AIG Women’s Open 2024: Everything you need to know

AIG Women's Open 2024: Everything you need to know

This summer the AIG Women’s Open is returning to St Andrews for the first time since 2013. Here’s everything you need to know about the 2024 Championship.

America’s Lilia Vu will defend the trophy she claimed in decisive fashion at Walton Heath last year, but she will face a field determined to make their mark at the Home of Golf. Youngsters and veterans, homegrown heroes and international superstars, professionals and amateurs – The Old Course awaits them all for the AIG Women’s Open.

What is the history of the event?

Surprising, in a word. You’d think the AIG Women’s Open would have a long and storied history. Maybe not as old as The Open itself, but the women’s game was thriving in the early years of the 20th century and exhibition match-ups between the great male and female golfers were common in the 1920s and ’30s on both sides of the Atlantic. And yet the Women’s Open didn’t exist until 1976, when the British Open Amateur Stroke Play, which itself debuted in 1969, was extended to include professionals.

The first event was actually won by an amateur and the second title, in 1977, was determined by a countback! The event almost folded in the 1980s and became an LPGA co-sanctioned event in 1994, before becoming a Major championship in 2001. Now organised by the R&A, and with a superstructure to match the men’s tours, the chaos of those early years is almost forgotten.

What about its recent history?

The championship has sparkled in the last few years. England’s Georgia Hall (see our exclusive interview on page 49) kicked things off with a superb exhibition of links golf at Royal Lytham & St Annes in 2018.
A year later Japan’s Hinako Shibuno rocked up to her Major championship debut expecting to find a seaside course. Delighted to discover Woburn was a tree-lined layout that reminded her of home, she romped to victory.

In 2020, Germany’s Sophia Popov, ranked 304 in the world, completed a remarkable double, winning £1,700 for a minor tour win at Troon North GC in Arizona in May and £515,000 for a Major triumph three months later at Royal Troon. The Swede Anna Nordqvist claimed a third Major championship at Carnoustie in 2021 before South Africa’s Ashleigh Buhai defied her nerves, Korea’s In Gee Chun and rapidly descending darkness to complete play-off victory at Muirfield in 2022.

What happened in last year’s championship?

Unlike The Open, the AIG Women’s Open has never been limited to the linksland of Britain and Ireland, but last year marked a first championship venture to the heathland majesty of Walton Heath. Soon-to-be Prime Minister David Lloyd George was a member there and his nearby home was attacked by the Suffragettes in 1913; 110 years later there was another politically motivated protest as Just Stop Oil demonstrators ran on to the 17th green ahead of the arrival of the leaders in the final round. They failed to derail Lilia Vu, who had also swept aside the challenge of Charley Hull with a clinical display that secured a six-shot victory over the Englishwoman.

Where does the Women’s Open stand among the five Majors?

Unlike the men’s game, which has three Majors of equal status and a fourth that sits below, the women’s Majors are more fluid in standing with one exception: the US Women’s Open stands above them all.
It can be argued that American golfers view the Chevron Championship and KPMG Women’s PGA Championship as the next rank down while British players undoubtedly view the AIG Women’s Open as second best.

In truth, all three are alike in stature, with the Evian Championship rated fifth. And of course, there’s another obvious difference: the women’s game has five, not four, tournaments that can define a golfer’s career.

How many Opens has The Old Course hosted?

This year’s AIG Women’s Open will be just the third to be hosted by The Old Course in St Andrews. The first was claimed by Mexico’s Lorena Ochoa in 2007. Already the World No.1, she carded a bunker- free and bogey-free opening round of 67 to open up a lead she never looked like conceding.

Six years later, the American Stacy Lewis was happy to return to St Andrews because she had represented Team USA there in 2008 and become the first-ever player to win five points in a Curtis Cup. She rented an apartment a wedge distance from the 18th green and secured the championship with a brilliant birdie-birdie finish.

Do the women enjoy the Home of Golf as much as the men?

It would certainly seem so. At the end of May, the 2018 champion Georgia Hall looked out across The Old Course and it was hard to stop her rhapsodising about the Auld Grey Toon.

“As soon as I’m here I’m just happier,” she said. “The atmosphere is amazing, the town is amazing.
I want to buy a house or flat up here. That’s how much I enjoy it. There’s nothing else like it. I’ve never seen ‘normal’ people just standing around watching golfers. It’s just incredible.”

“Being British, this event is always the most important one of the year for me, but it’s just extra special being in St Andrews. All of us will want to win a little bit more.”

Who leads the home challenge this time around?

It’s Hall again. She not only won the championship six years ago, she was also third at Kingsbarns in 2017, second at Carnoustie in 2021 and she tied Lydia Ko for low amateur honours in the 2013 Open on The Old Course. She also has vivid memories of playing alongside Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy and Lee Trevino in the four-hole Celebration of Champions event ahead of the 150th Open two years ago.

If Hall loves the linksland, her good friend and compatriot Charley Hull is a little more ambiguous about it. In fact, she once admitted that she prefers a tree-lined venue so much that she visualises trees flanking the fairways when she’s playing by the seaside.

It was perhaps no surprise that she posted her championship best with a second last year at Walton Heath, but she does have three top-25 finishes on the links in the championship and she’s getting closer to a first Major triumph – she was also second in last year’s US Women’s Open at Pebble Beach.

Could Lottie Woad spring a surprise? Well, if she did, it wouldn’t be that big a surprise. The 20-year- old Englishwoman played the final four holes in 3-under-par to deservedly win the Augusta National Women’s Amateur last April. She also won the 2022 Sunningdale Foursomes alongside Rachel Gourley in a display of ruthless golf that hinted at a fine talent with a smart brain. She finished tied 23rd on her Major championship debut at this year’s Chevron Championship and is well capable of improving on that.

Will Nelly Korda go in as favourite at St Andrews?

You’d expect so, given the year she’s had so far. To win back-to-back is impressive. To win five tournaments in a row is remarkable. To compete that run in a Major championship is quite simply outstanding. Korda, of course, went on to make it six wins in seven starts, but then it all went wrong.
Playing the devilish par-3 12th at Lancaster CC in the US Women’s Open, her third hole of the first round, she took 10 blows before finding the bottom of the cup. She eventually signed for a painful 80 – a pretty spectacular way to end that run of success.

She missed the cut and the world put it down to that poorly set-up short hole. But she opened with a 76 in her next start to miss another cut and then carded a second-round 81 in the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship to miss the cut again.

She is, of course, a supreme talent but her willowy frame might not be a great fit for the links and she has just one top-10 finish in seven AIG Women’s Open appearances. That it came among the trees at Woburn in 2019 may well be telling.

About the author

Matt Cooper
Contributing Writer

Matt Cooper has been a golf journalist for 15 years. He’s worked for, among others, Golf365, SkySports, ESPN, NBC, Sporting Life, Open.com and the Guardian. He specializes in feature writing, reporting and tournament analysis.

He’s traveled widely in that time, covering golf from Kazakhstan to South Korea via Seychelles, Sri Lanka and Nepal.

More straightforwardly, he’s also covered numerous Majors, Ryder Cups and Solheim Cups.

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