Celine Boutier’s dual victories at the Evian Championship and Scottish Women’s Open have solidified her as a compelling contender to watch at this week’s Women’s British Open
After the four men’s majors concluded with The Open championship a couple of weeks ago, attention quickly shifted to the two remaining Women’s majors – the Evian Championship and The Women’s Open.
The tall athletic Celine Boutier made history by becoming the first Frenchwoman to win the Evian – which is played on her home soil and now we speculate on what history will unfold as the Women’s Open is played at the historic Walton Heath GC, just south of London.
With the USGA staging the Women’s US Open at Pebble Beach for the first time ever, we wonder if the R&A too have similarly chosen this 1981 Ryder Cup venue with the history of being the home club for 45 years of five-time British Open champion James Braid ( a the turn of the century).
Fittingly, Walton Heath was also a pioneer when it came to promoting women’s golf, with women able to become full members prior to World War II. The course for the Women’s Open, the fifth and final major of the Women’s season, will combine holes from the Old and the New Courses to create a different challenge for the best women golfers in the world.
Indians Aditi Ashok and Diksha Dagar will be in the field this week and we hope they will take inspiration from Shubhankar’s record setting 8th place finish at The Open championship two weeks ago at Royal Liverpool.
Here are three storylines that we think are worth following:
Can Celine Boutier win three events in a row?
It’s @celineboutier … again!
She won @Womens_Scottish with her @Titleist Pro V1x pic.twitter.com/Ct3XNHQApE
— LPGA (@LPGA) August 6, 2023
Boutier is the hottest women’s golfer in the world and appears in complete control of her game. Two weeks ago she won the Evian Championship in commanding fashion to claim her first major. She followed that up by winning the Scottish Open last week, one year after finishing second in the same event.
European Women’s golf will get a huge boost from producing a new world no 1 – which they haven’t enjoyed since the dominant days of Sweden’s Anika Sorenstam.
Thailand’s Ariya Jutanugarn was the last player to have won three LPGA events in a row, which she did in 2016. But none of those wins were a major.
Boutier, who has risen to World No. 4, is the only player on the LPGA Tour with three Wins already this season and leads both the LPGA and the Ladies European Tour rankings. She’s already the leading contender forLPGA Player of the Year award and another major win would lock that up.
Battle among the top 2 – Nelly Korda or Jin Young Ko ?
Get to know the stars of the AIG Women’s Open in this thread
Find out who’s got a twin sister, who loves scary movies and who just can’t keep a white shirt clean.
First up, @NellyKorda! pic.twitter.com/IQM6gNkDNO
— AIG Women’s Open (@AIGWomensOpen) August 7, 2023
Nelly Korda and Jin Young Ko have traded the No. 1 ranking between themselves since April . Currently Korda is No. 1 and Ko at No 2 . However, Korda has yet to win on the LPGA Tour this season while Ko won in mid-May.
Korda won her first major in 2021, but had to miss time in 2022 to deal with a blood clot in her arm.
Jin Young Ko won her major in 2019 which took her to No. 1 for the first time and she has held that ranking for the most weeks of anyone since then, never falling out of the top 5 in that span. If she wins, she and Boutier would be the only two players with two wins this year and with give both a major which would throw the Player of the Year race wide open.
Could we get another unexpected winner?
Recent history in the Women’s Open, however, suggests that the winner will not come from among the world’s top 5 players. The last three Women’s (British) Opens have been won by players ranked outside the top-50.
If you go back to 2019, Japan’s Hinako Shibuno was ranked 44 th when she won while Britisher Georgia Hall was ranked 39 th when she won in 2018.
The Women’s Open was also the first major title for five of the last six winners. The exception was Anna Norquist, who won her third major in Carnoustie, Scotland in Norquist was struggling with her game that year and had earned only $283,715 in 14 tournaments leading into the Women’s Open, so her win was something of a surprise as well.
On top of that, the last five majors on the LPGA tour have also been claimed by first- time winners. In fact, 21 of the last 22 women’s majors have been won by first-time champions, illustrating the parity that currently exists in the women’s game.
Will Boutier, Korda, or Jin Young Ko buck that trend, or will we see yet another player emerge from the pack and grab her chance at major glory?
Credits:-
Photo – LPGA