PORTHCAWL, WALES | With the leaderboard crammed with great players from around the world, it was anyone’s guess as to who would win the AIG Women's Open. Down the stretch, it was a close-run thing between Japan’s Miyu Yamashita and England’s Charley Hull, one which looked as if it might end with the 29-year-old Hull capturing her first major. Alas, she missed greens at each of the last three holes at Royal Porthcawl to let the 24-year-old Yamashita make off with the trophy.
A picture of Japanese calm after opening rounds of 68 and 65 that gave her a three-stroke lead, Yamashita had switched to playing the famous links via the rough on Saturday. The fans behind the ropes felt for her; they knew that long and spiky grass better than she did.
It looked as if the girl and her lead had disappeared altogether when she knocked her second into a greenside bunker at the 17th, only for a par-par finish to allow her to hang on to a slight, one-stroke advantage over A Lim Kim.
Which route was this rookie on the LPGA Tour going to take Sunday – the rough road or the fairway? And who among the chasing pack was going to be the biggest threat? Of course it was Charley … after a chorus of “Go Charleys” from the first tee, she wrested that second place from Kim. She was 8-under to Yamashita’s 10-under after six holes and well into her stride. A stride that reminded one of Laura Davies on the day when JoAnne Carner said that she played at a pace to suggest she had “something better to do when she’d finished.”
How sad it was when the excitement came to a full stop before the end but what a championship it had been.
For the R&A, the leaderboard was one more example of the governing body’s success in spreading the game – something they talk about all the time. Mark Darbon, the new CEO, liked what he was seeing. “It fits perfectly with what we are aiming at,” he said.
What Darbon would like to happen now is for the public to be told more about those overseas players who are virtual unknowns outside their native lands. “Everyone has seen enough to know that they’re great golfers, but we need to start telling people more about their characters – and it’s something we’ve been working on in this week’s preview tapes.”
How sensible is that ...
Of course, everyone would have liked to know more about the Japanese contingent, six of whom were in the top 10 on the first day and three among the top five at the end.
For all we know, there could be a handful of characters like Hull hiding behind their often serious faces. However, when Hinako Shibuno became the first Japanese player to win the Women’s Open in its major guise – at Woburn in 2019 – she had led us all up the garden path by laughing her way round the course. Last week, a Japanese media gentleman explained that Hinako was “a bit of a one off.” (For the record, when she was talking to her caddie about her shot to Woburn's 72nd green, she burst forth with an improbable but charming, “What if I shank it?”)
Yamashita seemed a quiet enough soul, but GGP enjoyed a brief chat with her parents before the tee off Sunday with the help of a Japanese coach. They talked about the ice skating at which Miyu had excelled as a child, and how she had started golf at 5 and loved it ever since, with her father doing the coaching. Then, a question as to whether she had enjoyed school elicited Hinako-like shrieks of laughter from mother and father alike. “She may be at the top of the leaderboard,” said her mother, “but she was at the bottom of the class.”
Meanwhile, Darbon would have been well satisfied with Bronte Law’s comments on the state of the women’s game. Though the 30-year-old English player had benefited from the help she received from England Golf, and from America’s college system, she said that what has happened in the intervening years has been another thing again.
“The R&A have put women’s golf on the map by working so hard on the Open,” she said. “It’s completely different since they took it over [from the Ladies’ Golf Union] and it’s showcasing how much the game is growing."
That said, Law spoke of the extent to which the men are still way ahead of them in so many areas. With last week’s Open, the only thing she wanted to criticise was the TV coverage; they weren’t getting the same wall-to-wall coverage as the men had enjoyed during their Open at Royal Portrush. Then she added that the women “aren’t playing for what they are worth” at too many of the lesser Ladies European Tour tournaments. “Sometimes, they can’t afford to have caddies. ... We need help.”
For crowd favourites at Porthcawl, you did not have to look beyond the local heroine Darcy Harry, Nelly Korda, Lottie Woad, [Charley] Hull and Georgia Hall, the latter of whom began her week by giving the starter a big hug when he congratulated her on her engagement.
For a prime example of an island where the game is coming on by the day, you only have to look at Singapore. There, they began serious women’s golf from scratch and did not have any “undoing” to attend to before getting started. Shannon Tan, who was given a place in the pro-am ahead of the HSBC Women’s World Championship at the age of 12, was signed on by an HSBC youth programme backed by the R&A and ended up with a scholarship to Texas Tech, where she stayed for a year and a half before winning her LET card.
“It all started for me when I was given that opportunity to play in the HSBC,”' said the now 21-year-old Tan. “Today, there are lots of children following me.”
For crowd favourites at Porthcawl, you did not have to look beyond the local heroine Darcy Harry, Nelly Korda, Lottie Woad, Hull and Georgia Hall, the latter of whom began her week by giving the starter a big hug when he congratulated her on her engagement. Her fiancé, a professional golfer by name of Paul Dunne, was caddying for her and perhaps as a result, her play had taken a turn for the better.
And how was this for entertainment. Paula Martin Sampedro, the Spaniard who defeated Farah O’Keefe to win the Women’s Amateur Championship at Nairn earlier this year besides making off with the European Ladies’ Amateur, had five birdies in a row from the 11th on Sunday to win the Smyth Salver, the equivalent of the Open’s Silver Medal – a prize that was not awarded at Royal Portrush when no male amateurs made the cut.
The fans at Porthcawl, of whom there were not too many and not too few (and let’s hope it stays that way), were able to sit and watch the golf on a screen when they were not walking the course. As for the tented village, that was quite a treat, what with different foodstuffs from Welsh fare to the kind of dishes that the Japanese and Korean players would enjoy in their own homes.
A band played in the evenings, while those leaving the premises were seen off by dancing girls and invited to jig along beside them. Yamashita might even have been prevailed upon to follow suit.
E-MAIL LEWINE
Top: Miyu Yamashita, 24, stayed steady to win by two strokes.
Morgan Harlow, R&A VIA GETTY IMAGES