Clayton's Lisa Philips has etched her name into the record books at the $136,000 Australian Open today, becoming the first women to claim the blue-ribbon singles title twice since the event's inception.
The 19-year-old, who hails from Yallourn, became the youngest ever winner of the Southern Hemisphere's most lucrative tournament in 2011 when she triumphed over former under-25 world champion Sam Shannahan, and whilst she was unable to follow up with a back-to-back repeat last year; dropping the final to Jackaroos captain Lynsey Armitage, she has made history with a gold medal performance against world number two Karen Murphy today.
With a capacity crowd in attendance at the Darebin International Sports Centre looking on, the Australian Jackaroo teammates light up the greens, with Phillips finding form early in her third consecutive finals appearance, claiming the first set 9-5.
Recently crowned singles world champion Murphy was quick to launch her response however, squaring the scores on the fifth end of the second set with 3 shots, edging ahead with a full count of 4 on the seventh end, and picking up 1 on the last end as the game hung in the balance, to push it to a spellbinding tie-break.
Coming down to a measure in the first end, Murphy was off to a good start, locking in two shots. But as she struggled to find the jack in the second end, Phillips struck back a thundering three shots.
Starring down the barrel and left with only option of pushing the match to a sudden-death extra end, Murphy let rip with a final drive as the crowd sat silent as the bowl raced down the green, finding the gap and narrowly missing by inches to hand Phillips the gold medal and $18,000 prize cheque that accompanies it.
"It's unreal," Phillips said after the victory.
"I came out knowing that I had absolutely nothing to lose and I was happy to even come this far.
"It's such a big tournament that I guess you rise to the occasion.
"You can't really prepare to play Karen, you just have to be at your best.
"This was the third time I have played her now, so I kind of had a little bit of insight of to what she might do, her tactics, so I knew what she was going to do and didn't let it worry me."
