AIG Women’s Open 2024: Who will win?
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I’ve worked out which players will be in contention on Sunday at the AIG Women’s Open. My guide to who will win, and why I think they have a chance of topping the leaderboard at St Andrews Old Course.
The Spectacles. The Coffins. The Beardies. Cheape’s Bunker. Cartgate Bunker.
Shell Bunker. Hell Bunker.
The Principal’s Nose. Miss Grainger’s bosoms. The Elysian Fields.
The Road Hole. The Road Hole Bunker. The Jigger Inn.
The Swilcan Burn. The Swilcan Bridge.
The Valley of Sin.
The auld grey toon of St Andrews.
The home of golf.
The AIG Women’s Open is coming home.
History of The Women’s Open at St Andrews
The Old Course has hosted 30 Open Championships but this year’s AIG Women’s Open is just the third visit.
The first was in 2007 when Mexico’s Lorena Ochoa fired a bunker and bogey-free 67 in the first round to claim an advantage she never relinquished. Scotland’s own Catriona Matthew, who would win the championship two years later at Royal Lytham & St Annes, briefly threatened the lead before Ochoa withstood difficult Saturday conditions better than anyone in the field. She led by six shots after 54 holes and won by four.
Six years later Stacy Lewis took an apartment opposite the Dunvegan, pitching wedge distance from the 18th green, and settled down for the week. She’d already proved herself a fan of the Old Course when winning all five of her matches in the 2008 Curtis Cup and she reiterated the point in style. Saturday’s weather was sunny but the wind was destructive forcing the leaders to play 36 holes on Sunday. Lewis was five shots back when she teed off early that morning and was one back with 18 holes to play but she set off for the final lap an hour ahead of the halfway pace-setters. She made a birdie at 17 from 3-feet and another at 18 from 25-feet to set a clubhouse target no-one could match.
The key numbers in women’s major championships
In the last four years there have been 19 women’s major championships and significant patterns have emerged. Class? All 19 champions had already finished top 20 in a major and 16 of them had already finished in the top five. What about the combination of class and form in the majors? 16 of the winners not only already owned a top 20 finish in the majors, they had also posted one in their last four major appearances.
The key numbers in the AIG Women’s Open
Unlike the Open, the AIG Women’s Open has no unwritten rule of sticking to the linksland of Britain and Ireland. In recent years Sunningdale, Woburn and Walton Heath have hosted the event. While these ventures are popular enough (they’re all very fine courses) deep down everyone in the field and everyone watching knows that the linksland is unique and distinctive to this part of the world. The oldest and ultimate golfing test. It’s where the championship should be played.
Which is a long-winded way of saying that the return to The Old Course is a double reason to celebrate: not just going home, but heading back to the seaside.
Have AIG Women’s British Open champions proved themselves before on the linksland? Simple answer: usually. Eight of the last 10 winners had already finished in the top 12 in the championship on the linksland (that also stands true for 12 of the last 15).
What about form? Nine of the last 10 winners had a top five finish for the year – and so have 14 of the last 15 winners in all (even the exception had a best of T13th). They have also proved themselves nearer the date: all 15 had a top 15 finish in at least one of their five starts before their AIG Women’s Open triumph.
The glorious exception
In so many ways it made absolutely no sense when Germany’s Sophia Popv won the AIG Women’s Open at Royal Troon in 2022. She was ranked 304th in the world, had recorded only two LPGA top 20s in her career, she’d suffered from injury and illness that had prompted her to contemplate retirement, she’d never finished top 50 in a major championship and she’d been caddying for Anne Van Dam earlier that season.
But here’s where it gets weird. She had once topped the leaderboard in the championship when playing in the first group out in 2011 as an amateur and making the first birdie of the tournament. She had already won at Troon that year (sure, it was Troon North in Arizona, but she and her boyfriend had joked that she was on for the double). She had won that year (in fact she was a multiple winner on the mini tours). And she had just registered the second of her LPGA top 20s (ninth) at Highland Meadows – a course that has proved to be an interesting pointer for the AIG Women’s Open. Which leads us to …
Do winners drop a hint?
Let’s start with Highland Meadows. It’s a parkland course in Toledo, Ohio so there is nothing obvious to suggest it as an excellent guide for the linksland of Britain and Ireland. But the raw numbers suggest otherwise. Seven of the last 15 winners of the AIG Women’s Open did not play Highland Meadows in the year of her win but the other eight? Every single one of them finished top 10. If these golfers were world beaters it might be no surprise. But this number includes the two biggest surprises of the last 15 years – Popov and Mo Martin – as well as In-Kyung Kim, Inbee Park, Stacy Lewis, Jiyai Shin, Sherri Steinhauer and Jeong Jang.
Seaview Resort in New Jersey provides another excellent form line. It’s a traditional Donald Ross design which, as the name suggests, is by the ocean. It’s not linksland but it’s close. Six of the last 15 AIG Women’s Open champions recorded a top 15 finish there ahead of their win – in fact it was just about the only clue Mo Martin dropped (her final round 66 was the joint low score of the round as she finished T13th).
Yani Tseng, back-to-back winner of the AIG Women’s Open in 2010 and 2011, started those two years with victories on the Melbourne sandbelt – again, not the linksland, but close.
The Scottish Open Factor
It is now established that a key to Open Championship preparation is a start in the previous week’s Scottish Open and it’s more of the same in the women’s game. Well, not quite. While it took the men’s Scottish Open a while to pull itself away from the luxuries of Loch Lomond, the Women’s Scottish Open needed to slowly build its profile. Indeed, it is only a few years ago that the event was a small field pro-am which included celebrities (Strictly Come Dancing’s Brendan Cole carded a triple bogey at the par-4 first one year, prompting stifled giggles among the gallery as they whispered, Len Goodman-style, “Seven!” to each other).
