Probably the most prestigious ladies’s newbie event within the sport turns 5 this 12 months as 72 of one of the best on the planet will descend on Georgia for the 2024 Augusta Nationwide Girls’s Newbie.
The 54-hole event will start Wednesday with two rounds over two days on the close by Champions’ Retreat Golf Membership. As in years previous, after the primary 36 holes at Champions’ Retreat, the sphere might be minimize to the highest 30 gamers (together with ties) earlier than a follow spherical at Augusta Nationwide Golf Membership Friday and the ultimate spherical on Saturday, April 6.
Final 12 months’s champion, Rose Zhang, is just not within the discipline as she turned professional following her 2023 victory, however the discipline readily available contains one earlier winner and loads of different proficient gamers trying to have their identify without end linked with this historic venue.
Listed below are 4 inquiries to get you prepared for this 12 months’s event:
Who’re the favorites?
Very like Zhang final 12 months, Ingrid Lindblad has compiled a university and newbie résumé that appears to be lacking just one factor: a win at Augusta. The LSU graduate pupil simply set an SEC report with a win at her 14th school event by capturing 18 underneath, 10 photographs higher than second place. Lindblad is not simply the top-ranked feminine newbie on the planet; she has dominated LPGA Q-school and will have possible gone professional at any level over the previous two years. As an alternative, the Swedish nationwide has stayed at LSU in pursuit of a nationwide title (she already has an SEC championship) and naturally, a win at ANWA.
Lindblad has come shut. She completed tied for third place in 2021 and tied for second place in 2022. Final 12 months, a missed minimize felt like an aberration, and this 12 months, she’s hoping the fourth time’s the allure as she makes an attempt to place the ending touches on what’s already an impeccable newbie profession.
You do not have to go very far to seek out one other potential favourite for this 12 months’s event. Lindblad’s LSU teammate Latanna Stone is just not far behind Lindblad by way of accomplishments and up to date kind. Stone completed tied for second place in 2022 together with Lindblad and, since she’s a fifth-year school pupil, that is additionally her final try at successful the celebrated occasion.
Stone’s most up-to-date look within the highlight was eventually 12 months’s U.S. Girls’s Newbie, the place she made the championship match however — having handled a muscle pressure through the week — misplaced to Auburn’s Megan Schofill.
Schofill is one other identify to observe. Her win on the U.S. Girls’s Am final 12 months was spectacular, and he or she’s now heading into her fourth ANWA having tallied up 4 top-10 finishes in tournaments already this season.
Rounding out a few of this 12 months’s favorites are Spain’s Julia Lopez Ramirez — ranked second on the planet within the newbie ladies’s golf rankings and making her second look at ANWA — and England’s Lottie Woad, who has six top-eight finishes this season whereas at Florida State College and is ranked fourth on the planet.
Is expertise at Augusta Nationwide a difference-maker?
Although ANWA continues to be in its nascent phases, there at the moment are gamers on this 12 months’s discipline who’ve performed in each one of many event’s occasions since its inception. Gamers who’ve undergone “the Augusta Nationwide expertise” in years previous could be extra comfy taking part in on the historic course as soon as extra.
Among the gamers who could have extra familiarity than most with this occasion are 21-year-old Amanda Sambach (presently the Twelfth-ranked ladies’s newbie on the planet), who’s making her fourth look; Emilia Migliaccio in her fifth ANWA look; and Spain’s Carolina Chacarra (sister of LIV participant Eugenio Chacarra), taking part in in her fourth ANWA, although she has but to make the ultimate spherical.
This 12 months may even be Amari Avery‘s fourth try at successful this event, and to this point, the USC junior has had each form of end: a missed minimize in her debut, a tie for fourth in 2022 and a tie for twenty ninth final 12 months.
For gamers like Lindblad and Stone, the potential to win ANWA was an element of their choice to stay at school for an additional 12 months and never flip professional. Whereas Rachel Kuehn has not mentioned that this event is what introduced her again for a fifth 12 months at Wake Forest, her fourth look at Augusta comes after attaining the final word school purpose: successful a nationwide championship in 2023. Including ANWA to a résumé that features 4 All-American choices would not be such a nasty technique to end off her school profession.
Will amount flip into high quality for Japan and Stanford?
Regardless of that includes 37 gamers from the USA, ANWA has at all times included a variety of proficient opponents from everywhere in the world. No nation outdoors the USA might be extra well-represented on the occasion this 12 months than Japan, which could have eight gamers taking part and boasts the event’s solely worldwide winner: Tsubasa Kajitani (2021).
Kajitani is just not within the discipline this 12 months, however the group is led by 18-year-old Yuna Araki, who’s ranked eighth on the planet after successful three newbie world occasions in 2023, in addition to Kokoro Nakamura, additionally 18, who received the 2023 Japan Ladies’ Junior Championship. Total, seven of the eight contributors from Japan are ranked inside the highest 50 ladies amateurs on the planet.
Stanford, for its half, boasts 9 gamers on this 12 months’s discipline, additional cementing its place as the game’s preeminent school program. Maybe probably the most recognizable identify within the group is Rachel Heck, who introduced final week that she has opted to forgo turning skilled and can stay an newbie even after she leaves Stanford.
Becoming a member of her is Megha Ganne, who’s coming off a top-10 end on the event final 12 months and a win within the 2023 Carmel Cup at Pebble Seaside, in addition to 21-year-old senior Sadie Englemann, who received the 2023 East Lake Cup. Just one Cardinal is presently ranked inside the highest 10 on the planet, nonetheless, and that is Meja Ortengren from Sweden. Nineteen-year-old Ortengren is merely a Stanford commit for the time being, however she already has proven she has the sport to be one of many program’s greatest gamers.
Can one other younger participant win?
As touched on above, ANWA expertise is beginning to turn out to be an actual factor. And but, the previous three winners have been youngsters. Zhang, Anna Davis and Kajitani have been all 19 or youthful, and Davis stays the youngest winner in event historical past at 16 years previous throughout her 2022 win.
Although she missed the minimize final 12 months, the now-18-year-old Davis (presently ranked seventeenth on the planet) is again in Augusta for the third time and trying to turn out to be the one two-time winner within the event’s historical past.
Inside the highest 10 within the ladies’s world newbie rankings are two different 18-year-olds who might make some noise: the aforementioned Araki and Germany’s Helen Briem. Briem is coming off making historical past for her nation as the primary German winner within the 104-year historical past of the R&A’s Lady Newbie championship.
Different younger gamers to observe embrace Thailand’s Eila Galitsky, who received the Girls’s Newbie Asia-Pacific in 2023, in addition to 16-year-old Gianna Clemente, who made her ANWA debut final 12 months at 15 and completed one place higher than her age — 14th. Clemente additionally received the 2023 Ladies’ Junior PGA Championship. Spain’s Cayetana Fernandez Garcia-Poggio is one other 18-year-old who proved she belonged in her debut final 12 months as she completed twenty third and made three birdies on Augusta’s iconic again 9.
