Since many players and fans at last week’s HSBC Women’s World Championship were referring to the event as “Asia’s major,” is there not a case for giving it official major status? After all, it has been based in Singapore and had the same sponsors since 2008.
Bearing in mind that the Japanese, Chinese and Korean players as a whole are currently stronger than their European and the American counterparts, it seems somewhat unfair that America should have three majors, Europe two and Asia none.
People might ask if it isn’t enough to leave the HSBC tournament sticking with the “Asia’s major” slogan. The answer here is that it’s probably not. Attractive though the slogan is, anyone who wins what is seen by many as a major wants the “major” label that goes with it.
This is maybe stirring up more trouble but, along slightly different lines, there are several of today’s majors in which the winners from the pre-major days don’t get to call themselves major champions. The Evian Championship is one, the Chevron Championship (formerly the Dinah Shore) another. And then there’s the AIG Women’s Open (formerly the Women’s British Open).
When the last-mentioned started in 1976, Jenny Lee Smith, who won the tournament as an amateur, was given a gold pin etched with the words “1976 British Women’s Open champion.” Yet it was not until the event was given major status in 2001 that the winners could rightfully say, “I’ve just won a major.”
All of which is a bit different to how things worked in the men’s Open Championship, which started in 1860. Though the word “major” was not attributed to it until the 1960s by members of the media, every winner of the Open, from Willie Park Sr. and Old Tom Morris onwards, is on the list of major champions. (This, of course, was always going to happen in the years when golf was seen as more of a men’s game and there was none of the equality that became de rigueur at the start of this century.)
“I won the event when it had just become the British Women’s Open,” Lee Smith, whose married name is Jenny Lucas, said. “It seems crazy to me that everyone who won it from the start doesn’t get the same treatment as the men did.”
Let Alison Nicholas, who won the U.S. Women’s Open in 1997 and the Women’s British Open in 1987, explain how those two results have worked for her. When people ask how many majors she has won, she has to go through the following rigmarole: “I have to explain that although I won both, the British Open doesn’t count as a major because I won it [14] years too soon.”
Australia’s Karrie Webb, who was made an honorary member of the R&A in 2024, is another who believes that the Women’s British Open, which she won three times – in 1995, 1997 and in 2002 when it was a major – “should have been made a major well before 2001.”
Similarly, Lucas thinks that the same process should be adopted if and when the HSBC Women’s World Championship is given the higher ranking that would mean so much on that side of the world.
“This is technically Asia’s major,” said Singapore’s Shannon Tan, who came through the local qualifier last week. “It’s a big event and nine of the world’s top 10 players came. To be playing amongst the top names adds to my learning experience.”
For the record, the Evian Championship is the only major where the fast-advancing Asian corps do not hold sway. In 2025, the tournament’s top 10 included three Australians, two Thais, two Americans, one English, one Irish and one Mexican.
The Chevron’s top 10 and ties for 2025 consisted of eight Asians, two Americans, a Spaniard and a Belgian; the U.S. Women’s Open top 10 included two Swedes, six Asians, one English and one Australian; and the AIG Women’s Open top 10 included five Asians, two English, one American, one Australian, and one Spaniard.
Apart from the fact that Singapore is wrapped up in its golf and that the Sentosa estate, where the tournament is held, is a picture of wild flowers, monkeys and bird life, the courses at Sentosa Golf Club are long, testing and gloriously manicured. If you look at what the various players have to say about this island city, they never fail to mention the local foodstuffs and the charm of Singapore itself, what with its shopping centre in Orchard Road and its posters of past HSBC champions hanging from the lampposts.
Lydia Ko, who won the title in 2025, reiterated only last week that she loved heading for somewhere so friendly and such fun. There is the odd venue where you think, “Here we go again,” but she has made it clear that Singapore isn’t one of them.
Top: The HSBC Women’s World Championship has been based in Singapore since 2008.
Ross Kinnaird, Getty Images