Telfer's Thoughts

It has been a very unfortunate week for Lydia Ko. She woke up early one morning last week with a tingling sensation running down her right arm. The timing of this injury couldn’t have been worse, coming as it did on the eve of the year’s first Major Championship for women, the Chevron Championship.

Clearly she felt the medical attention she received was effective enough to allow her to compete in this important event.

Lydia being Lydia didn’t publicly reveal much about her injury. However it’s hard to believe her poor showing at the Chevron was not directly linked to the problems with her arm. Lydia only just made the cut, played nowhere near her best golf across the 4 rounds to finish in a tie for 52nd place.  This was the worst of her 5 performances this year, where she has posted 3 top 6 finishes, including a win.

While Lydia was struggling near the tail of the field, dramatic events were unfolding around the final hole for Ariya Jutanugarn, the Thai golfer and a 2-time Major championship winner, who had a 1- stroke lead. Unfortunately her second shot on this par 5 ran through the very fast green coming to rest some 25 feet from the hole. Her ball was sitting in some light rough, but camera shots showed it was nevertheless a reasonable lie. All Ariya needed to do was to put the ball onto the green, take two putts and the year’s first Major was hers. Alas, disaster befell the Thai as her club face chunked the grass behind the ball and her chip travelled no more than 6 inches, remaining in the light rough. Trying to recover her nerve from such a setback, Jutanugarn then overcompensated with her next chip which saw the ball run 15 feet past the hole. Inevitably, in her badly shaken state, she missed the par putt and had to settle for a bogey 6 which meant, incredibly, 5 golfers including Ariya finished in a tie after 72 holes, all with their scores at 7 under par after 4 rounds.

So all 5 went back to the 18th hole, for a sudden death play-off, probably the very last hole on the planet Jutanugarn would have wanted to play again, given what had happened to her minutes earlier. To Ariya’s credit she managed, along with 3 others in the play-off, to par the hole, but edging them all out with a birdie 4 was Mao Sargo, who was the Tour’s Rookie of the Year in 2024.  Her win today was her first on the LPGA Tour. She becomes the 5th Japanese player to win a Major title and the 4th in the last 5 years. The normal chaotic scenes that rain down on the winner on the 18th green were somewhat muted, as all and sundry shared to some small extent the heartbreak Ariya Jutanugarn was feeling and reeling from.

Another golfer, also feeling somewhat depressed with how things went on the last day, was Kiwi Daniel Hillier. Going into the latest event on the DP World Tour, Daniel was just 1 shot off the lead and must have believed his second DP World Tour was in the offing, especially after the way he had played through the first three days, posting rounds of 67, 70 and 68. However, starting his last round with a double bogey 6 on the first hole rather took him out the race for the title. He wasn’t able to re-capture his form from the first 3 rounds, having to settle for a 1 over par 73 and a share of 9th place.  But he did move up the all-important Race to Dubai points table from 7th to 5th.

Meanwhile Kazuma Kobori, our 23-year-old rookie, once again made the cut on this Tour, but he too couldn’t produce any of his dynamic skills on the last day and, like Hillier, posted a 1 over 73 to finish in a tie for 45th place.

And another tough week for Ryan Fox who, along with his playing partner South African Garrick Higgo, missed the cut at the Zurich Team Classic where birdies were flying off golf clubs like a flock of hungry geese.

The cut in this event in Zurich was 14 under par. Yes, you had to shoot 14 under par just to make the cut. Higgo and Fox were inside the cut after the first round of 4 ball best ball, but the following day on the alternate shot they could do no better than a 2 over par 74 and missed the cut by 8 shots .