Ashleigh Buhai records emotional first big win at AIG Women’s Open 2022 after four-hole playoff
Ashleigh Buhai waited until age 33 to get her first major championship, so four more holes is nothing. After shooting 75 in the final round of the first Women’s Open at Muirfield to take a five-stroke lead, Buhai overtook In Gee Chun in a playoff that lasted more than an hour as the sun went down in East Lothian, as well as men’s and women’s major championship season.
Buhai is just a Cinderella story in Wikipedia. The South African entered the week without major top 10 players (her only one came at the 2019 Women’s Open at Woburn), but she also ranked 84th in the world and made it to the top 10. top 25 in the last two female majors. at the Women’s PGA Championship and the Evian Championship.
She’s been out on the field for the first three days at Muirfield. A score of 70 in Round 1 was followed by rounds 65 and 64 that included 13 birds, an eagle and just two condors to beat the five-man Chun as well as teammate Hinako Shibuno on Sunday’s finale. day to end a historic week. at Muirfield.
After playing the first 14 holes of the final round with a score of more than 1, Muirfield experienced a disaster in 15th place at par-4. Buhai hit her tee into a bunker, and it got much worse from there. A passing second precedes a third with rough cloth. She made a three-bogey 7 to land in a second tie with Chun, who had a one-hole lead. Both made it through the last three holes to go to a playoff.
For someone like Buhai, who is playing in the 43rd major championship of his career, this can often turn out to be disastrous. The world begins to spin, the footage begins to race, and 10 minutes ago the feeling of total control was now like an 18-wheeler on ice plunging downhill.
However, she put both hands on the steering wheel and won back the championship within her reach. It’s the mark of a mature player – Buhai has been on the LPGA Tour since 2008 and was once the youngest winner in Ladies European Tour history – but it’s also a sign of a champion, which Buhai has won become.
There were also wobbly moments in the playoffs. Both players had to go through hypothermia, poor second shots and spine-tightening hits to last one of the world’s biggest tournaments. Buhai and Chun played the first three playoff holes – all 18 at Muirfield – in 13 strokes. Par-bogey-par. Then they go to the fourth tee and – because of the fading sun and lack of light, maybe – the last one for the evening regardless of the outcome.
Chun opened the door by hitting her ball in a bunker, but Buhai blocked her approach to a bunker and shouted “5.” Instead, she hit a shot of her life and Chun left behind a short miracle denomination. Buhai had collapsed in a short amount of time to give her the championship that would have slipped through her fingers so many times in the previous few hours.
Buhai along with South African colleagues Gary Player (1959) and Ernie Els (2002) became champions at Muirfield.
“It’s hard to put into words now, I think it just might hit me in a few days,” she said in tears afterward. “Obviously I’m very proud. We’re a very small country, so to be able to produce some big champions that’s a pretty amazing thing. For me as a South African woman and a big winner, I don’t have a Changing Life.”
It’s a mental win for her, for obvious reasons, but it’s also an emotionally compelling win to watch less obvious matches.
All big wins – both men’s and women’s – are life-changing, but not all of them Equal change life. And for Buhai, a career grinder who rarely wins at the highest level in the world, this is a revelation. She gripped the front of her cap and pulled it over her eyes, the reality of what she was sure to always envision was too much for her to bear at the moment. A great result for a long summer and an even longer career.
Kyle Porter and Mark Immleman discuss Ashleigh Buhai’s victory at the AIG Women’s Open. Follow and listen to The First Cut on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
It’s a magical curiosity to watch golfers try and understand or contextualize what they’ve just accomplished seconds after it’s happened. This happens all the time all over the golfing world, but it happens rarely at this level with much at stake. Buhai – for her one week and for a long (but not famous) career and for the way she revived herself after what could have been a nightmare at number 15 and for Muirfield – more than any other. Anyone else in the pivotal 2022 season has both past and future written on her face. All at once and all in the present. It is a wonderful thing to see.
