Yani Tseng (曾雅妮) won the Women’s Australian Open by three strokes yesterday, shooting five birdies on the back nine for a seven-under 66 to pull away from former champions Karrie Webb and Laura Davies.
Tseng, the 2008 LPGA Championship winner, had a 72-hole total of nine-under 283 on the par-73 Commonwealth Golf Club. Hitting 17 greens in regulation yesterday, she birdied the final two holes to all but end any challenge from Webb and Davies in the final group behind her.
Defending champion Davies shot 71, including a birdie on 18, to finish second.
PHOTO: AFP
Four-time Open winner and third-round leader Webb missed three putts for birdies inside four feet on the back nine and was third after a 74 and was four behind Tseng.
Australian Katherine Hull, who shot 72, finished tied for fourth with second-round leader Giulia Sergas of Italy (74), five off Tseng.
Webb wore a white shirt with blue-and-green trim — the same as last Sunday when she shot a course-record 11-under 61 at Royal Pines to win her seventh Australian Masters title.
While the shirt was the same, however, the outcome was very different as Webb, playing for the fourth week in a row after previous stops in Bangkok and Singapore, faltered in the closing stages.
Instead, Tseng was rewarded for steady iron play on the back nine — capitalizing on birdies on eight and nine to come home with a bogey-free finish.
“It was very exciting, my whole body is still shaking,” Tseng said before the trophy presentations. “My heart is still at over 200 beats a minute.”
“I just felt I needed to get some more birdies coming home and it worked out,” said Tseng, who said she plans to return to Taiwan and will share the Australian Open trophy with family and friends.
Webb started the day with a one-shot lead over Sergas and began with two birdies.
“I got off to a really great start and was feeling really good,” Webb said. “I played a couple of scrappy holes on six and seven and really lost a lot of momentum.”
“I just didn’t hit it as good after that for some reason. I didn’t trust myself as much as I would have liked and then the putts just weren’t going in. Seven under is an incredible score around here today,” she said.
CHAOS: Iranians took to the streets playing celebratory music after reports of Khamenei’s death on Saturday, while mourners also gathered in Tehran yesterday Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in a major attack on Iran launched by Israel and the US, throwing the future of the Islamic republic into doubt and raising the risk of regional instability. Iranian state television and the state-run IRNA news agency announced the 86-year-old’s death early yesterday. US President Donald Trump said it gave Iranians their “greatest chance” to “take back” their country. The announcements came after a joint US and Israeli aerial bombardment that targeted Iranian military and governmental sites. Trump said the “heavy and pinpoint bombing” would continue through the week or as long
An Emirates flight from Dubai arrived at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport yesterday afternoon, the first service of the airline since the US and Israel launched strikes against Iran on Saturday. Flight EK366 took off from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) at 3:51am yesterday and landed at 4:02pm before taxiing to the airport’s D6 gate at Terminal 2 at 4:08pm, data from the airport and FlightAware, a global flight tracking site, showed. Of the 501 passengers on the flight, 275 were Taiwanese, including 96 group tour travelers, the data showed. Tourism Administration Deputy Director-General Huang He-ting (黃荷婷) greeted Taiwanese passengers at the airport and
State-run CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) yesterday said that it had confirmed on Saturday night with its liquefied natural gas (LNG) and crude oil suppliers that shipments are proceeding as scheduled and that domestic supplies remain unaffected. The CPC yesterday announced the gasoline and diesel prices will rise by NT$0.2 and NT$0.4 per liter, respectively, starting Monday, citing Middle East tensions and blizzards in the eastern United States. CPC also iterated it has been reducing the proportion of crude oil imports from the Middle East and diversifying its supply sources in the past few years in response to geopolitical risks, expanding
STRAIT OF HORMUZ: In the case of a prolonged blockade by Iran, Taiwan would look to sources of LNG outside the Middle East, including Australia and the US Taiwan would not have to ration power due to a shortage of natural gas, Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said yesterday, after reports that the Strait of Hormuz was closed amid the conflict in the Middle East. The government has secured liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies for this month and contingency measures are in place if the conflict extends into next month, Kung told lawmakers. Saying that 25 percent of Taiwan’s natural gas supplies are from Qatar, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus secretary-general Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥) asked about the situation in light of the conflict. There would be “no problems” with
RSS