Hannah Green is in familiar territory this week. The fourth event of the LPGA Tour, the HSBC Women’s World Championship, has kicked off at the Sentosa Golf Club in Singapore. Last year, Hannah Green overcame a stern challenge from French golfer Celine Boutier to earn her fourth LPGA title and first of the year at the Tanjong Course.
The win at Singapore kicked off a brilliant year for the Australian golfer. Green, after the win at the tournament, clinched two more victories, at the JM Eagle LA Championship and the BMW Ladies Championship, to register her most successful year on the tour. Now she’s back to defend her title, with fresh ambitions and new decisions.
Speaking to the press before the tournament, Hannah Green talked about realigning her goals and having renewed focus as she expects to climb a steeper mountain this season.
Hannah Green believes that the Nelly Korda mountain is too steep to scale
Coming off her most successful year so far, it will be interesting to see how Green approaches the season. The Australian pro believes that it will be a tough job, but that is something she has to figure out. “Yeah, it’s difficult. Obviously I would say most players have goals throughout the year, and you know, because I did achieve winning three tournaments, it’s hard to then reset.”
Currently, Green is ranked sixth in the world. She aims to reach No.2 this year, as she thinks Nelly Korda at No.1 is unreachable. The six-time LPGA winner seems to take a realistic approach to that, explaining, “So I guess another thing that I’ve been thinking about with my coach is obviously where my World Ranking is, and realistically, with Nelly winning as many times as she did last year, I don’t think I can achieve No. 1 unless I win the same amount of times. I said would love I to get to World No. 2, World No. 3.”
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Nelly is coming off one of the best-ever LPGA seasons in the tour’s history, having won 7 events, including 4 straight last year. She currently holds average ranking points of 11.55 and the gap between her and second-placed Jeeno Thitikul is more than the gap between Thitikul and 45th-placed Chanettee Wannasaen. Talk about dominance. Nothing short of emulation will get Hannah Green close to Korda’s ranking points.
What would be extremely exciting for the Australian is that she has defended a title before. She won the 2023 JM Eagle LA Championship via a playoff against Aditi Ashok and Lin Xiyu. A year later, she defended the title by 3 strokes against Swede Maja Stark, showing clear improvement in a year. It is not beyond the realm of possibility. But the Australian does not want too much of the heat. She stated, “So I, again, don’t want to put too much pressure on myself. But it does bring a lot of confidence coming to events that you’ve played well at before. I’m looking to be in contention in major championships.”
Last year, Green made 16 cuts of the 20 events she played, missing only 4 cuts. While that seems like a small number, the only problem was that 2 of the 4 cuts were the majors. That will be something Green will be looking to improve. “Unfortunately, I didn’t play a lot of weekends last year, and those are the tournament we try to prepare well the best and I put too much pressure on myself to perform well at those events. I’m hoping this year will be a better season in that sense. Yeah, just got to use the confidence from the last couple years to go into those weeks,” the Australian added.
As she aims to claim her 7 LPGA Tour victory and defend her title, Green will have her task cut out pitted against a strong field.
The field at the HSBC Women’s World Championship
Except for Nelly Korda, all other golfers ranked above Green are on the field in Singapore. Jeeno Thitikul, Lydia Ko, Ruoning Yin, and Lilia Vu all are likely to provide stern challenges to the Australian’s bid for title defense. In fact, Green will be teeing off with Thitikul and Ko as they are all grouped together.
The field also includes all three LPGA Champions from this year. A Lim Kim, who won the Tournament of Champions, Yealimi Noh, who won the Founders Cup and Angel Yin, the most recent winner at the Honda LPGA Thailand. The field also includes other top golfers like Ayaka Furue, Charley Hull, and Jin Young Ko.
Despite the absence of Nelly Korda, Green will have her task cut out in Singapore this week. But this is where she will have to display her strong resilience and mentality. Do you think Green will successfully defend her title?
