Japan’s Miyu Yamashita secured victory in the AIG Women’s Open at Royal Porthcawl with an assured performance that mocked the golf’s world scant knowledge of her previous achievements and abundant potential.
Her triumph was built around a second round of 7-under-par 65 played in the calmest conditions of the week. Half the field had the opportunity to make such a decisive move yet only Yamashita did so.
Heading into the weekend with a three-shot advantage over her compatriot Rio Takeda, she was seven strokes clear of everyone else in the field and the buffer proved vital. Only England’s Charley Hull, who was a distant 11 shots back at halfway, mounted a concerted bid for the title, twice getting with a shot of the champion. Ultimately, however, she recorded a fourth second place finish in the major championships – her first victory remains elusive.
Yamashita completed an 11-under par total of 277 to land her first win on the LPGA and while some viewed the result as a shock she was ranked 15th in the world at the start of the week off the back of 13 wins in her homeland since turning professional in 2020. It would be no surprise if this major win was the first of many.
Early in Sunday’s final round, England’s Mimi Rhodes, who finished T19th, completed a remarkable hole-in-one at the 184-yard par-3 fifth. Her partner, Australia’s Stephanie Kyriacou, had made an ace of her own at the eighth hole in the second round and on this occasion knocked her tee shot to within inches of the hole. Rhodes’s effort then went in-off Kyriacou’s ball.
If Yamashita was the champion, England’s Lottie Woad was the golfer who drove most conversations through the week.
The 21-year-old can’t remember what she was doing on the first day of July, but essentially she was a student on her summer break. On the last day of the month, in contrast, she started the first round of the final major championship of the year as the clear bookies favourite.
It goes without saying that in between she didn’t go Interrailing or work in a coffee shop. Instead, she won the Ladies European Tour’s Irish Open by six shots and the LPGA’s Scottish Open by three strokes – the former as an amateur, the latter as a professional.
It was an astounding spell of golf, possibly the greatest farewell to the amateur game, and hello to the professional ranks, in British golf history. That she was disappointed with her performance at Royal Porthcawl, and still finished tied eighth, says everything about both her talent and desire.
It’s not the first time that an Englishwoman has announced herself to British golf in spectacular fashion on the shores of the Bristol Channel. In 1933, at Royal North Devon, Gloria Minoprio wowed her peers when contesting the English Ladies Championship with nothing more than a 2-iron.
Onlookers, meanwhile, were agog that she stepped straight from a Rolls Royce to the first tee wearing a blue-black pair of trousers. Albeit briefly, she became a nationwide sensation for being the first women golfer to compete in something other than a skirt.
Minoprio and Woad are significantly different characters. Where Minoprio was flashy and, indeed, a flash in the pan, Woad is unfussy and likely to be around for a very long time.
Nigel Edwards, who worked with Woad in his role as England Golf’s Performance Director, is cautious and yet cannot hide his admiration of her straightforward nature and the quality of her driving which, he says, “Consistently provides her with the opportunity to score.”
“Her potential is immense,” said BBC golf correspondent Iain Carter. “She is great from the tee, makes very few unforced errors, her chipping is extraordinary, and her putting under pressure is first rate.
“Most significantly of all, she has the temperament, the determination and the competitiveness to make the most of her talents and to enjoy doing so. She appear to have a genuine appetite for winning at the top level.”
Woad was not the only youngster to enjoy a stellar July. The Australian Grace Kim went eagle-birdie-eagle to win the Evian Championship, her first LPGA title. The 24-year-old’s compatriot, Minjee Lee, is something of an older sister figure to her and understands that both Kim and Woad are yet to fully appreciate the extent to which their lives have changed.
“It’s probably too close to the wins and they’re still on a high,” she said. “When they’ve had a little time off it will begin to sink in.”
Now a three-time major championship winner, Lee was a phenomenon herself, winning twice on the LPGA before her 20th birthday. She remembers that time as “something of a blur” and expects Woad may feel the same. She also remembers riding the wave. “It felt like go, go, go,” she said and encouraged Woad to take a similar approach.
There’s a palpable sense that British golf is engaged in a tricky balancing act, weighing giddy excitement against unreasonable expectations.
Alison Nicholas, the 1997 US Women’s Open champion and two-time winning Solheim Cup captain, is confident of Woad’s ability to cope with the inevitable off-the-course duties. “She’s pretty measured and you can only control your own expectations,” she said. “You can’t control anybody else’s. She just has to stick to her own bubble and ignore the world a little bit.”
Woad is yet to complete her studies at Florida State University in Tallahassee. She will continue to use her apartment there as a base while slowly taking the remaining classes required to graduate (it might take up to three years but she’s in no rush).
“I don’t feel too different,” she said after five weeks that had changed her life. “Everyone’s been really nice. It’s been great.” Those words reveal the true Woad. As special as she is on the golf course, she is utterly normal off it.
