WALTON-ON-THE-HILL, ENGLAND | Lilia Vu followed her win in the Chevron Championship, the first major championship of the 2023 season, with a scintillating victory in the fifth and last, the AIG Women’s Open. Level with England’s Charley Hull at the start of the day, Vu shot a closing 67 to finish at 14-under par, six strokes ahead of the home favourite. For Hull, meanwhile, this was her second runner-up in a ’23 major, the other having come at the U.S. Women’s Open at the Pebble Beach.
Nothing fazed Vu on Sunday at Walton Heath – neither Hull nor the handful of Stop Oil protesters who threw smoke canisters onto the 17th green. Said Vu, a 25-year-old Californian, of the latter: “I didn’t want the lady (the lead protester) to step on my line… I was a bit confused.”
She was confused, too, at having played so well when she had played so badly in the U.S. Women’s Open – she missed the cut – as to start wondering whether the Chevron victory had been a bit of a fluke. That thinking was shades of how she felt when, having lost her LPGA card after her rookie season in 2019 and winning it back again in 2021 on the Epson Tour, she spent the whole of ’22 working on her mental approach and trying to rid herself of a negative mindset.
“I stopped seeing each shot as a matter of life and death and was concentrating on playing my best and having a bit more fun,” said Vu, who will climb to No. 1 in the Rolex world rankings for the first time.
Now she smiles more, and it was typical of her that she was so appreciative of the U.K. crowd, which clearly was loving her by the end, even if she had beaten the one player whom they wanted to win above the rest.
“They were amazing,” Vu said. “So supportive.”
Only the looks on the faces on a few of the many children who had come to watch gave the game away as to how not everyone was quite so sporting about the result.
Earlier this year, Hull was diagnosed with ADHD, which she said had turned her into “a hundred-mph person.” She tries deep breathing and meditation by way of keeping it in check but, for the moment at least, she is limited in what she can take in the way of medications because of LPGA regulations.
She always has been a fast player and, all week, she was that 100-mph person. By way of pre-shot preliminaries, she was adding a series of quick-as-a-flash glances at her target before letting rip. Her swing speed was off the charts, even if it isn’t, while you have to wonder how many people will fall on their faces as they try to emulate her in the coming days.
Hull’s eagle at the par-5 11th cut Vu’s lead to two, but the American seemed far too placid of an individual at that point to begin to panic. Though she had missed her birdie putt at that hole, she promptly made one at the par-4 12th, and the result was never in doubt. In truth, there were signs that Hull was running out of steam before she holed a mammoth putt on the 18th green to hang fast to her second place, at which point she and Vu were cheered in equal measure.
“I played well, but Lilia played better,” said Hull, who was her usual charming self in defeat. As an asthmatic, she looked for her inhaler in her golf bag when the smoke came her way across the 17th green. When there was no sign of it, she laughed the incident off instead.
Hull deals with everything so well. Lilia Vu may have had the better of her and gone to No. 1 in the world, but our home hero was saying late Sunday that she feels better placed than she ever has done to win a couple of majors next year.
Lewine Mair