in the round at the Evian<\/a> and then I still wasn\u2019t feeling well until Sunday last week. So I think I did pretty well and considering my mindset coming into it. I\u2019m pretty proud of myself.<\/p>\n\u201cAt the end of the day, it\u2019s just a game. That\u2019s what I think about and I enjoyed it out there. I just love that adrenaline feeling. It\u2019s so good, it\u2019s like a massive hit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Minami Katsu tied Hull\u2019s aggregate but was never a threat to the winner. Hull sat 11 adrift after 36 holes of this major. With three front-nine birdies in round four, Hull closed to within one of the leaderboard\u2019s summit. What happened next turned the Women\u2019s Open back in Yamashita\u2019s favour. As she delivered birdies at the 8th and 9th, Hull could only par the 9th and 10th. The leader\u2019s advantage was three.<\/p>\n
Hull displayed typical tenacity over the closing stretch. She had promised to play like a kid, to attack every hole and stayed true to her word. Her iron into the par three 12th was laser-like, setting up a birdie. The 29-year-old picked up another shot at the 14th, outstandingly so after finding thick grass from the tee. Was Yamashita now feeling the heat? A drive into the bunker at the par-five 13th, followed by a tame greenside chip, suggested so. Yamashita steadied herself and jabbed back at Hull with a wonderful, converted par putt from long range.<\/p>\n
The final, key moments were still to arrive. Hull hit into sand from the 16th tee. She could barely advance the ball far from there before overshooting the putting surface with her third. Hull bravely rescued a bogey, just as Yamashita slammed home an 8ft par putt two holes behind. Yamashita was two clear with four to play. Another Hull dropped shot at the penultimate hole meant Yamashita doing likewise made no material difference.<\/p>\n
Charley Hull lines up a putt on her way to second place in the Women\u2019s Open. Photograph: Nigel French\/PA<\/p>\n
Yamashita is the third player from Japan to win this tournament but the second since it was afforded major status. Her swing is so stable one wonders how she can ever miss. A putting wobble towards the end of round three proved the exception to Yamashita\u2019s 2025 Women\u2019s Open rule. That she withstood everything Hull threw at her on a gusty afternoon says so much for the new champion\u2019s mentality. \u201cTo win such a historic tournament in front of all these amazing fans is such an incredible feeling,\u201d said Yamashita. Victory came the day after her 24th birthday.<\/p>\n
South Korea\u2019s Kim A-lim and Japan\u2019s Rio Takeda shared fourth at seven under. Lottie Woad\u2019s tournament closed with a 71 and four-under total for a top-10 finish. Woad will have learned a lot in Wales, including what it is like to play under such a burden of expectation. Victory at last weekend\u2019s Scottish Open on her first professional start meant she was in uncharted territory here. She will relish settling into the United States and the LPGA Tour over the coming weeks.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think it affected my golf but there was definitely a lot more attention, a lot more eyes on me,\u201d Woad said. \u201cI feel like I handled it pretty well overall and was just sticking to my game, just trying to focus on the preparation really and not let it distract me too much. It was a pretty good week overall, it was pretty solid.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Charley Hull is due high praise for at least making this interesting. It may be of little consolation…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":116936,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[1430,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-116935","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-golf","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114967786583724675","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}