Australia’s Abbie Teasdale utilised sneaky local knowledge to win the English Women’s Open Stroke Play Championship on Saturday at Manchester Golf Club, defeating Nellie Ong on the fourth extra hole after the pair were matched on 8-under 288 through 72 holes.
Teasdale, the winner of last year’s English Women’s Amateur Championship, has maintained that quality in 2023, notching victories on home soil in Perth at the Concord Cup and Western Australia Amateur before claiming the English Under 25 Championship last month at Woburn Golf Club.
Her family immigrated to Australia when Teasdale was a child and returned to the northwest of England last year. Now 20, she enjoys year-round summers, spending half the year based at Royal Fremantle Golf Club where she is coached by Ritchie Smith, who also looks after LPGA stars Minjee Lee and Hannah Green, and the other six months playing out of the Manchester club.
That course knowledge helped her to the top of the leaderboard at the turn of the third round on a marathon 36-hole final day, whereupon she played the back nine in five shots more than 17-year-old Ong to spend her lunch contemplating a final-round deficit of three. She responded with a 4-under front nine to close the gap entirely, and the pair could not be separated in what remained of regulation play as they carded closing laps of 71 and 74, respectively.
In the playoff, Ong missed a victory-clinching opportunity from 7 feet on the first hole before Teasdale holed out from 10 feet at the second to extend the action. With darkness descending, a par on the fourth extra hole secured the title for the Anglo-Australian, whose name joins those of Charley Hull and Jodi Ewart Shadoff on the trophy.
RESULTS
At Golf de Chantilly in France, the Continent of Europe maintained its recent stranglehold on the Jacques Léglise Trophy with a fourth consecutive victory and sixth in the past seven editions of the annual boys match against Great Britain and Ireland. The home team won all four series of matches in a dominant performance and eventually triumphed, 17-8.
France’s Hugo Le Goff and Ukraine’s Lev Grinberg won all three of their starts to lead Europe, and Germany’s Peer Wernicke (2-0-2) and Sweden’s Simon Hovdal (3-1) contributed three points apiece to the winners.
Two of the visitors stood tall in defeat. Scotland’s Niall Sheils Donegan claimed two singles wins and a foursomes half, and England’s Kris Kim, a four-time winner this year, added to his growing reputation with two victories alongside compatriot Dylan Shaw-Radford in the foursomes plus a half point when leading the final-day singles roster.
Matt Cooper