Predicting the winner of any tournament is a hard enough task at the best of times; trying to identify the winner of a women’s major championship right now is proving one of golf’s most elusive goals, a riddle wrapped in an ace inside an albatross. The past 22 majors have produced 21 different champions – only Minjee Lee, at the 2021 Evian Championship and 2022 US Open, has doubled up during that time – and of those 21 players, 17 were first‑time major winners. Godspeed your pin as you stick it into the tee sheet before the Women’s Open at Walton Heath.
Céline Boutier, who won her first major at the Evian 11 days ago, followed it up last weekend with victory at the Scottish Open. She’s in the form of her life, her long game solid, her approaches dialled in, her flat stick rolling true. She’s the hottest ticket in town – yet the 29-year-old Parisian, aiming to become the first woman to win back‑to‑back majors since Inbee Park captured the Dinah Shore, PGA and US Open in short order in 2013, isn’t particularly willing to talk up her chances of winning the record $1.35m (£1.06m) winner’s purse this week.
“I know the odds,” Boutier says. “To be fair, even winning two in a row is already pretty low, so I know three is like … it would be unbelievable if it happens, but I’m just not going to put a lot of pressure on myself. I’m just so happy to have already won my first major.”
What of the defending champion Ashleigh Buhai, whose performance at Muirfield 12 months ago was a masterclass in moxie? Having let a five-shot 54-hole lead slip on Sunday, mainly as the result of a triple-bogey on 15, the jig looked up for Buhai, already burdened with a sour fifth-place finish at Woburn in 2019, another Women’s Open she had led at one stage by five. But she gathered herself and came through four holes of sudden-death playoff drama with Chun In-gee, a dam-breaching victory that sparked “the best eight months of [her] career.”
Open wins in Australia and back home in South Africa followed and Buhai also goes into the week full of the confidence that comes with a major-championship breakthrough. “Winning the Women’s Open in the fashion I did sparked something in me. It gave me the confidence to know I could win in the biggest pressure situation. If my game is there, I can win.” And yet, armed with the knowledge that nobody has retained this title since Yani Tseng in 2011? “It’s very difficult to defend, we all know this. There’s a lot of pressure.”
While Boutier and Buhai deal with history and expectation, the recent run of breakthrough winners may give succour to those yet to take the last step to glory. Ireland’s Leona Maguire hopes the experience of leading the PGA after 54 holes at Baltusrol this year will serve her well. “I just didn’t have enough in the tank to get over the line. I’d like to think that if I get myself in that position again, I’ll approach it a little differently.”
The course – a composite of Walton Heath’s Old and New tracks – has taken on way more rain than is normal for August and is expected to play long. “I like hitting my woods and my hybrid, so it’s not something that bothers me,” Maguire says. “Out of the bunkers and out of the heather will be the big key.”
Walton Heath’s signature shrub is also uppermost in the mind of the Olympic champion Nelly Korda. “It almost broke my wrist today,” she said with a smile. “It’s not easy. It’s really bouncy. If you get a good lie, then maybe, but 95% of the time you will be pitching out with a 58 degree just to try to get it back into play. It’s really tough to get out of that.”
Korda also came out swinging hard against slow play after Carlota Ciganda’s disqualification at the Evian. “I enjoy playing with Carlota … but slow play should be monitored – if I’m being honest, if I was a spectator and I was out here for five-and-a-half hours to six hours, it’s tough to watch.”
A small note of warning there for the R&A’s chief executive, Martin Slumbers, who spoke of his dream to see Open Championship‑sized crowds of 250,000 at a Women’s Open in the near future, an ambition eagerly shared by Georgia Hall. “I’d love to see it,” the 2018 champion says. “I think it’s definitely possible. People will be pleasantly surprised at the crowds we have here this week. This event keeps getting better every year and raises the bar for other majors.”
