Can Hannah Green continue the roll at Chevron Championship
Hannah Green – the female game’s most in form player gets her chance at a second major
The first major of the year in women’s professional golf gets underway this week when the Chevron Championship is played at the Memorial Park Golf Course in Houston in Texas, a new venue for the event.
Following 51 years at the Rancho Mirage in California the event moved to Houston, the home of its naming rights sponsor in 2023, where it was played at the Jack Nicklaus designed Club at Carlton Woods before its move to new venue for this year’s event.
While Memorial Park is being used for the first occasion for this event, it did play host earlier this year to the PGA Tour’s Houston Open won by Gary Woodland.
Eight Australasians and one New Zealander will tackle the US$9 million event, Karrie Webb the last Australian to win the title when she holed her pitching wedge approach at the 72nd hole to force a playoff with Lorena Ochoa which Webb went on to win and claim her second Chevron Championship (then known as the Kraft Nabisco) and her 7th major title, the greatest of any Australian male or female
New Zealand’s Lydia Ko won in 2016, defeating England’s Charley Hull and Ingee Chun by one shot to claim the second of her now three major titles.
Hannah Green, Minjee Lee, Lydia Ko, Grace Kim, Stephanie Kyriacou, Karis Davidson, Cassie Porter, Gabi Ruffels and Robyn Choi represent a strong challenge from our part of the world.
Undoubtedly Hannah Green will start the week as the form golfer of 2026 given she already won the Australian Women’s Open and PGA Championships, against admittedly lesser quality fields, to go with LPGA Tour titles in Singapore and Los Angeles.
Green is now the highest ranked Australasian in the Rolex World Rankings at # 5 and ahead of Minjee Lee at 7 and Lydia Ko at 8 and spoke on Tuesday as to her thoughts on how this week might unfold.
“Yeah, I feel like I’m still somewhat on Cloud 9,” said the now eight time LPGA Tour winner. “I just finished my pro-am and didn’t do anything yesterday, on Monday. Just felt like I was too exhausted from the flight over.
“But, yeah, I definitely have a lot of confidence in my game. It’s been a really crazy I guess last five, six events that I’ve played. Obviously every time you come to a tournament you want to win, have the trophy in your hand; actually doing it has been very surreal.
“I’m just going to try and ride this wave for as long as possible.”
Green was asked her thoughts on the venue, given it is new for the LPGA Tour
“I think it’ll be really good for the tournament. Even though I really liked the Woodlands area, I really hope being close to the city will attract more people to come and watch us.
“The Houston Open has obviously been played here. I have seen that the crowds can get big, so I hope that people come out and watch us. It’s playing tough. It’s playing quite long. Obviously, this rain is not really helping either, making things a little bit more difficult for us.
“But I think it definitely feels like a major championship course, at least on the last nine holes that I played.”
Lee began the season well with two top 5 finishes, but missed the cut at her third start and then somewhat withdrew from last week’s JM Eagle Championship in Los Angeles, suffering from a bout of food poisoning, according to reports.
Ko has begun the season well with three top 5 finishes in six starts, and although she did not play at last week’s lucrative JM Eagle Championship, she appears to be in good enough form to do well this week.
The event carries a first prize of US$1,350,000.
