has yet to win the event, but there have been five top tens in eleven starts in the event for her and she might well add another name to the list of Australians to take this coveted title.
Ko’s most recent form has been well below her best, missing the cut at the Evian Championship and being outside the top ten in her last six starts in LPGA Tour events, but, as the world number three and defending champion, she deserves respect.
Lee, on the other hand, won three starts ago and finished third behind her fellow countrywoman Grace Kim at the Evian Championship so brings some good close-up form to the event.
The event brings together players from the Ladies European Tour and the LPGA Tour and New Zealanders Garvey and Kobori will fly the flag for the LET amongst the Australasians.
The likely contenders for the title other then those mentioned above include the winner and runner-up in the last two times the event has been played Lilian Vu, the brilliant and seemingly ageless, Jiyai Shin, who has not only won the event on two occasions but after a break of several yeas finished 2nd and 3rd in the last two years, and last year’s runner-up Korda who finished 5th last week in Scotland.
