The Australian Golf Club’s opening hole – image Bruce Young
This week’s Australian Open at the Australian and Lakes Golf Clubs in Sydney will again feature three different championships as Men, Women and All Abilities golfers compete for their respective Australian Open trophies.
Tried for the first time in 2022, when staged at the Victoria and Kingston Heath Golf Clubs in Melbourne’s sandbelt, the concept did not receive universal approval, mainly due to some early logistical issues but after some tweaking, Golf Australia is again running all three cohorts with the men and women playing both The Lakes and the Australian Golf Club on Thursday and Friday before focusing on the Australian Golf Club over the weekend.
One of the modifications is that instead of a 36 and 54-hole cut to accommodate for the large number of golfers playing on Sunday for the men there will not only be one, avoiding the issue that surfaced last year of Cam Smith missing the 54-hole cut after just making the first cut on Friday evening.
The All Abilities field will play all 54 holes of their competition at the Australian Golf Club from Thursday to Saturday.
The involvement of the DP World Tour as a joint sanctioning partner with the PGA Tour of Australasia has seen the strength of the field increase over the last two years and with leading Australians such as Cameron Smith, Adam Scott, Min Woo Lee, Cam Davis, Lucas Herbert and Marc Leishman playing as well as they have been of late then there is plenty of reason to believe we will see another home-grown winner of the event.
Min Woo Lee during practice this week – image AGM
Amongst the women’s field, Minjee Lee is the standout given her world ranking and given she has been a two time winner, once runner-up and two other times inside the top ten in her last six starts on the LPGA Tour after overcoming putting yips then everything points to her being the logical winner.
But Lee will not have everything her own way. Jiyai Shin is a former winner of this event and a prolific winner of titles worldwide. She does not play much on the LPGA Tour now but that has been of her own choice preferring instead to play in Japan and Korea where she has won 30 titles (in Japan) along with another 20 in her homeland of Korea.
Shin finished runner-up at this year’s US Women’s Open and has a liking for Australia having won not only the Australian Open in 2013 but the Australian Ladies Masters, the Women’s Vic Open and the Canberra Classic.
Hannah Green’s form has been a little below her best in 2023 but she did win earlier in the year and must be a consideration given that she has been a three-time LPGA Tour winner including a major title.
Minjee Lee and Hannah Green during this week’s media conference – Image Australian Golf Media
Sydney’s Grace Kim won an LPGA Tour event in her rookie season and is considered one of this country’s bright young stars, as is Gabi Ruffels who has only just secured her full playing rights to the LPGA Tour.
Ashleigh Buhai is the defending champion and although she has played poorly of late, she did win earlier in the season on the LPGA Tour and is a big event player to some degree having won the AIG Women’s Open in 2022.
The event promises to be another showcase of established and emerging Australian talent along with the likes of Riyuka Hoshino and Ryo Hitsatsune from Japan and several quality European players including the defending champion Adrian Meronk.
