Ashleigh Buhai has held on to grow to be the primary back-to-back girls’s Australian Open champion in additional than a decade, combating off a late problem from Minjee Lee.
Key factors:
- Buhai received regardless of capturing a three-over-par 75 within the remaining spherical
- Lee completed a stroke behind Buhai in second place
- Joaquin Niemann received the lads’s match by way of a play-off
The South African denied Australian Lee an elusive nationwide championship with a tension-filled one-stroke overcome the favored pre-tournament favorite.
Buhai closed with a nervy three-over-par 75 at The Australian in Sydney to complete with a nine-under 280 whole and efficiently defend the title she received final yr on the Victoria Golf Membership in Melbourne.
In the meantime, Chilean Joaquin Niemann defeated Japan’s Rikuya Hoshino in a play-off in a unprecedented finale to the lads’s match.
Buhai, 34, is the primary participant to win successive Opens since 2011.
However regardless of being as many as 4 photographs in entrance down the stretch, Buhai’s victory was something however comfy.
Extremely, she couldn’t discover a single birdie all spherical, whereas the vanquished runner-up Lee rolled in eight.
Trailing by 4 photographs with 5 holes to play, Lee reduce Buhai’s result in only one heading up the final after the 2022 British Open champion discovered the water on the seventeenth.
Nevertheless, a treasured par on the 18th gap was sufficient for Buhai as Lee was unable to vogue a ninth birdie in an in any other case valiant three-under spherical of 69.
After beginning the day seven strokes behind, Lee knew she wanted to conjure one thing particular.
She delivered, sinking six birdies within the first 10 holes.
Some wretched unhealthy luck on the eleventh gap, when her ball ensconced itself deep within the upslope of a bunker, may have cruelled two-time main winner Lee’s momentum.
However the world quantity 5 dismissed the bogey and swiftly posted a bounce-back birdie on the twelfth gap.
Lee’s hopes once more appeared to evaporate when she double-bogeyed the par-four thirteenth after leaving her method brief, then watched her chip shot spin again off the inexperienced.
However Buhai provided her a lifeline with successive bogeys of her personal on 13 and 14 — her first blemishes since Friday — and Lee replied with the eighth birdie to cut back the deficit to 2 photographs as soon as once more.
Alas for Lee, Buhai calmly two-putted from 12 toes on the final to shut out the championship.
Niemann reigns supreme
Niemann cashed in with an eagle on the second additional gap after a trio of big-name native hopes let the title slip throughout a wild remaining spherical.
Beginning the day 4 photographs behind, Niemann — who plies his commerce on the LIV Golf breakaway league after defecting from the PGA Tour — stormed house with a final-round 5-under 66.
Hoshino closed with a 70 to make the play-off at 14-under however completed runner-up for the second week in a row, having final week completed three photographs behind rising Australian famous person Min Woo Lavatory on the Australian PGA Championship.
Lee will likely be ruing not saluting once more after he entered the ultimate spherical as co-leader with Hoshino.
And former world quantity Adam Scott and fellow US PGA Tour star Lucas Herbert additionally had one hand on the Stonehaven Cup at phases through the remaining spherical.
Whereas Lee relinquished his lead early, Scott and Herbert had turns at trying probably winners down the stretch, solely to falter in unimaginable vogue.
Within the house of seven miserable minutes for Australian golf followers, each posted triple-bogey sevens to see their hopes vanish.
From 14-under and outright chief with three holes to play, Scott — who began his spherical on the tenth — drove out of bounds on the par-four seventh.
After making the lengthy stroll again to the tee, he couldn’t make par along with his second ball and out of the blue tumbled to 11-under.
Moments later, Herbert, additionally at 14-under, discovered the timber on the ninth gap and recorded his triple-bogey.
He by no means recovered as Niemann and Hoshino each finally compelled a play-off on the identical rating the 2 crestfallen Australians had reached barely two hours earlier.
AAP
