Youth was served at this year’s U.S. Open Women’s golf championship and the foreign flavor to the tournament also continued unabated.
Yuka Saso of the Philippines birdied the third playoff hole at the Olympic Club in San Francisco to earn her first U.S. Open title. At the age of 19, Saso joined 2008 U.S. Women’s Open champion Inbee Park as the only teenagers to win the event. Park was also 19 when she captured the tournament title at Interlachen Country Club in Edina, Minnesota.
Although Saso wasn’t among the pre-tournament favorites, interestingly, seven of the top eight contenders among the U.S. Open best bets were all international players. Two-time champion Park of South Korea was the 11-1 favorite to win the tourney. South Korean compatriots Jin Young Ko, Sei Young Kim, Hyo Joo Kim and So Yeon Ryu were also among the favorites, as were Ariya Jutanugarn of Thailand, and Lydia Ko of New Zealand. Jessica Korda was the only American considered to be in with a chance to win.
In the final outcome, just three of the top 12 finishers in the tournament were American players.
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Through the first 49 U.S. Women’s Opens, there were just five foreign-born winners. Uruguay’s Fay Crocker was the first international winner in 1955. At 41, that win made Crocker the oldest first-time winner in LPGA history.
She was followed by France’s Catherine Lacoste in 1967. They were joined by Australia’s Jan Stephenson (1983), and England’s Laura Davies and Sweden’s Liselotte Neumann, who won back-to-back in 1987-88.
Since 1995, there have been just eight U.S.-born winners of the tournament. Both Sweden’s Annika Sorenstam (1994-95) and Australia’s Karrie Webb (2000-01) won consecutive titles, as foreign players won six of seven titles between 1995-2001.
Ten different South Korean players have won U.S. Women’s Open titles, beginning with Se Ri Pak in 1998 and most recently by Kim A-lim in 2020. Since 2015, Brittany Lang is the only American golfer to win the tournament.
It certainly didn’t look like it was going to be Saso’s day when she opened her final round by posting double bogeys on the second and third holes. She rallied with three birdies over her final 12 holes to gain a place in the playoff with Japan’s Nasa Hataoka.
Saso became the first player from the Philippines to win a golf major. This year’s event also marked the seventh straight LPGA Tour major in which a first-time winner was victorious.
Only four players managed to break par in the tournament.
"Yuka Saso" by Jed Jacobson is licensed under CC BY 3.0
For the first time, the Olympic Club was playing host to the U.S. Women’s Open. However, over three visits from the men’s version of the U.S. Open, the challenging track earned a reputation as the graveyard of champions.
No player with the 54-hole lead at the Olympic Club has ever gone on to win the U.S. Open, and upon their first try, the women managed to maintain this unique and foreboding tradition.
American Lexi Thompson held a one-shot lead entering the final day of play following a third-round 66, her best-ever score for 18 holes in a U.S. Open. By the eighth hole of the final round Thompson had elevated her edge to five strokes.
What awaited her, though, was an epic collapse on the back nine. She played the final seven holes in five-over par, missing out on a spot in the playoff by one stroke. Thompson double bogeyed No. 11 and bogeyed the 14th hole. Further bogeys on 17 and 18 cemented her demise.
“I really didn’t feel like I hit any bad golf shots,” Thompson told the Golf Channel. “That’s what this golf course can do to you.”
If it was any consolation at all, Thompson included her name on a list alongside some of golf’s luminaries. Ben Hogan, Arnold Palmer, Tom Watson, Payne Stewart, Jim Furyk and Graeme McDowell all held the outright lead or a share of the lead and saw their advantages evaporate over the final 18 holes of a U.S. Open played at the Olympic Club.
During the 1966 U.S. Open, Palmer squandered a seven-shot lead on the back nine of the final round. He would lose in an 18-hole playoff the next day to Billy Casper.
The women also carried on the men’s tradition of fantastic finishes at the Olympic Club. This was the third of five U.S. Opens held on the course that required a playoff to determine a victor. The other two resulted in one-stroke victories over the regulation 72 holes of play.