The tournament truly came alive in 2017 when it became an LPGA and Ladies European Tour co-sanctioned event. That year it was played at Dundonald Links, as it has been the last two years. It has also been to Gullane, the Renaissance Club and Dumbarnie Links.
In that period there have been five AIG Women’s Opens on the linksland. Popov didn’t play the Scottish Open ahead of her win and Buhai in 2022 missed the cut in the Scottish (although she did contend 12 months before that). The other three winners finished ninth (In-Kyung Kim), T21st (Georgia Hall) and T12th (Anna Nordqvist).
More persuasively 28 players have finished tied fifth or better in those five events and 25 of them played in the Women’s Scottish Open. 21 of them made the cut and 14 finished in the top 30. In other words: a rare outing on the links, a week ahead of the big event, has proved beneficial.
The Old Course test
What can we make of the two women’s winners on the Old Course? Ochoa and Lewis have both topped the world rankings, they have both won more than one major championship, they both topped the LPGA’s seasonal scoring averages in the year of their St Andrews win and both ranked top three for hitting Greens in Regulation that year, too. Lewis finished the week 8-under, Ochoa was 5-under. These numbers are down on recent men’s winners (all five of those in the 21st century were 14-under or better). That the women have found it a tougher test (or it has been set up as a tougher test, intentionally or otherwise) might explain why hitting greens has mattered – the men’s winners tend to thrive with a hot putter.
The World Number One on the links
Scoring average and hitting greens in regulation screams the name Nelly Korda because she ranks second in both categories this season. But is she a good bet for the championship? It’s questionable. On the one hand her form has turned from remarkable to the bizarre. She won six times in seven starts early in 2024 but since then has struggled. She carded a 10 on the par-3 12th in the first round of the US Women’s Open, her third hole of the week, and then made a seven at the par-3 16th in the second round of the Olympics at Le Golf National. The good news is that The Old Course has only two par-3s but her capacity for tripping up will be tested by a layout that has sabotage potential everywhere.
And then there is her links record. In the AIG Women’s Open she missed the cut at Kingsbarns, was T42nd at Royal Lytham & St Anne’s, T14th at Royal Troon, T13th at Carnoustie and T41st at Muirfield. It’s not disastrous but with no top 10 finish you do wonder why she’s never played the Women’s Scottish Open.
Who will win the AIG Women’s Open? Our picks
Haeran Ryu (Korea) – 22/1 with bet365
Major quality and form? Three top 10 finishes in 2024
Pedigree in the championship on links? Debut
Good form? Second, third and fifth in her last four starts
The right form? Second at Highland Meadows
Scoring Average/GIR ranks? 8th & 1st
There’s not getting around the 23-year-old’s lack of links experience and curious decision not to play the Women’s Scottish Open. But she is a rising star of the game, one who has won five times at home in Korea, once on the LPGA last year (when Rookie of the Year) and she has been brilliant in this year’s majors: she led the Chevron Championship after three rounds before finishing fifth, was ninth in the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship and fifth in the Evian Championship. Since then she was third in the Dana Open and grabbed another 54-hole lead on her way to third in the Canadian Open. She was also T21st in last year’s event at Walton Heath.
Ayaka Furue (Japan) – 12/1 with bet365
Major quality and form? Winner of this year’s Evian Championship
Pedigree in the championship on links? T20th at Carnoustie in 2021
Good form? Backed up her first major win with solid golf in Scotland last week
The right form? Second at Seaview, played well in the Women’s Scottish Open
Scoring Average/GIR ranks? 1st & 9th
Fuelled by the enormous disappointment of just missing out on Olympic qualification the 24-year-old from Kobe carded three rounds of 65 to win the Evian Championship in sensational style (she played the final five holes in 5-under). She has a championship top 20 but she is also a winner by the seaside – winning the Women’s Scottish Open at Dundonald Links in 2022. Add that to her second place at Seaview this year and a Scottish caddie (Michael Scott), and she can add to the Evian joy.
Linn Grant (Sweden) – 40/1 with bet365
Major quality and form? Ninth in the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship
Pedigree in the championship on links? T19th at Muirfield
Good form? Third at Highland Meadows
The right form? See above
Scoring Average/GIR ranks? 20th & 39th
The Swede first hinted at her quality when sitting fourth at halfway in the 2018 US Women’s Open when an 18-year-old amateur. Six years later she’s turned pro with aplomb and notched seven major championship top 20s in 10 starts in the paid ranks including T19th at Muirfield in 2022. She played in the Women’s Scottish Open last week and has plenty of Scottish pedigree: she won significant amateur events at Royal Troon and North Berwick, and her grandfather was a Scottish pro who hailed from Inverness.
Xiyu Lin (China) – 22/1 with bet365
Major quality and form? Third in last year’s KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, T13th in this year’s Chevron Championship
Pedigree in the championship on links? T17th at St Andrews in 2013
Good form? Third in the Olympics
The right form? Fifth at Highland Meadows
Scoring Average/GIR ranks? 13th & 15th
The 28-year-old made a fine championship debut finishing T17th, after a slow start, on The Old Course 11 years ago but it remained this late developer’s best major championship finish until 2021. She landed two major top 10s that year and has added 10 top 30s in them in the last three seasons. Extended Olympic bronze medal celebrations led to her missing the Women’s Scottish Open which is a pity but she has a fine record in that event with two top 10s at the Renaissance Club and two top 20s at Dundonald Links. Her stats are quietly impressive, too.
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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The AIG Women's Open Trophy at the Home of Golf
